Couldn't really tell what this was about for most of the movie. Was it a B horror flick or a closeted young girl's sexual awakening?
I guess it tried to be a bit of both.
Firstly, the acting all around was pretty awful, maybe with the exception of the mother. For someone who's never seen the outside world or (presumably) been to school, Rauchine was pretty well spoken. This comes down to either bad casting or bad acting. And the young British actor playing the male lead, well I have a theory that producers think Americans can't detect really bad acting if the actor has an English accent. Too bad it sticks out like a sore thumb to the rest of the world. The scrawny weakling trying to play tough was pretty funny, and then the cry-baby "please I don't deserve thiiiss" sequences had me in stitches. And it was pretty obvious to everyone that this "harmless" and "nice" Englishman was only out to get into the young girls pants from the start.
Now we come to the plot. I give the film some credit in that it managed to explain things somewhat towards the end, but it was pretty confusing leading up to that. The grandmother was supposed to be a ghost, and since the mother was the only one who could see her that seemed semi-obvious, except that she was opening doors, closets and chests and constantly grabbing the mother. Ghosts can't, er, do that stuff. And one scene which was hilarious was the young man trying to explain how he's a counseller to stop people doing things that are bad for them, and what addiction was, all while ostentatiously smoking a cigarette. He didn't smoke one in the entire rest of the film.
Pure class.
We got some nice gore at the end but it wasn't really very thrilling or satisfying after the boring, mostly pointless lead in. And putting a graphic throat slashing during a sex scene is a pretty good way to gross people out. Also of note were the sweeping helicopter shots of the forest stuck in randomly at the end, making us think there was some kind of ghost or presence after them. There wasn't, so they made no sense and seem to have been put in there as an afterthought in the hopes they'd make the film look more "artsy".
Nice try.
Cheap, tacky and pointless movie - but I suppose they have their place. It seems this killed Margaret Langrick's career as it was the last film she made.
4/10