It had a great premise, but it falls apart in its execution. First off, the story is kind of disjointed. Apparently, the kid awakens these ancient spirits that the Anasazi kept at bay. These spirits apparently brought out the darkness in people before stealing kids and taking them back to their plane of existence or something crazy like that. It was never clear on whether or not they were trying to get into our world, or if their main goal was actually kidnapping. Who knows? The parents, played by Bacon and Mitchell are able to easily Google tons of information about what’s going on but still can’t seem to deal with it. Speaking of which, I want to know what kind of super-search engine terms they used, because they were able to pull up a mega-load of info on those demons easily. There was a slight time jump from when they return from vacation to when the actual story picks up. This time, jump wasn’t portrayed very well, which, if it had been might have made up for some of the following grievances I had with the film.
On top of it, the acting was phoned in…from a shitty connection…on a broken down payphone. Some of the scenes which were supposed to be serious were laughable. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to snicker when Kevin Bacon tells his wife that he was sorry he had an affair all those years ago. Or was I? Was this film a sleeper comedy? Because if so, brilliant!
The movie also suffers from a thing I like to call, fucking with people for no reason. Do spirits in scary movies just get off on scaring folks? Because sometimes, if you take out the creepy factor, things that occur in scary movies just don’t make sense. For example, in this film, there is a reoccurring theme where the faucets keep turning on by themselves. I can see how that would be unnerving and scary, but what is exactly happening? Are the ancient Anasazi demons impressed with modern plumbing? Do they keep turning the faucets on in amazement that it’s so easy to get water? Or are they just really thirsty? I don’t get it.
All said and done, this movie kind of reminded me of the movie, Poltergeist (the original one, not the shitty remake). The similarities are kind of shocking.
Overall: 2 out of 5 sacred stones.