To me, this movie is perfection.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Emily Osment steps outside of her goody goody personae as a goth girl who has had to move with her family to another town. As with almost all goth's she is not a happy person. She crosses wires with the school bitch and gets embarrassed. She gets even at the Halloween dance when the queen smashes open the pumpkin piñata and gets dowsed with a mixture of candy and roaches. She then gets tasked with watching her brother on Halloween and when he accidentally turns off her computer she reads him a special book. This book brings forth "The Evil Thing". Now her brother is a super wuss and I did not like his character at all. It is okay to be afraid of things but not like this kid is in this movie. Of course the Evil Thing shows up and kidnaps the brother, a pizza delivery guy, and the queen of the dance. The queen's boyfriend, from coercion more than any thing else, is really a good guy. He ends up dumping the queen and goes to Emily's house to get her to save the prisoners. To make a long story shorter Emily and the boyfriend use the blood from a roast to get the Evil Thing to eat itself. This frees the kidnapped ones and all live happily ever after, almost, kind of maybe.

After trying to scare her brother with a tale of a monstrous creature, a teen finds that the titular creature has been released into the world and must try to stop it before it consumes more people from their town.This one ended being a pretty interesting teeny-bopper horror film that's quite fun. This is mostly due to the fact that it's more of teen drama in the first half before it focuses on the book and the creature being released, yet strangely none of this is really all that bad or boring. Though a majority of these scenes serve as the building of their relationship and home-life that gives their relationship a nice touch with all their teasing and tormenting, and the school troubles thrown in there's a great balance here of acceptable teen melodrama with the flirtings of a decent horror story. However, once the switch-over occurs, it's a lot more enjoyable here, starting with a creepy legend at the center of the film told within the book that's all quite fun overall. Moreover, this lead-up into a fantastic creature back-story allows for some highly enjoyable attacks scenes here which enable this one to really become worthwhile here, as the initial attack on the delivery-man and the later encounter in the park where it captures her friend with a rather tense and chilling stalking scene amidst the wooded area surrounding the park all coming off as pretty fun encounters. The creature' stalking them in the house is even more fun with some great stalking and a couple close-encounters while setting up the manner of defeating the creature found in the finale in its sewer-cave underground which is quite fun with the chilling crawl through the webbed tunnel the creature left behind, the confrontation in the pit with the hatched infants and the big confrontation with the creature that puts their knowledge learned earlier that gives this quite a fun amount of action. Along with a main creature that looks fantastic and has a lot of realism to it being a live-action creation and an overall sense of fun that arrives from the whole affair, there's not a whole lot to dislike here. However, due to the teen appearance and all of the focus surrounding them still making it entertaining despite the lack of focus on the horror angles, it doesn't have the air of danger it really should since nothing's going to get too frightening or dangerous for them and it won't really wallow in the usual trappings the genre normally dishes out, which makes for the film's one big flaw. It might make for a strained viewing getting past that once those get brought out and start holding up the plot somewhat. Otherwise, it's still not all that bad of a film.Rated PG: Violence and children-in-jeopardy.

I thought this movie looked good in commericals and when I saw it a knew it was no box office it, but it was good. Emily Osment did an amazing job playing Cassie. It was really great seeing her play a total different role from Hannah Montana. Cody Linley, who played Sean also did a really nice job. I've always been a fan of his, so I was coming into this liking him already. I loved watching him play with the shock pen. That got a laugh out of me. I will agree that some of the jokes were cheesy, but some were kinda funny. Now, onto "The Evil Thing". I thought that they could've come with a better name, but that was in the book(?) so, that's fine. Also, it was really really fake looking. And I think the ending could've been a little better, but I saw that the title said "Vol. I" or something..so maybe a sequel? Even though it was really fake looking, I have to say parts of the movie I did get creeped out. All in all, it was a great Halloween movie. A fun thing to watch with your family or something.

had it not been for the commentary! If Emily wasn't giving away upcoming events in the film, she was talking over dialog and killing the mood of the scene. My son and I found it very annoying. I checked Tivo to see if there were any other showings of this movie, in case they showed it without the commentary. Hopefully the DVD will give viewers a choice between watching with commentary and without. The plot was interesting. The parts were played well and the kids did a good job bringing the characters to life. Good balance of drama and edge-of-your-seat suspense. All in all, remove the commentary, and this is a very good Halloween movie!