It's hard to talk about this movie without giving away the ending, so spoilers to anyone who wants to see this movie (which is probably nobody). The story revolves around Jenny, who is staying with her father and step mother in Italy (even though the majority of people in this movie are British). We start to get little bits of information as the movie progresses but it all has to do with the lake in the middle of the woods. Jenny meets a bunch of orphans and she visits them regularly in secrecy. But we learn there might be something sinister in the lake, something that might want to get Jenny... Oh no wait, turns out the creepy octopus monster in the lake has nothing to do with the story at all. The father is the real villain because he was using Jenny this whole time to harvest her organs so that he could save his first daughter, and the orphans are actually Jenny's siblings and the father has Jenny's mother tied up in the orphanage and didn't actually die. Oh, and apparently he removed statues from the lake and through stones into it so that the magic of the lake can save the dying daughter. Also one of the orphans is a handsome boy who can summon the octopus lady for some reason. Also the orphans are ghosts. Or not, they really didn't explain that part of the movie very well. So, let's get right down to it, the ending makes no sense. Why didn't the father just ask Jenny to donate her organs, she seemed like a nice girl, she'd probably do it. Why did Jenny need to retrieve the stones and statues? Why couldn't the ghosts do that? We see that the ghosts can infiltrate people's dreams and crave drawings into walls with nothing, so who's to say they can just float into the house, take the statues, through them into the lake, float down to the bottom of the lake and retrieve the stones? Also, why was the Octopus Lady trying to scare Jenny this whole time if she was a benevolent spirit? And why did the father need Jenny and the Orphan's organs if he has a magical lake to save the dying daughter? Can't the "magic" cure the illness she has? And why didn't it? Why did he need the organs? And were we really supposed to be happy when the Jenny gets the last stone and kills the poor girl? She didn't do anything wrong, I feel more bad for the father than Jenny and those dumb orphans. This movie promised so much and yet delivered so little. This is not the worst movie I've seen, but it definitely has the worst ending. I'll give three stars for the great cinematography, but's that's about it. The acting is wooden, the writing is bland, and the story is awful.

There are pretty straightforward pros and cons to this movie, and to me it seems to really be stretching things to call it "horrible" or "great storytelling.The story itself - overall - wasn't that bad and, in fact, I enjoyed the ending. It was darker than I'd thought it would be, and definitely not entirely predictable. Ironically, that's also part of the problem. There wasn't really enough story development in the first 70 minutes of the film to lead you to predict much of anything, and by that time you're almost a little apathetic. Very little seems to be holding together what is presented during this stretch, and much of it isn't really that necessary.A lot of the bad reviews I've read include phrases like "I couldn't make it half-way through" and "I turned it off with 20 minutes left." Because the story is so back-loaded into the conclusion of the movie, their reviews (to me) are rendered almost completely irrelevant. But because of the glacial pace I definitely understand where they're coming from.Before I get the usual condescending "Most people (who aren't as smart as I am) who expect explosions and non-stop action/killing/slashing just won't 'get' this type of artistic storytelling (and are not worthy to cast eyes on the film like I am)," I beg to differ. I don't need nonstop action, especially in a horror/psychological thriller movie. But in lieu of action there needs to be story/character development to keep you engaged. And in this film that all came at the end, with only fairly disjointed bits and pieces for the first 70 minutes.I give this a better-than-average rating because it IS better than most of the low-budget garbage out there. It is, indeed, watchable. But your life will not change. You'll think, "Hmmm. Didn't quite see THAT ending coming," then get back to your housework.

I believe it was Aristotle who claimed that in fiction the impossible works better than the improbable. In other words, a horror movie with Etruscan ghosts haunting a Tuscan lake? I'm along for the ride. A guy managing to keep many people in captivity for years, successfully performing complex surgical procedures on them and getting rid of the corpses, all without anyone ever noticing? And not somewhere in the Gobi desert, but in one of the most densely populated European countries, to boot? I'm not buying it. And I will mention neither his demented motivations nor a spoiler - his connection with the victims - which make the premise even more ridiculous.Neverlake suffers from a case of overplotting. Either you go with the supernatural storyline or with the "medical experiments/abductions" cases: pick one and run with it. The two don't glue together well, and structure gets wonky; any horror movie where a medusa-like monster is there merely for a cameo, where a surgeon performs ludicrously difficult operations and follows them up with esoteric rituals, or where the protagonist first has to throw some relics in a lake to appease phantoms and then to recover other relics from the same lake to appease other phantoms... well, it should probably rethink its storytelling choices.5/10

The story is about a girl visit her Father in Italy. When she meet her stepmother she acts like a total spoiled bi**ch. There is no story line at all. Ghost children, mystery: like an episode of scooby-doo without the dog. There is a lot of poetry, dreams, like an amateur film project. I try hard not fall asleep: Is too boring and I wanted to escape outside the theater to catch a heavy drink. The posters are so catchy, they drag me to buy a ticket,I never imagine the torture I was about to endure. This movie is made for 14 year-old girl easy frightening. A Horror movie for doomies.