Inhabited (2003)

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

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

This isn't a well-executed horror film but given its limited blood, lack of guts and gore and no harsh language that I can recall, it is a pleasant diversion from all that disgusting garbage passed off as horror nowadays. This is a frightfest that kids, lest the troll images should scare them, can watch.The film focuses on a family of four, with the emphasis on the mother (Gallagher) and daughter. The six-year-old girl claims to see fairies in her new playhouse in the backyard. Since the family has just moved to this new house, mother imagines the concept of fairies is her little girls outlet for creativity. But when her daughter's teacher expresses concern about the girl's inability to fit in, she suggests that Gallagher take her to a shrink. Meg is reluctant at first but when the fairy tales get out of hand, she seems to have no other choice but to take the girl to visit nefarious doctor Malcolm McDowell.The film has some flimsy messages, taking stabs at psychology as well as those acceptable lies we all tell are children: Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny and so forth. Meg never loses faith in her little girl and she begins to believe her even when all signs don't point to fairies. But when mysterious things continue to occur, and Tyler (Greg Cipes) gets attacked by an unseen creature, Meg and her husband (Lutes) begin to believe their daughter might not be off her rocker.STORY: $$ (The story was fine at first but the end result reeks of a rushed denouement. When we hit the climax of the story, things become too rushed and overly clichéd, and it seems like the director lost all control on set. There is a scene near the close of the film where Gallagher and Lutes are seated on the sofa discussing the likelihood of their daughter's fairies. I got the impression, given the half-hearted way they delivered their lines, that Meg and Eric both voiced their concern with the insipid dialogue just before they shot the scene but the director shrugged them off and said, "Just shoot that darn thing."ACTING: $$$ (The focus throughout the film rests predominately on Megan Gallagher. She gives a very strong performance as a caring mother, even though the end of the film was rushed and thus so was her acting. But take away the rushed final fifteen minutes and you won't find anything wrong with her performance. She does an exceptional job. Malcolm McDowell is effective as the shrink: masking his nefarious ways under the guise of compassion. Eric Lutes has little to do as the father other than offer support to Gallagher. Looney gives a good performance as the mysterious handyman Megan hires to fix up the house who might know more than he lets on.SEXUALITY: $ (Nothing doing here. This is essentially a family-friendly horror film, if such a thing exists. The only inkling of sexuality in the film comes when Megan invites Dr. McDowell to her home to commune with her little girl. Her for-the-company dress is a bit on the lowcut side, displaying some cleavage, but that's all you'll get out of this decent time-waster.

A family of four has moved into a new house that needs a real makeover. Out the back happens to be a fancy old looking playhouse, which the young daughter, Gina grows attach it. This is where she talks to her fairy friends and her parents (mother) believe she's just getting used to the move. Soon small, but dangerous accidents start occurring and Gina claims it's the fairies. To that response they seek the aid of a doctor who specialises in these cases, but is she telling the truth?Two things were on my mind when I decided to give the film a view. That I'd be watching a haunted house flick and a real stinker too. The director, Kelly Sandefur brought us the laughably dumb and irritable family horror TV movie "Fangs (2001)". So I was in store for a childish themed movie. So there was another fact that wouldn't budge from my mind. Anyhow, I don't shoot me. I guess going in with extremely LOW expectations rubbed off nicely.There's something about this ho hum fairy-tale family (yes, family-friendly) horror film that kept me more than occupied and rather surprised. I liked the concept behind it, although in the long run it's mechanical and there's a familiar pattern that developments. It seems to take its thunder from the likes of the third short story "The General" in the omnibus flick "Cat's Eye (1985)" and "Don't be Afraid of the Dark (1973)". The enchantingly, silly material has some imagination amongst its shallowness. It can get little rushed and over-stated in certain details. The mystery around "are they're real or not" isn't much, as we know how it's going to eventuate in first place.Sandefur's direction is generic and lacks atmosphere, but workable with a certain professionalism and slickness coming off the cheap production. The quick flashes and ragged editing worked out when they showed glimpses of the nasty little critters. But when the main focus was on them the visual effects was a different story. The creative designs of the artful trolls are well crafted and so is the odd looking playhouse. In these TV movies the violence is lacking, and that's the scenario here. Most of it happens off screen and is very watered down. The scares are ineffective and you see them miles before they hit. What cues it up is an out-of-sorts score that doesn't translate well with the action and feel. The performances were shockingly above average with the likes of Patty McCormack and a manipulative toned down Malcolm McDowell leading the way. Megan Gallagher makes a potently strong heroine as the worried mother figure.Yep, it's predictable. Throw in cheesy. Definitely risible. And how about a truckload of clichés. Oh, what a nice onslaught I can see you thinking. Despite that, it's hard not to be simply amused by it all.I found it hard to recommend, as I thought it got me on a good night and I don't think I'm its target audience. It isn't aiming for anything big, but for an enjoyably relaxing viewing on the couch. I found it to be bemusedly watchable, PG b-grade horror.

A family of four moves into an old house with an even older 'doll house' in the backyard inhabited by the Huldre -- little troll-like people with an attitude. Fans of gore should look elsewhere, but those people with time enough to watch a relatively 'family-friendly' horror movie will not be disappointed. Other reviewers have called this a made-for-cable movie. If it is, I'm curious which channel produced it. It definitely has the feel of something that might have been produced for USA or TBS. It's not really scary, but it has a very professional veneer and solid performances. This film, however, falls apart at the end the same way so many other horror movies do by showing too much of the monsters. The Huldre seem fierce and mysterious when seen in short glimpses, but, when they are overexposed, you start to think you could take care of them all with a baseball bat.

I work in a video store - so generally I take home everything as it is free. Well this little anti-gem came in today and I thought it looked decent. Goblin like dwellers living in a house and looking all scary like, the premise seemed like it could have been creepy. But it was handled in every wrong way possible. They focused more on dialog between characters we do not care about. It follows every cliche in the book(two cat jump out scenes in the first 15 minutes) and even then it does horribly. Traditionally, if you are going to use the old "sneak up behind someone" routine and cue the scary jump music, you do so in a way where the person sneaks up behind them. In this, they cue the scary music, and the woman jumps, but the guy doing the sneaking is slowly walking into the scene, it was downright hilarious. And they do the thing that really bugs me a lot..the characters act as if they know it is a horror movie. In the very beginning, the mother stumbles across a doll with her head off, so after finding out the son didn't do it, she starts panicking like something horridly is the matter. Doesn't make much sense. And the fairies themselves just aren't done creepily at all. Just a bunch of evil dead style camera running, quick flashes of their faces, and a lot of skipped frames. The whole movie has a definite made for tv feel, although not nearly as scary as a made for tv movie. Rather than trying to make the movie creepy, they went the route of the film being nothing but a slow unravel as to what the things are and people involved in the past..but we don't care.