Stricken with terrible recurring dreams, a woman finds herself drawn to a mysterious and cursed hotel where a family is staying there while the husband writes a new book, and when a dangerous entity is known to be lurking inside its walls tries to help them escape the area.
There wasn't much to this one but it does have some redeeming qualities. What tends to work best for this one is the films' striking and often pretty chilling shock scenes that serve up some creepy ideas. The idea of the haunted hotel and its cursed history that houses this terrifying being that's capable of shapeshifting into anyone to carry out its plans serves as a workable and solid basis for bringing these kinds of efforts together. By providing a logical enough reason for the constant and utterly unneeded confrontations with the ghostly beings in the hotel, there's a great energy present here as the pacing is at a frantic clip rushing by without any dull points or lagging spots at all. These are what generally works for the film. This one does have some minor drawbacks. The main aspect holding it back is the generally scattered narrative approach that makes it difficult at times to figure out where we are or who we're watching. The primary focus in the first half on generating random short scenes without even getting to know the family members, who they are or even what's going on in the hotel doesn't generate any real suspense or shocks from these scenes. they're simply random, unknown people hanging around a creepy hotel that could be haunted, and the reasons why are never made clear at all which causes frustration when featuring creepy ideas or concepts without explaining anything in favor of jumping around to brief moments in various periods of history with nothing connecting them. On top of that, the film has a real problem creating scares or tension beyond creepy flash images. The scenes of the girl following the children playing in the hallways who led her into secret rooms don't come off in the slightest bit creepy or chilling, the constant influx of scenes and ideas outright copied from other films which are supposed to be scary come off as lame and the ideas presented as scary come off as questionable and underwhelming. There's no reason why a doll is talking at all if it's supposed to be a protector, the flashing cuts to the kids laughing by themselves while moving in jarring fast-motion are just dumb after awhile much like the constant, unintelligible whispers and squishing noises heard here. With inept technical work and no real interesting characters, there's hardly anything worthwhile here.
Rated Unrated/R: Violence, Language and children-in-jeopardy.
