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The family man David (Rupert Evans) and his pregnant wife Alice (Hannah Hoekstra) buy an old house nearby a canal to raise a family of their own. Five years later, their son Billy is the pride and joy of the family. David works archiving and editing films for his partner and friend Claire (Antonia Campbell-Hughes). When she gives a reel of a 1902 footage to work, David learns that his house was the place of a violent murder. This discover haunts David that sees a stranger inside his house threatening his son. When he finds that Alice is cheating on him with her client Alex (Carl Shaaban), David sees the stranger killing Alice and becomes obsessed to find who the suspect might be. Meanwhile he becomes the prime suspect of the police with his disturbed attitudes.

"The Canal" is an ambiguous horror movie with the story of a man that has a breakdown after learning that his home was the place of a brutal murder in 1902 and that his beloved wife is cheating on him. The story of haunting, obsession and madness has a confused screenplay and slow pace. But the acting and the dark cinematography make worthwhile watching this movie with low expectation and have a surprise. The creepy conclusion is the ambiguity of the story. Was David really insane? My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Canal" ("The Canal")

Independent film The Canal smartly produces a slow-paced psychological horror that interesting imagines a new take on the haunting genre.

Ivan Kavanagh is the brainchild behind this original and brilliantly conceived film. The Canal is more atmospheric than most horror films currently being produced and very psychological with a horrific twist. The slow paced groundwork is eerie and unsettling but expertly done. The characters and smart and savvy in trying discern reality from imagination, or worse, supernatural occurrences.

The beginning scenes of The Canal are deliberately jumpy, adding to the confusion and anxiety the main character David experiences. A bit more clarity would have helped the film viewers experience the intended disorientation while avoiding pure confusion. I personally think the film was just a tad too slow in the beginning and Kavanagh will lose impatient movie watchers unsure of whether the investment will be worth it.

Without spoiling the ending, I thoroughly enjoyed it and it had me squirming and gasping. The Canal is a slow burn, with Kavanagh pacing the film so audience members are psychologically bewildered to savor the conclusive reveal.

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A pretty effective thriller even if the script uses the usual old clichés of ghost movies. I had a good time watching it and wasn't disappointed. However, I deplore the use (around 43 or 44 minutes of film) of the real photographs of Sharon Tate's crime scene after she was brutally murdered by Manson's followers. I think that is not respectful. The director could have avoided that.

Having seen tons of horror movies, I decided to give this a fair chance. I enjoyed it. It's well filmed, well acted and well written. It's about a couple and child who move into a house (with a dark history). The man soon after discovers his wife is cheating on him and dies under mysterious circumstances. The police suspect him, he suspects a dark force related to the house is to blame. The movie is filmed in such a way that the viewer isn't certain if a dark force is responsible or the man is possibly insane. Even the man is struggling with that as he desperately tries to weave the facts together to solve what occurred to his wife. All the while, his four year old son remains in the house being scared to death by his father.

Bottom Line- I liked the movie but perhaps being a parent with small children of my own caused me more difficulty in watching it. It's probably one of the better movies of this type but I don't see myself wanting to review it again at any point in the future.

Not overly inspired, but worthy of a watch. It meanders between supernatural and psychosis. Nothing wrong with any one aspect but just seems like it never really gripped me enough to really enjoy.

This is definitely a more familiar sort of slow-paced, atmospheric horror, but like so many of its kind, when done right they really work. This isn't a slam dunk or anything, but it's pretty effective for what it is. If you really don't overthink everything, you sort of know everything that is going on, but it doesn't matter. It has some truly strong performances here, and the atmosphere allows for some really creepy scenes to ensue. The climax could use from even more outlandish material, but as it is it makes its point and is pretty effective. For horror fans this is recommended, and for everyone else, well, look as to what types of films you like.

But as others have noted rushes towards the finish line (which is a good thing). But there are a few hurdles the movie has to overcome to win over the viewer. And it might not even achieve this. Not everyone has the patience to wait for a movie to pick up. Especially after not only a slow start, but a character that seems to be doing as many wrong things he can do wrong.

