This is a fairly ubiquitous title, so to prevent any confusion, I’m talking about the movie starring Kevin Bacon and Radha Mitchell and directed by Greg McLean. It came out last year and was supposed to have gotten a theatrical run, but I swear I have no memory of it at all. A limited release, maybe? It’s supposed to be based on a true story and concerns a family who take a trip to the desert southwest (interestingly, I myself just took such a trip) and bring some serious trouble back home with them when the autistic son picks up some sacred stones serving as locks to keep some ancient Anasazi demons from getting into our dimension. The demons take the form of various animals at times: a crow, a coyote, a wolf, a buffalo, and a snake. They’re scarier and cooler, though, when they’re in their humanoid form.
Any haunting-slash-possession movie is going to have the same weaknesses these days; to wit, being formulaic and predictable. While there are some character turns that I didn’t expect, and the acting and production values overall are quite good, the ending is predictable and unfortunately there are some, by now, overused tropes scattered throughout. Still, the movie moves fast; the scary stuff starts right from the beginning and doesn’t let up, and the spooks are groovy. There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before, but what the movie does, it does well. Recommended.