That was an excellent one.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Renting a house in the Swedish countryside, a family comes to believe the house is possessed by demons and consults a trained demon hunter to help rid them of the dangerous beings inside before it harms their family.Overall, this one was quite an exciting and enjoyable effort. One of the more enjoyable aspects of this one is the fact that there's quite a large amount of time taken up here with getting this one to the point of featuring the house as actually being haunted by real demons here as the entire middle section here is loaded with all sorts of paranormal hunting sequences that have been featured throughout the genre for ages here with all sorts of hunting techniques and scanning equipment being utilized to fight off the strange energy found throughout the house. Coupled with the tactics of haunting here with the pounding footsteps, slamming doors and ethereal voices throughout the night it really paints quite an effective picture that really sells the haunted nature quite well. As it adds these features with the previous sequences to denote the haunted nature of this effort, the complete picture of what's happening here is even more accomplished here and it really goes to add a more imposing presence to this one with it's chilling backstory involving the demonic rituals conducted in the walled-off room as well as the ghostly actions in the finale with the attacks that come into far more focus and impact with a spectacular burning-down-the-house Gothic finale to cap it all off with. These are enough to overcome it's few flaws here, most notably it's incredibly contrived and familiar story that mashes together two similar efforts without much difficulty in spotting where the influences came from which simply highlights the overall familiar ground it traipses through. It's not in the slightest original and doesn't do much to dissuade that viewpoint by taking on those common scenes without really making any big difference in them. As well, the film does take quite a while to get through here as there's not a whole lot of interesting action taking place early on with them moving into the house being just quite excruciating to follow and makes for a wholly difficult time with this not really getting the action going while it shows them settling into the house. It's a long series of boring scenes featuring them arguing with each other or goofing around before launching into the attacks well over half-way into it and that doesn't make for an intriguing effort at all. Otherwise, this one was quite enjoyable if you overlook those flaws.Rated Unrated/R: Violence, Graphic Language and children-in-jeopardy.

The film begin promising. A family moves into a big house at the country side. The first part of the film is more like classic Swedish drama than horror. The characters act realistic, the atmosphere is rather gloomy and sometimes depressed overall, while the family having problems with the economy and the relations between the mother and the father. From here, it goes downhill. Strange things begin to happen in the house, but the father seem to be the only one who take notice about them. All of those things are very sparse and simplistic, which is not a mayor problem even if you begin to feel a lack of surprise moments. The characters (especially the father) begin to act more and more stupid towards the end and you just feel frustration about their actions, rather than sympathy for them or fear of the ghosts in the film. When the ghosts finally make their "real" entrance, it is not scary at all, and they just shows a little bit too much muscles (a lot of explosions that ruins the horror atmosphere and other stuff) which the film suffers from thanks to the bad special effects. Íf there would be at least a somewhat good background story or some solved mysteries about the ghosts or the history of the house, the movie would be worth watching, however there are none of those at all.When I decided to see this film, I prepared for a not too good but somewhat enjoyable horror film. I was waiting for the horror to start but when it did I wished it would have continued as the beginning of the film instead.Why should you consider not seeing this film? - Not very many surprise moments at all - Not very scary or atmospheric house or surroundings - Not a very good plot (there are no background-stories or solved mysteries about the ghosts in the house) - Bad special effects that ruins the film - Sometimes stupid and annoying charactersWhy should you consider seeing this film? - As a drama, it works, at least in the beginning...

This movie is one of my favorites. It doesn't rely on special effects, it doesn't rely on big name actors, at least not by U.S. standards. It doesn't rely on great dubbing, in fact it is quite bad. So what does this movie offer... a scary plot, the movie is slow and cerebral, but very scary. Pacific Heights scary. The main character has to solve a mystery about the house that they just moved into. The movie offers up just enough to keep the guesswork, wallpaper that won't stick, mysterious figures in the windows, a quite entertaining film, which is what this is, a film, not a movie, excellent, I voted a ten...

I remember watching this movie once back in 1992, back then I thought it was amazing (somehow), upon seeing it again I realize that it has a bunch of elements that really stand out, and is worthy of attention. Don't take me wrong, I'm pretty cynic when it comes to Swedish movies, the only one I've ever liked so far is "Mannen Pa Taket" and "Noll Tolerans", however this has nothing to do with any action paced scenarios, but more the realism in it, unlike the ungraspable Hollywood-movies. It all starts out with a series of events in the families new house in a town outskirt, where everything for a start seems to be quite alright (with a couple of flaws of course), then for some reason they start to notice that something is happening to the house, the tapestries start to fall off in one of the rooms, in another nothing 'feels' right, and then it all gets creepier and creepier. I can't say that this movie is very particular in comparison to the great, I just think that this is a missed out movie, may it not be the Swedish quintessence, but a good portion of essence (at least).