La dimora del male

It sort of keeps your attention because you really want to find out what the end game of all of this is and it falls wayyy short. I don't wanna say I hated it but I didn't love it either. It's worth a once over. Jessica Brown Findlay of Downton Abbey fame does give a great performance though! I give it 5 out of 10 bags of potato chips.

I was quite enjoying this, it definitely has it's moments. It was building towards a conclusion, but then...nothing. It's a film full of loose ends and half-baked ideas. Jessica Brown Findlay is good as Marianne, but her character needed to be written better, with at least some semblance of a person behaving realistically having experienced what they did. Why Sean Harris has the hair of Quentin Crisp is perhaps the greatest mystery here. A reasonably enjoyable journey but the destination is the middle of nowhere.

I love Smith's other 6 features, but this one....not so much. It is a slow burn, and that I have no problem with. Trouble is, it really doesn't go anywhere. The cast tries, but the script is lacking on multiple fronts. It doesn't help that Smith's trademark pitch black humor - which somehow even showed up in moments of Black Death - is totally absent here. It almost seems like he knew this was hopeless and put in minimal effort. If not for seeing "Directed by Christopher Smith" in the credits, it could have been made by literally anyone. Very disappointing to see a director with so much ability just phoning it in. Hopefully this is just an aberration.

There is a lot to enjoy in this somewhat by-the-numbers haunted house movie. Sean Harris gives it everything to almost comic effect and Jessica Brown Findlay is very good. True, there's nothing new to see here and it drags a touch but it's certainly more engaging than many recent mid-budget ghost films.

Do you suffer from insomnia or do you lay in bed overthinking for hours before falling asleep? If yes, this is the movie to watch.