Inhabited

Malcolm McDowell diagnoses Megan Gallagher's daughter and she as having a form of illness, when they believe they are seeing "The Huldre", troll-like creatures which live with "the rocks and the roots" (to quote the movie).

Basically a family moves into an older house, which has a smaller doll-house in the backyard. The daughter (well played by Sofia Vassiliova) starts to befriend the creatures, until they become vindictive. The family cat also disappears.

There are a few good scenes with Megan Gallagher ("Millennium") and Malcolm McDowell as the psychiatrist. There is also something strange which occurred to one of McDowell's patients.

If you enjoy this type of story, you may also like "Bad Ronald", which had a similar odd theme, and the house is haunted by bad Ronald (Scott Jacoby) only that movie is from the 70's. 7/10.

A family of four has moved into a new house that needs a real makeover. Out the back happens to be a fancy old looking playhouse, which the young daughter, Gina grows attach it. This is where she talks to her fairy friends and her parents (mother) believe she's just getting used to the move. Soon small, but dangerous accidents start occurring and Gina claims it's the fairies. To that response they seek the aid of a doctor who specialises in these cases, but is she telling the truth?

Two things were on my mind when I decided to give the film a view. That I'd be watching a haunted house flick and a real stinker too. The director, Kelly Sandefur brought us the laughably dumb and irritable family horror TV movie "Fangs (2001)". So I was in store for a childish themed movie. So there was another fact that wouldn't budge from my mind. Anyhow, I don't shoot me. I guess going in with extremely LOW expectations rubbed off nicely.

There's something about this ho hum fairy-tale family (yes, family-friendly) horror film that kept me more than occupied and rather surprised. I liked the concept behind it, although in the long run it's mechanical and there's a familiar pattern that developments. It seems to take its thunder from the likes of the third short story "The General" in the omnibus flick "Cat's Eye (1985)" and "Don't be Afraid of the Dark (1973)". The enchantingly, silly material has some imagination amongst its shallowness. It can get little rushed and over-stated in certain details. The mystery around "are they're real or not" isn't much, as we know how it's going to eventuate in first place.

Sandefur's direction is generic and lacks atmosphere, but workable with a certain professionalism and slickness coming off the cheap production. The quick flashes and ragged editing worked out when they showed glimpses of the nasty little critters. But when the main focus was on them the visual effects was a different story. The creative designs of the artful trolls are well crafted and so is the odd looking playhouse. In these TV movies the violence is lacking, and that's the scenario here. Most of it happens off screen and is very watered down. The scares are ineffective and you see them miles before they hit. What cues it up is an out-of-sorts score that doesn't translate well with the action and feel. The performances were shockingly above average with the likes of Patty McCormack and a manipulative toned down Malcolm McDowell leading the way. Megan Gallagher makes a potently strong heroine as the worried mother figure.

Yep, it's predictable. Throw in cheesy. Definitely risible. And how about a truckload of clichés. Oh, what a nice onslaught I can see you thinking. Despite that, it's hard not to be simply amused by it all.

I found it hard to recommend, as I thought it got me on a good night and I don't think I'm its target audience. It isn't aiming for anything big, but for an enjoyably relaxing viewing on the couch. I found it to be bemusedly watchable, PG b-grade horror.

A family of four moves into an old house with an even older 'doll house' in the backyard inhabited by the Huldre -- little troll-like people with an attitude. Fans of gore should look elsewhere, but those people with time enough to watch a relatively 'family-friendly' horror movie will not be disappointed. Other reviewers have called this a made-for-cable movie. If it is, I'm curious which channel produced it. It definitely has the feel of something that might have been produced for USA or TBS. It's not really scary, but it has a very professional veneer and solid performances. This film, however, falls apart at the end the same way so many other horror movies do by showing too much of the monsters. The Huldre seem fierce and mysterious when seen in short glimpses, but, when they are overexposed, you start to think you could take care of them all with a baseball bat.

To be honest, I was hoping for this movie to have a lot more bite than it actually had. Watching it, more often than not I thought I was watching something that was made for television. There's no real gore, no swearing, not even any shocks. Even the way the movie has been photographed reminded me of a made-for-television production. But the biggest problem that the movie has isn't really its low-tech feel, but that for almost all of the movie, NOTHING terrifying or creepy happens. The movie feels like it is spinning its wheels over and over by not delivering anything for its horror-wanting audience. Movie is not a complete loss - towards the end of the movie, we are given several special effect sequences that look very impressive for a movie that had a low budget. Had there been more of these special effects throughout, it's possible the movie might have been livened enough to recommend. But as it is, there's not enough to recommend this movie even for a casual viewing experience.

I bought this film from e-bay as part of a lot of about twenty horror flicks, all about a dollar a piece. When watching this, my first impression was that it probably was from the late 80s. Later on I began thinking - the Linkin Park posters on the wall and everything else seemed to hint that I was dealing with a more recent film. Realizing that, the flick became an unbearable torment. The last 3 minutes were the longest in the movie history - the film just refused to end. Is there a genre such as "horror for children"? In that case this film is definitely it. If there are parents, perverse enough to want to introduce their offspring to horror, I suggest this would be perfect for kids of about 6-8. The only thing I really liked was Greg Cipes who was much too good an actor for that kind of nostalgic retro bottom part of a drive-in double-bill.