The Atoning

I'm not a fan of horror films that rely on blood and guts to inspire fear. Tickling our imaginations is more my preference. But, to each his own. This movie started rather slow but it still caught my interest. I knew quite quickly what they should have known all along. And rightly so! It wasn't about what happened. It was about the family figuring it out. The female lead and the son put on some good acting. The male lead wasn't quite as good but he was still quite a bit beyond okay. I would have tweaked the ending a bit...just because I'm a sap, lol.

When I stumbled upon "The Atoning", I must admit that I was immediately lured by the cover. I didn't even read the synopsis for the movie, the front of the cover was all that was needed to have me interested.

So I knew that I was getting myself into a horror movie. I just didn't know what kind of horror movie.

"The Atoning" turned out to be an unfathomably slow paced horror movie that borrowed heavily on elements from "The Others", but it just failed to be as interesting or groundbreaking as "The Others" was back in the day. There was so little happening throughout the course of "The Atoning" that it was getting progressively more and more difficult to keep interested in watching it.

It should be said that while the storyline and script was atrocious, then the acting performances were actually quite good. Just a shame that they had so little to work with. Virginia Newcomb, playing Vera, was the one whom carried the movie for the most parts.

The movie wasn't even halfheartedly scary. And when the people covered in black paint showed up, I was about ready to just turn off the movie and find something else to watch. But I endured and stuck with "The Atoning" to the end. Some of us suffered through this, so you don't have to.

If you enjoy horror movies then I suggest you find something else to watch, because "The Atoning" is just not worth the time or effort. Maybe if something more interested happened throughout the course of the storyline, yeah... But it didn't, so don't bother.

This movie has a good story with a decent twist towards the end. The problem is the bad pacing and very poor sound work ruin any kind of atmosphere and makes it almost unwatchable. The first 2 3ds of the movie just drag. It's slow with random awkward jump scares and again the sound work does nothing to make the jump scares actually scary. Once they start actually explaining the plot it gets better. If the sound wasn't severely lacking the last half hour would've been almost good. The acting wasn't terrible but could use some improvements, especially in the first half. It's just an awkward low budget feeling movie with incredibly dull sound that ruins any vibe that the movie was trying to produce.

Seriously. The story was so slow, it was painful. The acting was decent here and there but dreadful otherwise. There were elements to the storyline that were intriguing but execution failed miserably. The creatures were spooky until you were presented with them face on. Some things are better left to the imagination. I don't know how this scored a 6.1 on IMDb. Don't waste your time.

In the first 4 minutes of the movie you figure out exactly what happened to the family. If you didn't pick it up at that time the movie pretty much gives you all the pieces before the middle of the movie. Further cements it near the end as the motive of why it all happened. The title of the movie is proper and you need to figure out for whom it was meant. Overall not a bad movie and it does have a couple of jump scares. Guess maybe that's why it was label as horror?