this movie was more drama than horror or mystery.no good music.bunch of wimps trying to make a commercial horror movie...very modest, and nothing really scary happened...i don't know... i like my movies more painted black.i gave all my points for good cinematography.other than that i don't think i would recommend this to serious horror fans... this is good for people who don't watch any horror.i had a feeling that i had seen this movie before.3/10

This movie had so much potential... I really don't know what to say, because on the first minutes I was so captivated, I thought that this was it!: Portuguese cinema took a giant leap, and who could have guessed, on the suspense/horror/supernatural genre! The photography was top notch I'd say, and the sound, the acting... all these technical elements brought to life a simply Portuguese rural town with a creepy, eerie atmosphere. Still, it seems that the people behind this project didn't go beyond that! The story seems interesting enough in the first minutes, but then it just keeps dragging on! No real scary scenes at all! And the ending? It was predictable (sorry, it was! Everything pointed out to that one character I won't mention here), and it just didn't justify the time wasted on the movie.Overall: technically good, but too dull and dead to even recommend someone to see it. I'm really sad, because I'm still waiting for the big jump of the Portuguese cinema... and this one was not it.Next time, try to focus more on the story.

Plot is about biology professor Xavier Oliveira Monteiro (played by Adriano Luz think a Portuguese Kevin Spacey) who takes his family back to the village and home his ancestors are from. Only its not the lovely picturesque area it seems on the surface, there's a lot of old folk tales the locals are only more than happy to share with the Monteiro family. To prove himself right and the locals wrong Xavier and wife Helena agree to take part in a séance that ends in terror when a part of his childhood is brought up no one alive could possibly have known. This all happens at a point the oldest son returns home from studying, who as some kind of incestious hold on his sister who's got a baby child of her own to an unknown father. The films true beauty is that it lets the viewer fill in the gaps themself something which may be off putting to people who can't accept ambiguity in what they view.First horror/supernatural/psychological/spiritual (call it what you want hehe even its genre is ambiguous) film I've seen in ages I've been totally captivated in. Everything works well, the music mostly light almost indie guitar based rolls along perfectly with the beautiful yet washed out look of the locations, just the way it blends with the fog rolling along a field or dust blowing during one of the period funerals.A much deserved 9/10 from me, if I had to give a flaw it would be it was a little slow to get going but so hope Frederico Serra & Tiago Guedes choose to do more creepy films and not switch genres. Also if Portuguese cinema is this good, please distributors start subbing and releasing it so the rest of the world can see it.

Patriotism is a beautiful thing. But misguided patriotism led to Hitler. And the Portuguese folks that have written here either suffer from an exacerbated love for all things Portuguese, or they are friends of the director: because this film is rotten. Even considering Portuguese films low standards, it is rotten. And not due to the usual lack of means: the photography and sound are first rate, the actors are respected professionals and no effort has been spared on locations and costumes; even the direction is technically proficient (if in a mannerist way). But the end to all these means was a work that set itself the target of copying and pasting scenes, ideas, ambiances and whole phrases of other films ("the Shining", "the Others", "the Village", and even "the Usual Suspects" key phrase about the "devil's best trick"). In one hundred minutes there isn't one new idea: only pastiche. And, if, once in a while, great movies come out of this, here the pilfering serves no purpose. There is no point to the film, no reason for it to have been made, and no reason for it to be seen. If the movie tried to tell the story, it failed: there is no story, just a sum of anecdotal and disconnected events than serve as pretexts to insert the copied scenes; the dialogs abound, and pedantically drag on and on; the characters are stereotypes than change their demeanor for no apparent reason, disappearing inexplicably from scene only to reappear latter, at the plot's convenience, like in a high-school play (in-between dialogues, none of them actually seem to have anything to do). If the movie strives to create and ambiance, it fails: besides the landscapes none of the rural scenes bears any semblance to reality: the village has two streets and two priest, no cars and no TV's; yet all villagers speak with high-street Lisbon accents, and servants and masters, priest and their flock, priest among themselves: all speak with a familiarity completely unbecoming to what rural traditions demand; the screenwriter just mistook a weekend outing in his uncle's farm with serious Stephen King type research. If the film tried to cause scares, it failed completely: every scene too rehashed and every character too unconvincing to care about. The only source of anxiety was realising how low Portuguese film has stooped so that this utterly mediocre crap passes for progress. In Portuguese, "Coisa Ruim" means "Foul Thing". That, believe me, it is.