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Overall Rating : 3/10
Directed By : Mary Lambert
Elizabeth Moss (The Joyriders)
Jason Lewis (Mr. Brooks)
Tom Malloy
John Savage (The Drop)
Supplied By : Allumination Filmworks
Film Reviewed By : Rick L. Blalock
Date Reviewed : January. 14, 2008
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| PLOT About a month after Emma Callan and her family move into their seemingly picture-perfect Victorian home, Emma starts to have ghastly visions of a girl who appears to be her twin but is pure evil. Since no one else has seen this doppelganger, Emma is faced with two terrifying prospects: Either she's going insane or she's actually being haunted by a malevolent spirit determined to destroy anyone who dares delve into the dark mysteries of The Attic. |
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| THE REVIEW The plot for the Mary Lambert directed film THE ATTIC is a simple one, in fact it seems very familiar, in that it seems to be a combination of a few other films. Taking nods from films such as THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, THE RING, and even SISTERS, THE ATTIC is really nothing new. Emma is seemingly a normal girl, but one day when looking around in the attic she is spooked by a ghost who closely resembles here and from then on her life changes, she begins having dreams/nightmares of the girl that she saw, she also slowly begins to act more awkwardly. As Emma becomes more and more paranoid about things, her family begins to question her validity. Before seeing this film, I at least expected something with a bit more mystery and suspense, as this did come from the Director of Stephen's PET SEMETARY, a film that is well liked by some. A few years ago, Lambert was also the Director of the third direct-to-video sequel to URBAN LEGEND, URBAN LEGEND : BLOODY MARY. Although the majority hated BLOODY MARY, I for one, took it for what it's worth, when you separate it from it's series, it's a cheesy B-Movie, with bad CGI, but in my opinion it was decent. Sometimes a simple plot is all that's needed to make a good film, however in the case of THE ATTIC, it's plot may be just a little too thin. All we have is a girl haunted by a spirit, and clues about the "ghost" are basically thrown into our lap, with no further build-up or not even a twist to throw us off when we get to the point when we think we have figured it all out. The fact of the matter is, that we do figure it out, and we do so a little too soon - when Emma's mentally handicapped brother Frankie dies at the hands of "Beth" and no weapon is recovered, that is when the film becomes way too predictable. I can't really speak on the acting, as the actors I feel, didn't have much to go on and work with, I felt that the acting and overall look and the story gave off the vibe that THE ATTIC would be better suited for an anthology story of some sort. In the film's relatively short runtime of 81 minutes, not much time is spent on developing a solid story, so it feels like a story that could begin and end within a 30 minute timeframe suitable for Television. Overall, THE ATTIC seems like a film contrived from an idea of adding many elements of someone's favorite Thrillers all into one entity. Nothing here is truly 100% original, it's not absolutely terrible, but perhaps with a little tweaking and better writing, this film could've been something of more potential. |
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| GORE
METER 1/10 Just a slit throat. |
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| MUSICAL
SCORE 3/10 A piano driven score. The score, I felt was most prominent in the opening credits sequence, but after that, I found it to be a lot less noticeable. |
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| OVERALL
IMPRESSION OF THE FILM Although, the film is predictable and unoriginal, THE ATTIC is certainly not the worst of films, I have definitely seen worse, The plot is predictable and it doesn't require much thinking on the viewer's part - if anything it's an ok way to kill some time, if you are looking for film with a very familiar story. This DVD will be released on January 15, 2008 |
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