Awful doesn't even cut it. This comes under the heading of WORST MOVIES EVER MADE. Stupid story, incredibly poor acting (but then how could they act with such a stupid script{}. UGH, UGH, UGH all the way. If you read the synopsis or story line, or even the review of the 'short story' they try to convince you it's about women and mental illness. Poppycock and balderdash. It's just another run of the mill, idiotic vampire movie. The only mental illness here was that of the the author who wrote the short story. I just had to watch the whole movie just to see how incredulously stupid it would turn out to be. BINGO !! First prize for INCREDULOUSLY STUPID. What a waste of time!

This is a film which honors patience. It is not for those who need action-packed adrenaline stoking from beginning to end. This is a film for those who appreciate the slow build up to terror of a classic Gothic ghost story.The characters speak slowly in careful Victorian, but Midwestern American, English as the year is 1892. The camera reveals scenes with a languid, sensuality. Yet, there is a discomforting eerie quality that builds as the film progresses. Most of the scenes are outside or within a 100-year old haunted house. A few sequences are of a bleak landscape separating the house from town. The sound track has a threatening undertone. John encounters a rat-killing couple on a bicycle ride into town. The encounter is the first of increasingly bizarre experiences that John, his wife, and sister-in-law, Jennifer have, after renting the house with yellow wallpaper. Suspense builds, like waves, each reaching a bit higher, and the viewer's tension notches up.The film is wonderfully atmospheric and full of symbolic allusion (e.g., town represents safety, where there is civilization, but it is cut off by desert, forest, and distant mountains, thus unattainable for those caught in the web of terror). The stark Victorian mansion, at first, seems to offer a comforting respite for the grief-stricken family. John and Charlotte have lost their daughter in a fire that consumed their previous house. True to its Gothic literary antecedent, however, the house's hidden terrors slowly enrapture and capture its occupants. The descent into terror and madness is a slow but steady incline, not a dash from a spring board.John, a medical doctor, demands that the family maintain its rational, civilized understanding of reality and thus seek understanding of the inexplicable events that begin to occur after moving into the house. Charlotte embraces the irrational-supernatural aura of the house as a means to reconnect with their deceased daughter. Jennifer, the pragmatist, brings in a "ghost-buster" from back east. So, what force will prevail and will the 3 survive as they approach the final horror the house dishes up? The production is first class in all respects. The sets appear historically accurate to the Victorian era. The soundtrack music is wonderfully eerie and then shrieks like Psycho when the viewer's nerves are about to snap with tension. The acting is superb by all 3 of the main characters, and the walk-ons are appropriately creepy. The writing and direction bring to life for 21st Century viewers a classic Gothic tale of terror.

I like the film because it builds, not just the scenes,but the acting as well. the main characters have an intense lose in the beginning of the film, then they try to recover throughout the story afterwards. The acting is carried out in this regard from beginning to end and all the performances are well done. The lead man is very good, changing from deadpan-zombie in the beginning, to a decisive individual at the end. His lack of emotion in the beginning is accurate, and the females that are around him behave according to this. Very well done. Instead of just starting in the beginning on high notes, which is what most of television consists of (and lives and breathes by ..constant high pitched emotion with no build up.) A really well directed film with a moving soundtrack that is really built for film lovers. But not much for general viewers. One of those great, surprising films that makes one wonder how the film was ever made in the first place, or how was the financing ever secured. Not a popcorn film, but a great art film. Watch it for something different.

I have always liked the Gothic novel upon which this movie is based, and so I was a bit fearful to see how director Logan Thomas had interpreted it. In short - It was wonderful. It has been a long time since I have enjoyed a movie enough to write a review. This was well- written, well-acted and well-directed. It was so beautiful and visually stimulating I could hang the stills around my house. I love the reinvention of this story - it is at once fantastically modern and relevant and yet dripping with history and antiquity. This is truly a masterful, rich and thrilling film. Definite must see!!