Hunting Souls

The evil entity was slimy enough and looked rather similar to many other actually scary monsters. The young child was the best actor of the bunch. (Great under water scene, which is why I gave it a two. Not a spoiler.) Child also showed superior intelligence at 1 hour 23 minutes. I don't know who she inherited her brain from, certainly not the parents. Maybe she was adopted. This could be a sort of spoiler: A ROPE, what? I have seen a few thousand horror movies in my almost 77 years, fan since I was allowed to see my first one when I was 10 and that was a first, you will know what I mean, if you make it that far. As expected in a horror movie, plenty of dead people, mostly due to stupidity. I watched the whole thing so I could review it fairly.

Nothing happens! Nothing! No monster payoff, nothing scary, just nothing! Horrible writing! How does this even qualify as horror? It should be called a drama at best.

I watched this on a streaming platform nearly a week ago. Very eerie as horror movies should be. The acting was good enough by aal but the lady from social services. But it seemed to be pre-edit copy, meant to be viewed by the producers for editing suggestions. The couple, although played very well by these well-seasoned actors, seemed to had multi-personalities. And, like so many horror, sci-fi & thriller movies, the couple doesn't communicate, but these people took that to extreme, not sharing with each other even after witnessing the spookiest experiences & sightings, things that real people would evacuate the premises, at least for the night for. I feel sorry for the little girls who play Sophie, this being the debut for one of them, who performed their scenes as their role demanded. I sincerely hope the copy I saw was a rough draft, & the final story was evened out.

Okay story but the acting and the dialogue was cringe and weird multiple times. There's some weird interactions happening, like when they enter the hospital the dad is yelling for a doctor (which makes sense seeing as his child is unresponsive) and the nurse is offended by that; "you don't need to yell... we always take care of her." Then later the doctor and nurse are discussing a previous similar case to that of the child, and the nurse says "well they were best friends." How does she know?? They're 7 year olds, how would she know who their best friends are? Also, of course the first and only person to die in this movie was the one POC in it...

Lastly, the true horror in this movie is corporate America: Mike's boss not caring that he is taking many days off because his daughter is sick and making him choose between his job and his family.

Do you know those English language video lessons sketches? That people dub Oblivion music over? That's the level of acting in this movie. The main actor especially, speaks like a text-to-speech program and shows the same range of emotion.

The script and dialogue seems alright at first, but the cast has no chemistry at all. Then things take a nosedive - dialogue goes from weird to just disjointed in relation to what is happening - for example one hour into the movie they still deny anything supernatural.

The scares are the tired old loud noises and doors banging stuff. All the sets and props - house, office, hospital, outside shots - they looks so sterile, as if you are watching a commercial and not a real living and breathing world captured on camera.

The demon is just a copy-paste Creature of the Black Lagoon or Stranger Things season 4 type of deal. Of course done way,way cheaper and goofy looking. A demon from "Wish" as the kids say.

Overall a bad movie with no redeeming qualities. Can't kill time with it, can't enjoy it in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way either. Stay away no matter how desperate you think you are for a supernatural horror flick.