The Atoning

Did not know what to expect so I saw it without any expectations. The concept is good, but the low budget and at times terrible acting puts you off. All in all it wasn´t a total waste of time for me and got me thinking about the angle the movie focuses on.

This movie was completely intriguing until they brought out 'the demons'. Why is it that the big reveal of the monster, ghost, demon is always a letdown.

However I have to say that the demons in this case were done artfully and their movements were dance-like which is rather novel for this genre.

But when are horror movie makers going to learn that, for truly horrifying effects, the more that's left to the imagination the better.

In the first 4 minutes of the movie you figure out exactly what happened to the family. If you didn't pick it up at that time the movie pretty much gives you all the pieces before the middle of the movie. Further cements it near the end as the motive of why it all happened. The title of the movie is proper and you need to figure out for whom it was meant. Overall not a bad movie and it does have a couple of jump scares. Guess maybe that's why it was label as horror?

This movie has a good story with a decent twist towards the end. The problem is the bad pacing and very poor sound work ruin any kind of atmosphere and makes it almost unwatchable. The first 2 3ds of the movie just drag. It's slow with random awkward jump scares and again the sound work does nothing to make the jump scares actually scary. Once they start actually explaining the plot it gets better. If the sound wasn't severely lacking the last half hour would've been almost good. The acting wasn't terrible but could use some improvements, especially in the first half. It's just an awkward low budget feeling movie with incredibly dull sound that ruins any vibe that the movie was trying to produce.

I don't think I would call this a horror - more of a suspense mystery kind of film perhaps.

The acting was OK and so was the story. It does lack something to make the story or characters pop - or stand out as memorable.

If you are expecting gore and being shocked out of your seat you won't get it wiht this film.