The Spiritualist

With friends like that, who needs enemies. I'm talking of Laura's so called friends that appear during a seance. She doesn't know any of them but that's why the film fails. None of the characters are likeable. The story makes no sense and it jumps a lot. The best thing about it was the beautiful castle it was filmed in. The only reason I watched it was to see a ghost, but instead it was full of sounds of people gulping. All I can say is in one word: yawn.

I came across this film on Youtube and seemed to have a decent story to it, after twenty minutes I kept saying it will get better...it never did. It seems to pick up and then go downhill a lot, the acting is not the greatest, some bits go slow and others parts go on too long, the twist at the end was not well executed properly, Having Julie Wallace and Ian Reddington star in it that caught my attention, there acting talents are wasted in this.

The story was good. It has potential. The acting just so bad. The only one I give any props to is Caroline Burns Cooke, the spiritualist.

The sound was so bad at times I couldn't hear the dialog. Then it was so loud it was over whelming. The set was gorgeous. The estate was beautiful.

This movie is the reason why ALL movies' full synopsis should be posted on the internet! I watched this -even some scenes more than once - and I STILL didn't work out the ending! I've heard it called another "Sixth Sense", but I swear, I just don't see it! This is driving me crazy! Would I watch it again? Yeh, probably will - but only to figure out what was going on!

The difficulty, I think, was all the back and forth from past to present. The actors often wore the same clothing in both time settings, so it was very confusing.

The Spiritualist was good in some scenes , then others acted as if she didn't know what she was there to do. But one of her high moments was when she was discussing the man's dead twin brother. The man's reactions to her description were so touching, heartbreaking, yet encouraging.

Perhaps, if I figure out the "mysteries" in this film, I'll find more scenes like that. I hope I can. The worst thing a filmmaker can do is to drop the story, leaving it unfinished and untold.

I watched this despite some low scores because I'm really chugging through the horrors on Amazon, and, with it being on Prime, thought it was worth a gamble. I'm glad I did because I was engaged with the story throughout and taken by surprise a couple of times. The spiritualist herself is a great character played very nicely.

The story requires a bit of concentration, but I felt I understood it and was pretty satisfied by the payoff. It's fairly well-shot and produced and doesn't feel like a bargain basement feature (I'd say it has solid TV-quality production values) so 100% worth a watch if you like supernatural mysteries. However, it's definitely not terrifying, so avoid if you just want scares!