Citadel

I do normally take a look at other reviews of the films I watch, just to see if other people got something that I missed. Here, I think I must have been watching a completely different film. If you check out a lot of the online reviews of 'Citadel' then you'll be told it's one of the best modern horror films ever.

It just bored me.

It's an Irish horror film about a young man who witnesses his wife being murdered by demon children, leaving him an agoraphobic. He later meets up with a - slightly bonkers - old priest and they team up to fight the aforementioned demon hoodies.

It's an okay enough idea (I've seen worse), but I didn't find any of the characters interesting or likable, plus the children weren't that scary (well, no more than their identical clones you see hanging around every off license up and down the country).

Yes, it was presented in a reasonably different way which made it clear they were trying to steer away from the Hollywood style of film-making. But, at the end of the day, it didn't take away from the fact that it bored me.

Others obviously disagreed. Fair enough.

Honestly, I love the whole concept and the story. The thing I found so difficult to watch was the main character, Tommy Cowley. Granted he's agoraphobic, but I'm a bit irritated with such weak characters, especially when they're men. So you'd better have a lot of patience for Tommy's constant cringing if you want to finish the film.

In a nutshell, I thought the decisions the main character made were all short of idiotic, but then again, maybe it's attributed to his "condition". It didn't hamper the fact that the cinematography was quite good, the atmosphere--excellent, and the acting convincing. The spin of the story was also very interesting and I liked that they added an element of supernatural in it.

The pace of the movie is a bit slow, but I thought that worked quite well for the film. There's not much action involved, but I thought the ending was quite good. I still don't regret watching the film and would recommend it.

Although this film was made thanks to sponsorship from the Irish film board, it is far from a piece of Catholic dogma. The character who plays the priest renounces religion entirely and the film's horror is an original and recent addition to the genre. It's full of good ideas and can be related to relatively recent phenomena; the urban sprawl and the creation of enormous flatblocks outside city centres, prevalent across the United Kingdom. Most frighteningly perhaps it represents the disaffected youth who hide themselves from the enormous collection of security cameras which dictate their life. Spawns of drug selling youth hide their identity behind hoodies; who'd have guessed 20 years ago that being approached by a group of youth wearing tracksuits would be such a menacing phenomenon. In this film creative use is made of this fear. The film is far from perfect, but most important is its originality, fear is created the way it should be, as suspense, and the implication of the horror created by its themes don't require an enormous spilling of blood or disgusting special effects to disquiet and disturb you. I'm glad I saw this film; it proves again that truly good additions to the genre, don't originate from Hollywood and don't require its approval to be made.

Great acting by a guy that convinces u that hes going through some real stuff.

First of all, the plot of the movie was very interesting and kinda innovative (I think so)... The storyline was well-written, it was simple and kinda easy to understand. The characters were very interesting, well-developed and really likeable. The filming location of the movie was just an abandoned creepy neighborhood. I have to admit, it was an unexpectedly scary movie and there were many jumpscares. The children's appearance was super creepy and kinda terrifying. The opening scene of the movie was definitely unexpected and it was kinda sad. The ending scene was kinda expected and it was super intense. Overall, it was just a nice psychological thriller movie that I would probably recommend it to my friends.