But if you overlook that typical horror movie cliché and can wait for the movie to really pick up, you will like where it goes eventually. The direction is decent and the acting is good too. The story is not really inventive, but moves the film along nicely. There are few good scares along the way and the mentioned ending is really good

It was good with some nice creepy details, and horror moments . The ending was really creepy, and quite interesting it spiced things up compared to, some other parts of the plot were a bit predictable and for the genre. The ghosts did look pretty scary, and there were some nice tense moments.

It wasn't problem free though, there were parts that seemed messy, and could have been laid out better. The link between the family in the past and the main character wasn't really explained well either. Was the connection the house? Or the film?

I did like the fact the main character could have either been going insane, or seen a ghost. And the acting was well done.

Without wanting to sound too much like a narcissist, "The Canal" is the type of ambitious, well-intended, and aspiringly convoluted psychological thriller that puts a lot of energy & effort into misleading the viewer... only to end exactly like you presumed since the beginning already. Is the protagonist sane or insane? Is the house haunted or is it historically just a bad neighborhood to live? Do ghosts manifest themselves on video or is David seeing things that aren't there? Is writer/director Ivan Kavanagh stealing ideas from "Sinister"? Well, that's a definite yes.

I want to be gentle on "The Canal", but it just isn't good enough. I appreciate how Kavanagh is obsessed with focusing our attention (or trying to, at least) on the lead character's mental unbalance and heartbroken spirit. I also reckon that Rupert Evans puts down a truly strong performance as David the derailed film-archivist. Well heck, for one of the first times ever, I wasn't even annoyed by the performance of a 5-year-old kid or his mother with an impossible-to-disguise Dutch accent. Let's take it even one step further: the atmosphere is quite often very ominous, the ancient video footage of the 1902 murders is creepy, and the dramatic themes (like marriage failure) feel painfully real. In short, Kavangh and his crew don't do many things wrong. It's just that, when it's finished, the sentiments that prevail are obviousness and "been-there-seen-that".

I don't know why the IMDb score and Metacritic score are so low on this one. That's one of the reasons I put off watching it for a while but I'm so glad I finally got around to seeing it; it's one of the better horror films of recent years, and I'm a huge horror junkie. If you like disturbing horror that gets under your skin and doesn't rely on jump scares or constant gore then this is for you. The film is beautifully shot and has some exceptionally creepy visuals. It's sporadically violent and cruel but every moment of blood letting or grotesquerie is expertly handled and actually frightening rather than pure gross-out. I urge you not to watch the trailer as it contains spoilers I wish I hadn't known before going into it. If you want to know what to expect, I'd say it's got elements of films such as The Shining and The Ring, but it has a very unique feel. There's a nice dose of drama along with the horror and Rupert Evans is thoroughly believable and engaging in the lead role, much more so than your average modern horror protagonist. Highly recommended!

There's an aspect of the supernatural to this one but there didn't really need to be. It just as easy could have been a mental illness character study. It also could have gone into more of an occult / ritual based movie. Was it scary? Not really. It had a few moments but there could have been more of them. At least it didn't de-evolve into some runninng jumping screamfest. It's a decent watch, just not a lot of reward.

I liked it, and I can't remember last time I said that about a horror movie. There's some really cool scares in this one. Just really cool stuff. I was impressed.

The issue with this movie is it is the same old tired storyline we've seen a thousand times before. What makes this a standout is that it pulls that story off better then most other movies I've seen.

Recommended if you've gone through movies that I rate higher then a 6.

Greetings from Lithuania.

"The Canal" (2014) is delusional, boring, badly paced mess. It has one or two chilly moments, but after them you start thinking was it real or just in the head of our main character. I didn't like this guessing, and overall reaction to this movie is very poor.

"The Canal" has not bad acting, and not bad directing at the moments, but overall it's a confusing mess. It's very uneven, with script so confusing that towards the end this movie started to drag and because it's running time is only 1 h 29 min - that's a very bad sign.

