Bag of Bones (2011)

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I have never read a Stephen King novel in my life, in-fact, I recently purchased "The Stand" but have yet to read it (too many novels to go through). So I can't judge how good his literary work is and this review is not about his novels.What I CAN judge is the movies based on his work since I have seen movies based on his work since I was a kid.The only two movies which had the horror elements and creepiness, as far as I'm concerned, are The Night Flier (1997) and The Mist (2007). I like both of those, everything else has been trash. Maybe it's way too hard to convert Stephen King's horror to the big screen and it requires special people, like the directors of those two movies I like, to make it work. So yeah, coming back to the Bag of Bones (BOB). It isn't scary. AT ALL.The worst part is the acting. Pierce Brosnan, I only ever found him convincing in Tailor of Panama and James Bond. Everywhere else he seems to forget how to act and starts phoning it in. In BOB, he hilariously screams two-three times during "scary" parts and rest of the movie, just shrugs off the supernatural stuff happening around him, even laughing most of the time in supernatural scenes cause he thinks his dead wife is talking to him (dafuq?). Basically, he refuses to act like a normal human being, failing to connect with the audience.Then there's the SECOND worst part of the movie. The generic scares, the "horror" of jump "scares", which returns with vengeance since this movie fails to have anything interesting in the lore itself. I found it funny that the only horrific things happen to women in this movie and the "curse" also hurts.. women while it was supposed to punish the men. This was the dumbest plot I've seen in a horror movie.. since he last horror movie I saw and rated/reviews (see my reviews).Overall, meh. 2/10.. two points for Melissa George looking hot as usual.

This is a garbage adaptation of an excellent book. In fact, I thought about throwing the book at my TV set as I watched it. Instead, I chose to vent my frustration in a review. Casting Pierce Brosnan as Mike Noonan was a big mistake. I felt no connection between him and the character in the book. His acting seemed forced and disingenuous. Sara laughs looks like a building built inside a studio surrounded by artificial foliage and set lighting. That pretty much sums the whole thing up, a big fake. Sara isn't laughing in this movie. Instead, she is crying at this dismal rendering of a good book. Whoever put this crap together should apologize to Mr.King and promise never to do it again.

I started watching this as one of the few King adaptations I'd never seen and found it surprisingly good, especially Brosnan in a role I could not really imagine him taking on.Most of the Stephen King films I have seen have been pretty good; The Stand, Salem's Lot, It and my favourite, The Langoliers. I have never read the book Bag of Bones so cannot comment on its faithfulness. But it was intriguing and quite clever how the story unfolded and kept me watching to the end.As I said, there was some rather unnecessary gore involved and some really harrowing scenes which I thought were well executed. I found the relationship between Brosnan and the little girl touching and poignant.All in all, I would watch this again. Not THAT many contemporary films I can say that about!

This review may contain spoilers.Pierce Brosnan is not an actor that I've paid close attention to in the past. I've seen bits of some of his 007 movies, and it was amusing to see him singing in Mamma Mia! So, his performance here as bestselling author Mike Noonan came as a pleasant surprise.Noonan plays a writer whose wife, played by Annabeth Gish, is killed at the beginning of the story. Noonan experiences a severe case of writer's block and calls on his wife's spirit to help him. Brosnan does a good job of portraying the grief of a man who suddenly loses the wife who loves passionately. Noonan's antagonist is a wealthy old man, Max Devore, and his wife; their performances are totally over-the-top in the short time that they appear on the screen. The deposition scene in the movie demonstrates that Brosnan's experience as James Bond portraying masculine unflappability have paid off.Brosnan's not quite as convincing portraying fear. However, it's not the essential part of playing Noonan. I have not read this particular King book; however the story is as much about losing the person you love as it is about the horror elements. Bag of Bones reminds us again of King's greatest strength and probably the reason for his phenomenal success. He creates characters that are believable and places them in situations to which the audience can relate.This shared quality connects this fine adaptation with one of the greatest ghost stories ever written: Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca. The very beginning of the movie demonstrates that King was inspired by Du Maurier's classic. I wouldn't call this adaptation terrifying, but it is generally very well done.