Wanting the best for her friends' daughter, a woman decides to take her to a remote hotel in the countryside to help out her aunt who runs it, but the longer they stay there they become convinced that something is wanting the girl forcing her to discover the secret connection with it's past to save her.
Overall, the film manages to get quite a lot right. One of its better aspects is the films' ability to offer up a heartwarming story at the center between the two girls despite not being related. Doing the journey as a favor for her friend, the bond that develops, as a result, is impressively handled as it's quite possible to believe they are related through the interactions and protective nature that forms here as she tries to keep the girl out of trouble. Once we're aware of the protective and motherly focus at the center of the film, the slow emergence of the horror elements towards the daughter becomes all the more frightening. Those horror elements are another enjoyable and entertaining aspect present here. Starting slowly with the odd disembodied creaking noise or whisper in the darkness, a discovery about the past connections to the hotel and the payoff to a series of innocent children's games provides a nice framework for the later scenes of the spirit lingering around the hotel. The constant appearance of the spirit through several decent jump-scares do help this even more with the attack on the spiritualist she calls in to help out or the search through the darkened ruins of the hotel basement, as does the spirited finale which adds some life and some decent gore to this one, altogether giving this one some positive aspects. That said, there are a few issues throughout here. The main problem is the general routine-ness and overly familiar feeling brought up, featuring yet another in a long list of films about black-haired female ghosts targeting innocent people. There's nothing new to the formula or has a clever twist, it's simply running through the same storyline beats in a new locale which is about the only original feature on display here, which goes to show the level of creativity present since even using the location of a hotel doesn't offer a lot of creativity or ingenuity in the film. The other problem is the general lack of apathy created when it's not centered around the two girls. There's very little of any interest derived from the investigation of what happened in the hotels' past that connects her to the history of what happened and most of the side characters adding in doing so serve no purpose in the film that couldn't have been done without them anyway rendering everything with a bland feel. Aided by the slack tempo that keeps everything at a one-note feel regardless of what's happening, these overall bring the film down.
Rated Unrated/R: Language, Violence and children-in-jeopardy.
