Too much of everything

Sadly Over-hyped

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

I love a well-acted film--especially a classic Ghost Story. The two schoolgirls, one of whom is being haunted in her family home, are perfectly on cue with every word spoken, with body language, with facial expression. Quite a good film with some genuinely scary moments. Characters are well developed. The story is allegedly based on true events, similar to the Enfield Haunting films Conjuring II and the somewhat-plodding BBC miniseries starring Timothy Spall.

The Maynard family move into their dream house, only to find out something is already living there. Len, Jenny and their daughter Sally struggle to keep their already-fragile family together as they are attacked by the poltergeist. It becomes apparent that Sally is the poltergeist's main focus of attention, and the house slowly becomes a living nightmare. Its true story time again, and here we have a 'real life' relative of the family not only writing the film, but also directing the tale. Now, whilst he doesn't pull any punches with the families struggles, it hardly touches on the financial crisis that befell many at the time.But then the film is about a poltergeist haunting a family. Imagine The Entity with several helping of stodgy hot-pot, and you get the gist of this film.But my gosh, its a mundane plodding affair, about as depressing as Sunday evening when you realise that the weekend is over.The cast are OK, Ashfield is okay as the troubled mother, but Waddington is fabulous as the anxious father. He knows his family are on the breadline, and now he has even more spirits to add to the ones he has at his local. But he is the only highlight of this otherwise poor film.Which is a shame, because the story is so interesting, but the result I'm afraid comes across more like a Heartbeat Halloween special, than a feature film.

A horror movie that is quite indecisive whether it wants to be a comedy as well – in spite of the fact that it deals with "the most malevolent poltergeist in Europe's history". Long segments of WTLWO have no gags, but then the "humour" rears its absurd head in the most inappropriate moments, rendering the characters' behavior illogical. The film-makers should have chosen a direction and stuck with it, instead of meandering between genres like confused teens. Just to give you an idea: the girl's father and his pal blackmail the local priest into conducting the exorcism, and they do this by showing him sex-photos of him and his maid.Several idiotic plot-devices were used by force to advance "conflict" hence the plot.Firstly, the way Sally loses her best friend is quite absurd: Sally faints during a school excursion, and her teacher instructs her friend to go inside the house to watch over her. Once there, Sally's friend must immediately do no. 1 because she "wore nappies at the age of 10" (how convenient for the writer). Predictably, she gets attacked while peeing (in what is also perhaps a world premiere of a 13 year-old girl being shown peeing and wiping – though I am excluding French cinema in which this must have been done by now). The girl's mother angrily admonishes Sally – yet Sally FAILS to tell her that it wasn't her fault and that she had fainted previously. Sally's mother appears a minute later and smacks Sally hard, in SPITE of the fact that Sally had a mysterious band-aid on her forehead, which apparently wasn't noticed by her mother for whatever baffling reason, nor did she ever even ask Sally how she hurt herself. In other words, the entire fainting episode is something Sally FAILS to inform her parents about – and they never find out about it – which I thought was extremely moronic. A dozen people could have told them about it: the teacher, Sally, Sally's pal, Sally's classmates, the school principal, etc, yet none of them do.Secondly, the role of the private exorcist. He shows up at the pub where Sally's father gets drunk, but instead of introducing himself to him, he insults him and gets into a row! What purpose could this scene possibly serve? To tell us that Sally's father likes bar-brawls? Who gives a toss! Later, the mystery man hands a visit-card to Sally who predictably FAILS to show it to her parents. Later, when she finally calls him for help, he is unable to do much; the only thing we learn from this man is that there are two ghosts instead of one – as if that wasn't quite obvious anyway. Sally keeps failing to communicate the most essential information to her parents, as if she had her tongue already cut by the tongue-cutting ghost.The ghost is a pedophilic, serial-killing priest. He fondles Sally on many occasions, in what is slightly tasteless fare. But then again, this is the same movie that gives us insight into how a 13 year-old pees! Why be surprised. I am just glad the camera didn't go down into the toilet-bowl before the flushing occurred, to help us understand what a girl's pee looks like seconds before its sent into the British Canal.There is another cretinous scene early on when Sally's father lunges out of the cellar frightened out of his wits and actually smacks his daughter full-on – in spite of just having had encountered a ghost! The writer tries hard to alienate Sally from her parents and society, using all the clichés in the text-book, and then exaggerating them to the point of absurdity.

A have read a review on this site, where the poster says he or she has seen similar things in other horror films. This may be true but it is pretty hard with poltergeist movies not to duplicate, things being displaced etc, I found the setting of 70's Britain excellent,having lived through the 70's it brought back memories of collars on the outside of jackets and the humour added another dimension. The acting was realistic and unlike so many films there was a story which had a conclusion. How many times do we sit with the credits coming down and think "is that it, has it finished?" Personally I don't believe in ghosts, poltergeists, exorcisms, etc but this film kept me entertained which is all you can ask.