The tyranist's thoughts
I was pretty excited to see this thanks to some slick trailers and the fact that it was coming out right before Halloween. It is regrettable that we often don't get decent horror flicks during October. The studio seems to think that no one is going to go see a good flick in October regardless of its subject. A shame really. I think people are more likely to go to a top notch horror flick in October than any other time of year.
Anyway, I liked this one quite a bit going in and felt mostly the same coming out the other side. There are some pretty creepy things that happen early on and they managed to do a fantastic job building suspense. The kind of thing where we all know that a character is about to get it, but they don't and they don't and they don't until we think nothing's going to happen.
The cast did pretty well. I'm fond of Tony Shalhoub and growing more fond of Shannon Elizabeth (no, American Pie did not make me fond of her). Sort of surpising to me was how much I liked Embeth Davidtz even though she has a pretty small part.
The script seemed strong for the most part, but it sort of falls apart at the end. For a very long time, the movie is mostly suspense with much more gore than you'd expect, but when the endgame rolls around, it gets pretty standard. Even that isn't enough to ruin the movie, though. I say check it out for yourself. It's better than a lot of other stuff that comes out and much more gory than I expected.