Michael Ledo
Dr. Peter Bower (Adrien Brody) laments and blames himself over the death of his daughter Evie (Emma O'Farrell). He accepts a job in Sydney doing psychological assessment. He discovers his patients all have one thing in common, something which forces him to return home and remember an event from over 20 years ago.Adrien Brody appears to have been typed cast into roles of a gloomy individual. He plays a pathetic individual not knowing what is happening to him, someone who sees ghosts. The film never develops into a real horror in spite of a few attempts to have a scary ghost scene. It is described as a mystery/thriller with the thriller side being light and half of the mystery revealed in the film trailer. The mystery peels itself back like an onion skin, never giving us enough clues to go beyond the next level.While I enjoyed watching the film, it is not one I would watch again.
rhondasmit
Sorry, there are some (mild) spoilers here.The sad thing about this movie is that there was a decent story there, but instead of telling that, everyone focused on building up to a twist, and then overemphasized that part with dark rainy broody moody mumbled boo-o-o-o-ring haunting of a completely unlikable unsympathetic character. The one ghost (the daughter) that maybe should have haunted the protagonist was apparently on vacation. The other ghosts gathered at the office but I don't understand why, when there was a much more obvious and guilty person to haunt. Really, this film could have worked well without all the damn ghosts, that brought nothing to the table except for annoying sound effects and hackneyed movie 'scares' we've seen too many times. The reveal was rushed and downright silly. If ghosts had all that power, then why bother with the first part? And would the ghost of the mother killed in the train wreck really be willing to risk her daughter's life so another ghost can get revenge? I'd predict more infighting among the ghosts... now that could have been a movie! Although many people seem to like Brody's 'acting', it seemed cardboard to me. I could not connect to his supposed grief/guilt, or that he had any relationship with his sleeping wife, or that he had lost a child. None of that resonated. Also, and I realize that it is a trend now, but what is with the 5 minutes plus of credits?
tvsweeney-39052
A psychologist who recently lost his young daughter through an auto accident because of his own carelessness is shocked to realize all his patients and even the friend who referred them are deceased. Investigation reveals all were killed in a train accident happening in his home town when the psychologist was a teenager. His return to discover why he's being haunted forms the basis of this story.Though the beginning is somewhat slow-moving with several non-speaking scenes, perhaps showing the tedium of his existence, once the little girl called Elizabeth Valentine comes to his office, things begin to pick up. What started out as a psychological horror drama of a man haunted by the belief he caused his child's death changes to a suspense mystery as he discovers reports of the train accident and his own memories don't coincide and the ghosts are asking for a retribution other than his own memories can supply.This film was made in New South Wales so other than Adrien Brody and Sam Neill, most of the cast won't be recognizable to American audiences but it's well-acted and well-cast. Mr. Brody, whom I consider a very underrated and rarely-used actor, underplays his part with a relentless but non-histrionic resoluteness in determining exactly what happened. There are several "shock" scenes and a tricky plot which twists back upon itself before the final resolve.A good film for a Halloween night.
TxMike
I came across this movie on Netflix streaming. The most glaring initial impression is that Brody speaks in such a whisper, especially during the first half of the movie, that you need to turn on the subtitles to grasp what he is saying. Set in Australia, the Psychologist is Adrien Brody as Peter Bower. He is despondent, his daughter had died recently in an accident on the street when Peter is distracted by something in a storefront window. The significance only comes to light at the end of the movie. This is a movie that requires viewing patience because things happen and we wonder if the story will go anywhere. But eventually it does and ends up being a worthwhile movie. SPOILERS: The whole story is set up some 20 years earlier when a train derailed near his small hometown. Peter and a friend had gone at night to spy at lover's lane, we see they lean their bikes against train tracks, and later a passenger train comes along, hits the bikes, and crashes to kill almost all on board. We think "Those bikes could not have caused that derailment" and we are correct, it was a faulty memory, suppressing what actually happened. To relieve his guilt Peter makes a report with the lady police chief. She is curious, as her mother had been one of the fatalities, looks up all old evidence and photos, corners Peter's dad, a cop back 20 years earlier, and all that leads to Peter's dad having been at lover's lane that night, he raped and murdered a girl Peter had been seeing as a ghost, Peter witnesses the struggling girl pull the track switch which actually caused the derailment. The dad then carried the dead girl and placed her among the dead in the train. That had been in Peter's subconscious all those years and seeing a similar toy track switching station in a store display window had distracted him when his daughter was killed. As the movie ends dad meets his own fate with a speeding train. A bit contrived, I must say.
AD
