The Occupants

Started well enough, unfortunately ----acting bad, direction bad, script absolutely awful. Story couldn't be fathomed out. I have never watched a movie with a score of 3.7. Having now done so -- I won't do it again.

Lucy (Cristin Milioti) has a new husband Wade (Michael Rady), a new baby and a new house. Luckily, these characters are all appealing and not portrayed as overtly schmaltzy or horny, as often newlyweds are in films like this. These main players are supported by an equally inoffensive bunch - Lucy's distant sister, her ex-boyfriend therapist (to whom she continually confides) and Christian babysitter. For once, the practice of religion is not used as a mask for repressed villainy, which is a nice change. Equally, the psychic drafted in to explain Lucy's ghostly apparitions is little more than an entirely useless cameo. It is interesting that the male character seems often to be a focus for spooky malignancy, instead of the female.

Against these refreshing developments is an over-cluttering of ideas, many of which emerge only partially developed. They serve not to spice up a plot that has been attempted before, but to confuse it. The threat once revealed, isn't terribly menacing, his crimes only thinly sketched. That the characters often speak in hushed tones that are only vaguely audible doesn't help matters.

So this is ultimately a mixed bag with perhaps too much going on. The perennial threat that 'the abused becomes the abuser', Lucy's dread, is nicely ominous, but a large twist towards the end changes things somewhat. I'll say no more than that! It is up to the individual as to whether this big reveal works - personally, I liked it. My score is 6 out of 10.

After moving into a new house, a woman and her husband find the place haunted by the violent tragedy of the former occupants of the house and try to stop those actions from happening to them and her new baby.

This here is a really weak and overall bland thriller disguised as a horror film. The biggest issue with this one is the fact that the central premise is nothing to really get worked up over, and it shows in the reactions of the characters. The primary focus is one the shots of the woman losing her mind over the events that transpire, yet none of what happens early on in this is enough to warrant such actions to take place and even worse off, doing so with the rather bland happenings that this goes through being just so unnecessary and uninviting that the reactions to them are completely unrelated to the events portrayed. That these in turn lead into the film's main segment being a series of investigations into whatever happened to the previous owners is so boring and lifeless that after such a troubling opening it sucks the energy out of the movie from there with endless scenes of her going over documents and papers that fill up time so that it's just so hard to stay invested in the movie as a whole from there on. The main subplot about these scenes is the film's second biggest issue, the constant referrals to the counselor friend she thinks is taking advantage of her yet is the first person she goes to whenever there's a bump in the night or a weird flash-vision she has, and despite every attempt to the contrary to make us believe he's some sort of creepy psychopath, he comes off as calm and level-headed about the situation while she rants and raves like a maniac then turns the tables back on him saying he's the one trying to screw her around. This happens a good three or four times after a conversation saying that she'll have nothing to do with him, so this in fact becomes extremely troubling and confusing as to why this goes on. Since the film earlier made mention of the fact that the supernatural haunting actions were unwarranted of the extreme reactions taken, that in turn brings up the fact that the majority of the supernatural going on here is really not that scary and oftentimes just plain dull, with a few somewhat decent scares here including the appearance of a demonic face on the wall hidden behind a poster, the ghostly visions of women running around the house and the ominous threat of violence depicted towards the infant son which does have a hint of believability to it, yet whatever happens is then undone by the absolutely ridiculous finale that makes no sense and undermines the general plot of what came before it. These are really enough problems to lower this one significantly.

Rated R: Violence, Language, children-in-jeopardy and a shadowy sex scene.

It's like someone wrote a first draft of a script and then nobody checked it

I actually really enjoyed this movie. It's not the worst acting ever and the music kinda kills the mood but of all the lower rated films I've seen, this one deserves more credit than it gets.