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Well, I thought it was better than it could've been and better than expected, but that's not saying much. It's a remake of a Filipino horror (and it's directed by the same guy to boot) and the couple of those that I've seen (there seems to have popped up quite a few of those recently) were about as much "horror" as Power Rangers are sci-fi. Still for whatever reason the remake looks pretty good (no idea if it's a step up or down from the original as I don't think I'll ever bother with it), painting enough of a shitty, depressing atmosphere for quite a long time with a loser guy who just got out of jail that has trouble to get a shitty job and inherited a shitty apartment in a shitty building from his old, crazy mother, who died a shitty, lonely dead. Not sure if all the shittyness is intended or just came out that way, but looks pretty good (in a bad way) and all the sepia tones add to it nicely. The slow build is done in a rather competent way and there are some nice visuals like a cute scene of a little girl suddenly starting banging her head against the wall. The 'ghostly' part is also done rather well (which touches another of my pet peeves regarding the ghost scenes in today's cinema) and keep enough of a mystique not to devolve into the laughable territory.
With all the niceties aside, when the action finally starts moving, it starts moving too chaotically and a little nonsensically. The ghosts only 'come alive' very close to the end and when they do there's really no suspense or thrill to it (not because of what they do or how they do it, but because the viewer already knows all there is to know). A lot of scenes seems to have been made just because (to make the movie last longer than 90 minutes?) and they don't mean anything in the larger span, nor are they ever followed. There's essentially no back story to anything or anybody aside from a couple of throwaway remarks by the extras and a bit too much is left unresolved. "A bit too much" as in "almost everything" including who died, who survived, did the curse end, was the dead guy in the basement found - and more importantly, did he even die? we only see him choking after falling down the stairs (but then again in the American movies "falling down the stairs", no matter how short they are and how safe the landing looks, almost always equals certain death), we don't even find out if there really was the curse or was the loser ex-con guy crazy. Well, we don't even know if his mother really was crazy aside from 1 quote from the building manager (who admits that he never even met her and only started working there after she died) and some pills the loser guy finds in her bathroom, but then again I think I've taken those in the past too (uhmmm....).
Anyway, 4.5/10 for some nice visuals, pretty competent if flawed and completely unoriginal story and being just average enough not to be unwatchable.
PS. The "mysterious curse" from the poster is blatant false advertising. Yes, a lot of shit is left unresolved or just never followed up, but "the curse" is anything but mysterious.
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I am The Changer of Ways!
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