If I'd have gone to see this by myself I would have had much better feelings about it. I thought the representation of Amber's grief and the lesson of balancing that with the good was powerful, and they went about it without trying to dismiss or "fix" her in the end (as can be surmised from the previews that that's the direction it would go). From an adult perspective I thought it was great.
But as it were, I took my 5 and 8 year old, and deeply regretted not looking to the reviews further before seeing it, thinking I could blindly trust an Angel Studios movie to have a PG movie actually be appropriate for little kids. (I was originally not going to take the 5 year old, but we ended up having a spot to fill last minute) So the lower rating is because the misrepresentation is quite problematic.
As many reviews have said, it had such a strong horror movie tone to it, dappled with the lighthearted moments seen in the previews. There were definitely some laugh-out-loud funny parts, but much of it had even my 8 year old freaked out and hiding behind covered eyes. I think he'll be alright, in the end he said he liked it, but it's not the sort of experience I want for my kids.
To me though the worse part was the unexpectedly frequent swearing. We have been really diligent about that and my kids came away with some new words they haven't heard before. Which really wouldn't be so bad if they didn't relentlessly repeat everything they hear. Not the sort of thing I'd have expected to experience from this studio, so I was really disappointed with that.
Basically, this is just a warning to parents with small kids to always do your homework and make the effort to check content before seeing a movie, despite what studio it's from.
