This is what happens when a director gives a passion project that he doesn’t have time for to another director, one who, if he shared the same passion, doesn’t have the same ability to execute. The scariest thing about the film is the trailer. And for me it all lays at the director’s feet.

The casting seems okay on the surface—Guy Pierce, Tom Cruise’s wife (?), and a little girl who looks sufficiently creepy. But there’s zero chemistry between the leads and some pretty poor line deliveries.

So the script—at times it sounded like it was written by people who definitely do not have children, at least not of Sally’s age. Very bothersome.

The score—yet another example of tension or atmosphere being ruined by over-scoring. What is more scary than silence when you’re alone in the dark? Yet hardly a moment in this film is without a pretty standard Hollywood horror film score, one that’s very Elfman-derivative, at that (as if we needed that, since Elfman himself is Elfman-derivative nowadays).

The little things—creepy as hell in the trailer, but not executed well here at all. They all sound too much like Gollum and they’re just not all that scary. Again, cue the score.

The only thing I’m not complaining about was the fact that the projectionist left a light shining on the screen for much of the first half of the film. Luckily, this allowed me to get my money back. No harm. No foul.