Altar

Atmospheric haunted house horror about a designer who moves her husband and kids into a spooky Yorkshire manor she has been hired to restore. Beautifully shot on location, director/screenwriter Nick Willing makes the most of the subdued, wild beauty of the Yorkshire moors. I wish we had a better sense of the gorgeous house the family takes over -- for all the reliance on secret rooms and bricked up passageways, the internal layout of the house remains vague and generic. Also less defined than they should be are the couple's two children, who we don't get to know very well. This makes the peril they are in less compelling than it could be. Olivia Williams does a great job as the emotional center of the film, trying to hold her family together in the face of mounting financial pressures and a menacing presence that seems to grow more powerful. Like many such stories, the supernatural here is an expression of the resentments and strains that have crept into William's marriage to her failed artist husband, played by a miscast Matthew Modine. While it doesn't break any new ground, "Altar" builds and mostly maintains a high creepiness factor, especially when Modine discovers a new medium and new canvas for his art. This is a good, old-fashioned, restrained horror film, well worth checking out.

I love a good ghost story. I practically worship a great ghost story. Sadly, Altar is neither. It has its moments, and it's not a complete waste of time to watch, but in my opinion it started with all the makings of a truly interesting story and mixed it all up into a batch of...mixed up.

The true star of the film is its Yorkshire manor location. Now, if I'd been handed this set to work with (and if I, you know, actually made movies), Altar is NOT the story I'd have come up with. I actually felt a bit annoyed at the movie for not living up to such a classic haunted house setting! The premise was simple enough, and it started out in fairly contemporary spooky fashion, but there was just not the right kind of follow through. Rather than spine tingles and after-view thoughts about mortality, the climax delivered only a mash-up of effects and incoherent, half-explored themes.

I will say this: the actors who played the children did great. Williams did fine in her role, and even Modine did the best he could with what he was given (his character was the biggest mess in the mix, with some truly uncomfortable scenes - and not in a horror/mystery sort of way).

Generally, you could do a lot worse for your hour and a half, but if you want a great haunted house / ghost story, look elsewhere. It's been done a thousand times better at least hundreds of times already.

The Altar is a ghost story in the classic tradition. Meg (Olivia Williams), Alec (Matthew Modine) and their children move in to a decrepit Yorkshire mansion whilst Meg restores it for the owner. Over the next couple of months the haunted nature of the house becomes apparent, with the usual banging sounds, slamming doors and ethereal appearances. Most of the film relies heavily on Olivia Williams and she does an OK job, with Matthew Modine limping in towards the end.

Undoubtedly, the film borrows heavily from other ghost and spirit films, most notably The Shining, but it was almost like playing bingo, identifying tropes from other films as it progressed, such as The Exorcist, Don't Look Now, etc. The TV movie feel and austere feel of the grand old house give a 1970s drama feel to the film. Some may associated this with quality drama, some with cheap production values.

There are some plus points: the old Yorkshire mansion and it's windswept grounds give a good background feeling, and the explicit pictures of the ghosts is usual and scarier than most in the genre - more like The Grudge than Turn of the Screw.

Overall, I was left with the question, why? Did this movie really need to be made?

If you've seen a fair share of horror films, you can tick off not only the mash up of plot points but the composition of shots, camera tricks, and the musical flourishes.

The Legend of Hell House, The Amityville Horror, The Shining, The Haunting, Rose Red, Dead Again, Darkness, Burnt Offerings, Poltergeist, The Ninth Gate, etc. It's strange and weird enough, but the plot doesn't cohere and devolves into the straight to video mess it is.

By the time things turn a corner and the elder daughter starts to get rolled into the mix, it's like you're watching a new movie, as if they're trying to restart in the third reel. But that's the film in a nutshell, constantly restarting with a new conflict that sort of connects but not really.

This is a bad movie. When I knew the cast, I thought it had to be good. Experienced actors with a great curriculum of good movies. Well, it started out very bad and it gets worse till the end. A lot of clichés. The same and old ones that everybody saw in thousand of other horror type movies. Bad acting, which surprised me. It seemed that Mathew was not there at all....he was around the movie scene and stopped a while to make some filming. Didn't feel him at all. The plot, it's old and the same one, ever and ever again. The effects are bad and didn't scare one bit. Not even the slamming doors, or the sounds...nothing is capable of scare in this picture. My question is: why someone bothers to do a movie like thousands of other? and why did the actors accept being part of this? I really don't understand. There are a lot of stupid scenes also. It's really not good enough to spend time watching.