The Spiritualist

The mansion this was shot in was beautiful, and I actually liked the spiritualist who comes to the home, but everyone else was annoying. The "friends" were exceptionally rude and no one, even the main woman character, seemed to like any of them. The big twists at the end were interesting, but by that time someone didn't pay the electric bill because it got very, very dark. Maybe some editing would have helped a bit as well. It's not a bad movie, but I just didn't care.

So, somewhat a telling of a ghost story, but the presentation is a bit confusing at first given the jumps in time that aren't well delineated. Then the movie shifts to a "spiritualist" coming to the home of the couple that the wife is plagued by visions of her deceased mother. It builds some sense of tension up to this point, then the plot shifts to keep itself hidden so there can be some twist at the end. It was still unclear at the end what was actually happening even though a point or two were clarified. The film was able to capture enough of an atmosphere that I could almost overlook the rather amateurish acting (Can Jake stop calling his wife "Babe" in every line he speaks to her?"). I wasn't completely bored while watching, but I was left without much feeling for this film.

Please read this review before committing your valuable time to this failure of a movie. The only conclusion I can draw is the positive reviews (some of which are absolutely *glowinug*) are "canned" reviews by people in the movie. My wife and I sat down to watch this, with fairly high hopes, and as time passed......and we watched our lives cut shorter and shorter with each passing second wasted on this dog of a movie, we became very frustrated. There isn't even a cogent story line to follow. What's it about? Shouldn't you have a general idea within the first 20 minutes of the movie? But you don't. The scenery is interesting. It was shot in an old house. If you need to see pics of an old house, go to Pinterest and search for Old House. 5 minutes and you are done. But as for the movie, it's a turd.

The story was good. It has potential. The acting just so bad. The only one I give any props to is Caroline Burns Cooke, the spiritualist.

The sound was so bad at times I couldn't hear the dialog. Then it was so loud it was over whelming. The set was gorgeous. The estate was beautiful.

I watched this despite some low scores because I'm really chugging through the horrors on Amazon, and, with it being on Prime, thought it was worth a gamble. I'm glad I did because I was engaged with the story throughout and taken by surprise a couple of times. The spiritualist herself is a great character played very nicely.

The story requires a bit of concentration, but I felt I understood it and was pretty satisfied by the payoff. It's fairly well-shot and produced and doesn't feel like a bargain basement feature (I'd say it has solid TV-quality production values) so 100% worth a watch if you like supernatural mysteries. However, it's definitely not terrifying, so avoid if you just want scares!