Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

nightroses "Watcher in the Woods" original 1980 film was spooky and dark. I've not seen it for a long time now, since I was a kid, but it made an impression on me. Now I had to see the 2017 remake of the classic paranormal film. The "Watcher in the Woods" 2017 remake was so different like chocolate and cheese. There was nothing spooky, or anything mysterious. The fact it was often set at night doesn't give it moodiness alone. There was that enormous tree with a secret door that opened like a big mouth. The film looked more like a cheap fantasy with the most wooden acting I've ever seen. There wasn't a Welsh accent anywhere despite it being set in Wales. The American family were quite dull and the teenage girl was pretty obnoxious at the beginning. The poor little sister having to wear the same tight plaits in her hair, all the time, and didn't take them out at night. She appeared unenthusiastic and bored, in comparison to the other little sister of the 1980 film. The most spookiest bit of the 2017 film was unintentional as Anjelica Huston was playing Morticia Addams here still and her daughter Karen looked a bit like Wednesday' s Christina Ricci. The overall film was so bland and really weak.

the_doofy It is very very difficult to find a horror movie that is rated PG and creeps out the entire audience, but this is what U get with this film.Its a low budget deal with C acting in some characters and B+ in others. The music is done very well. Camera work was quite good. Suspense was there. The story line and plot is done well enough that my wife and I were kept engrossed. I can predict typical horror fans will down grade this gem for lack of blood, body counts, smoking/pot, macabre humor, and so on. Its a real tribute to all involved with this movie that it does not have many of the basic elements a modern horror movie of today generally has. I'm sure many viewers will decide that such a movie cannot even be classified as horror. And yet an honest viewer is forced to check the box marked 'spooky'.Ending is both predictable and original.

GL84 Moving to a house in England, a family finds their daughters becoming involved in trying to solve a local urban legend of a young woman's disappearance from the area and set out with a friend to finally put an end to the ghost stories plaguing the town.This proved to be a surprisingly enjoyable effort. One of the more enjoyable aspects here is the way this one manages to generate the feeling of superstition around the town. The small-town community which features the urban legend of the central disappearance that sets the plot in motion gives this a strong enough start, and the investigation that ensues offers plenty of thrilling material to coincide with those traditions and customs. That gives the scenes of the family arriving in the area and getting subjected to the hauntings in the house a rather fun atmosphere here with a much more thrilling concept than expected so that the tie-in with the backstory allows for a stronger horror aesthetic with the notion of the plague into the towns' history. Those few scenes, from the different breaking objects around the house which signal the start of the whole affair to the two daughters going after the woman in the woods and the flashback to what happened to her daughter, manages to give this a solid series of scenes that really move this one forward into some thriller categories. The big ceremony at the end, where it uses a much darker setup than expected to offer up a rather chilling set-piece which brings the town history and their own rituals into play rather nicely that generates some thrilling action in how they go about dealing with the ghost and ends this on a rather nice note. Alongside some creepy atmosphere out in the woods throughout here, these manage to give this one enough to like that it holds up nicely over the few flaws. One of the minor issues here is the rather troublesome storyline here as this one goes back- and-forth between the different needs of the ghost. At first, this one features the story about the witch haunting the woods before moving on to the setup about the lost girl and then brings in the historical connection within the woods which does make some sense but ends up feeling way too scattershot to really be of much use overall. The other small issue to be had with this one was the films' obvious tameness of the haunting material, where it's quite obvious how this was made for its TV audience. There's never any real danger posed by the ghost due to not really appearing all that often, the scares aren't all that intense and the whole thing feels incredibly tame in this aspect which does tend to lower this one slightly. Otherwise, it's certainly enjoyable enough despite these flaws.Rated Unrated/PG: Mild Violence and Language.

Mr_Ectoplasma This retelling of "The Watcher in the Woods" follows an American family who are spending the summer in Wales. They rent a manor from a mysterious elderly woman whose daughter disappeared in the woods decades before, and the daughters find themselves enveloped in the mystery.I'll be direct here: I grew up on the 1980 version of this film and adore it, and also read the book as a child. It seems screenwriter Scott Abbott was attempting to stick closer to the source novel for this version, as the 1980 film did have substantial differences, but the result is not for the better. The pacing here is fine albeit routine, and the unraveling of the mystery offers few surprises and virtually no tensity. The film has all the cliché trappings of a made-for-television film, but doesn't even attempt a unique spin on them. I won't pretend that the source novel or even the 1980 John Hough-directed film are masterpieces; they are, at the end of the day, youth-aimed works and are going to be lite fare. That said, this retelling is not only narratively bland, but visually bland(er). The original film was a remarkably dark, Gothic film, and part of what made it such a staple of so many's childhood nightmares was the off-kilter atmosphere, menacing score, and unsettling visuals. Here, key scenes are dumbed down, and the look of the film as a whole is utterly devoid of mood; the home used in this version and the surrounding forest lack any and all menace or mystery, and the photography is a large part of what makes the film so insipid. Exterior scenes in particular are bright and cheery, and not even in an ironic way that belies the horror.The performances are concomitantly weak, with the lead cast mainly consisting of Brits doing bad impressions of American accents. Anjelica Huston is fine given what she has to work with, but even her performance here is bland, and the intrigue surrounding her character rendered meaningless. Benedict Taylor, who played the boyfriend in the original, makes an appearance in a way that brings things generationally full-circle; this is a nice nod, but it cannot come close to salvaging the rest.In the end, "The Watcher in the Woods" pales in comparison to its source material as well as the 1980 film, mainly because, unlike the novel and the previous adaptation, it offers nothing in the way of mood, atmosphere, or tension. It's too bland, too bright, and far too non-threatening to offer anything worthwhile. The original novel and earlier film are both unique and ominous in their own respective ways; unfortunately, the same cannot be said here. Aside from a semi-well-directed flashback scene, the film is unrepentantly dull. 2/10.