Husband Alec Hamilton, wife Meg, daughter Penny, and son Harper move to a large fixer-upper in the Yorkshire countryside. Meg has a contract to restore the house to its original state. Alec is an artist, perhaps separated from his muse. Meg hopes he can work well at the new location. Dust, no telephone signal to speak of, no running water, and it's cold. Nice start. Early on Alec and Meg force their way into a room that is not in the building's plans. As per horror cliché, the principal characters do not notice when they unintentionally make a blood sacrifice in just the wrong place. The viewers though, gets their noses rubbed in it.Meg is skilled in restoration, but loses her London team through accident and scheduling. She manages to interest a local builder, Sean Donnelly, to help her on a part time basis.Then the ghostly signs start showing up, and things get more difficult for the family.Bland and beautiful. The pacing is a bit slow, the building of dramatic tension is weak, and the execution is short on scares. For descriptions of the logical pitfalls in the script, perhaps try the other reviews on IMDb.

i read the reviews of this film before i watched it, many were critical, but i was pleasantly surprised to find myself scared, hands over face in bits, a traditional ghost story, where my imagination did most of the work.many have said it takes parts from other films, doesn't every film,i mean has anybody seen a totally original film, really? the film lulls you in, in the true old fashion way, gives you a family, in a creepy house, has things happen, nobody believes them until its too late. i liked the slow move of the film,the weird altar , hidden rooms, stuck doors, the ghosts, no need for gore , or screaming people, it felt realistic, as to how you might react to spooky situations. if you like hammer house, you'll probably like this.

A young family move to an isolated house which the mother has been hired to restore only to discover that presences still linger casting a hold over her artist sculpturing husband. Taking a leaf from a James Herbert novel and channelling countless haunted films Altar is an effective ghost story chiller, however, what sets director/writer Nick Willing's offering apart are the practical and some special effects which have an optical natural feel as opposed to the usual ineffective blatant CGI. Willing delivers some genuinely eerie visuals and creepy moments, this coupled with a great score and on location shoot help give some credence and atmosphere to the proceedings. Matthew Modine's Hamilton sports a Shining Jack Torrence like woollen jumper (the writer character is replaced here by an artist) and mimics Torrence's transformation (although quite speedy) still Modine gives an intense performance. Both the younger actors are effective, actress Antonia Clarke is notable as Penny. Olivia Williams gives convincing performance which complements the naturalistic writing and setting. While it breaks no new ground in terms of ghost stories or twist endings it's a solid old school British horror.

... which suffers from the same problems as pretty much all movies in the genre. A family moves into an old house with a shady history. Then the usual slightly spooky stuff starts to happen: windows open and close by themselves, odd knocking sounds are heard, faces appear in photographs, a phone inexplicably rings, and so on. Then the ghost starts to pop up here and there. And then things somehow go further downhill.A dilemma faced by the makers of movies like this is that, once you've shown the ghost, where do you go from there? The ghost here isn't even particularly scary-looking, which would be fine if it were not that apart from looking scary, why would a ghost be frightening? It's not going to try to eat me like a zombie. It's not going to try to suck my blood like a vampire. Or even grab a big knife and slash me for no reason, like Jason Vorhees. It's not that an apparition cannot be scary, but to work in a modern horror movie there needs to be more than the fear the ghost might appear in your dream or do some weird thing with its fingers.The acting isn't a problem here. The setting and scenery are both good. The cinematography is fine. The real problem is with the genre, which is looking increasingly tired. If you've seen a handful of haunted house movies in the last decade, you won't find much more here than tired clichés and a predictable plot (and yes, a ghost-hunter makes an appearance). If you've never seen a movie about a haunted house, "Altar" may well pass the time.