Overall, "The Canal" had the potential to become a descent horror flick, if the script weren't so interested in psychological aspects, because as psychological horror movie this one doesn't work - either you play with the audience straight (no psycho stuff), either you have to know how to do it right that it would be interesting to watch. In this movie's case, it done wrong and that's why this movie is confusing and simply boring.

This movie really put me in the mind of Sinister. Depending upon if you like Sinister this could be a good or bad thing. Sinister was more satisfying for me. This movie seemed to be lacking something. I cannot pinpoint what it was, but through the entire movie I felt like i was a hairs width away from losing concentration on it. It could have been more. The acting was very much watchable. The problem lay with the story itself, and possibly just the way the script was wrote. I cant say that I noticed a lot of cheesy lines or anything like that, it was just more like the film lacked heart. It is worth a sit through. It isn't torturous to watch it, it will only leave you wanting for a bit more than it was able to deliver.

Despite some of the poor reviews I've read here, I found this to be a completely coherent and excellent psychological Thriller/Horror movie! Yes you will see some themes borrowed from other films, but let's be honest every movie does that. The cinematography was amazing. The score was arranged with a lot of attention to details and made it perfect backdrop to the film. Transitions and shadows were creepy and eerie. About the only thing that annoyed me what's the editing in which the way the editor wood chop out frames causing a time jump effect. This worked okay as a transition but awful during actress dialogue. All in all it was a great movie.

Heh, I swear... I don't think I've had to wade through SO damn many Bull$hit reviews in all my life. "10 stars!" "MOST BRILLIANT HORROR FILM! GO SEE IT NOW!" "BEST FILM EVER!" Please... Anyway, ultimately I guess I did enjoy the movie; I did give it a '7', which at the beginning, I wasn't even sure whether I even wanted to finish watching it.

But, as the story goes on it DOES get better. Without giving anything away, it's interesting how they gave us a surprisingly effective ending (meaning the whole last 'movement', not just the last few minutes) that wasn't your usual cop-out ending that you normally see in these types of films. I really don't want to get more specific than that because I do not wish to ruin it for you. Let's just say that it kind of leans one way and then kind of twists the other way : )

I felt that the style was a little off-putting at first, employing techniques making it a BIT too jumpy at times. It could be kind of jarring. I mean, it's not that I cannot appreciate good jump-scares with loud noises if it is done well. But, to me at the very beginning I think they did it a bit too much in conjunction with normal, mundane things. Like when he was just simply loading the film. BUT... thankfully, as the substance and mood of the film began to solidify and build more and more tension, these elements seemed to fit and merge with the overall tone of the movie better, rather than seeming quite as out of place as it had in the beginning. The A/V style kind of struck me as about 65% David Lynch (excellent) and about 35% MTV (not so much) Heh, maybe not quite THAT bad... One thing that I REALLY did like was the haunting, ambient sound throughout much of the film, which is more consistent with the Lynchian mood that I like.

The acting overall was fine; the main guy played it with just about the right 'balance' (in a manner of speaking) between uncovering the past evidence and history of what happened with his house and still raising our concern somewhat about his mental state (that is all I'd better say about this, but like I mentioned before, the film doesn't 'cop out' stupidly like others that have similar themes) Without revealing any details, I personally liked the way they resolved the ending; because I think it really gave it a nice 'punch'...

One thing I WILL say though is that no matter whether ultimately he was right or wrong, the main policeman was a complete and TOTAL D*ck.

For me personally, the A/V style of this film would not be among my very favourites, but trying to view the movie objectively in order to help others determine whether they might enjoy it or not, I feel that overall this film was suspenseful and creepy with an effective ending which added to it's entertainment value. So, maybe for ME it wouldn't quite be a '7', but I think that for people in general it would be a good film (considering that there are SO many really LAME Horror films out there)

So, IF you like your Horror movies with strong Psychological undercurrents and you don't mind some Supernatural elements being thrown in, there is a good chance that you may very well enjoy this film.

Not much of a horror.. More like a psychological thriller.. Good storyline, good casting, an intense suspense is there to keep you gripped till the end.. Good job director and actors