Behind the Wall

I always give films a chance and as such watched this to the bitter end. Where to start..... Made for TV has become known to mean a film that may not be of the quality Hollywood demands. I would say this was "made for betamax"!

Acting: Poor to awful Plot: Could have been handled better Production: Non existent Music: From an episode of some cancelled 70's drama

What more to say.....

I want 1 hour and 29 minutes of my life back!!

Really, even if you are bored out your mind watching paint dry would be far more enriching to your life.

I'm going to make this review as short as possible. It's bland. And that's really all you need to know. Not scary, not really very suspenseful, and certainly not gripping. I found myself far more interested in my telephone than with this movie. The video quality was fine, the acting was decent... it just wasn't particularly interesting. If this had been a made-for-TV movie, people would be turning the channels. It's not even so bad it';s good, it's just... well... blah. This is as vanilla as it gets.

I'd like to say something nice about the film, but I just can't. My friend thought the lead actress was cute... but I don't even agree with that. So, um, I got nothing.

When telling a story, the focus of the plot should never shift from one genre to another. For example, a romance should never morph into a mystery. A whodunit should never morph into a tale of the supernatural. A comedy should never depict an incidence of death or maiming so intense that the audience perceives it to be real. To shift from one genre to another in mid-story jars the audience, causes confusion, and shakes them from their temporary reverie. They are transported back to the real world and the story dies because they can no longer participate in the fictional construct.

"Behind the Wall" is an unsatisfying story because if violates this fundamental tenet. It begins as a horror tale (bloody death of the wife/mother by an unknown force) and a warning not to venture into the basement, then morphs into a ghost story (death was the act of a ghost as opposed to a living monster, human or otherwise), morphs again into the totally unreal (characters go missing, dead bodies appear and disappear - something beyond the ability of even a ghost), then transitions yet again into the tale of an unsettled ghost that can only be pacified by the death of his living betrayer. To further weaken the plot, a priest gives a dire warning but offers zero rationale, and a budding romance is introduced which changes our focus from horror/ghost story to "will boy and girl get together?".

No movie can survive this uneven level of fictional reality regardless of its production quality or acting talent.

The actors in "Behind the Wall" are believable. The story is not.

Called back to her hometown after years being away, a woman finds that her connection to a storied lighthouse in town which initially caused her to leave is unleashing a torrent of ghostly activity on those nearby and must race to stop it before it engulfs the town.

This one was a pretty bland and overall decent effort. The film's best qualities stem from the continuous usage of the central location here, as the lighthouse setting featured is quite chilling and seems like the ideal location upon which to string these kinds of horror surroundings from. Given the rather chilling mark of being abandoned for years following the original disaster, there's the dirty, moldy setting here that combined with the really enjoyable layout and hidden compartments within the house that cause this to really have an eerie layer to it that gives this plenty of enjoyable qualities exploring this set-up. That the film's two biggest scenes, the flashback revelation of what happened to her mother getting dragged into the darkness behind the open wall and the eerie stalking of the photographers into the basement pit manage to come off with a great sense of thrilling action as well as really taking advantage of the location with the scenes coming off as the real highlights here by managing to come off as well as they do here. Likewise, there's plenty of fun here with how this one builds up the mystery of the lighthouse here b showing off the different mysterious events of the past and how they're all slowly disappearing one-by-one around the area which really starts the investigation into this and finally putting the pieces together which requires the big final resolution here that comes off quite fun and enjoyable. That's really all that work here for this one as this one does have some pretty big problems. The biggest problem is how little on-screen action really revolves around the actual haunting as the majority of time here is spent on other elements that hold this one down. As there's a large portion of time spent here on being welcomed back to town and trying to find out the reason for her summoning, it makes for a rather long time before we get any kind of true scares to develop here, and by continuing on the troubled past that she has to figure out while running those other story lines we don't get very many chances for scares past that point either and the whole thing feels rather long and dreary here with only the continuous shots of the atmospheric lighthouse to carry this one along. The other big problem here is the film's usage of one of the most appalling and utterly infuriating storyline tactics, having a character that is fully aware of the dangers and problems associated with the current situation keep that information to themselves in the face of overwhelming evidence that revealing it will save countless lives. Numerous times throughout here he could've easily prevented more deaths from occurring simply by actively sharing his knowledge with others, considering they're involved and wouldn't have had a hard time believing his story once they hear it and piece it together with what's going on. This is a truly irritating ploy that's continued in here, and really helps to lower this one along with its other problems.

Rated PG-13: Violence and Language.

This film was just...bland. I really enjoy sifting through under-the-radar horror films, and sometimes I find gems, but this time I found a decaying piece of driftwood. The plot was not only stock, but executed poorly; there was no suspense, there were no scares, and it was so predictable and cookie-cutter that I found myself quoting the next few lines before they were actually said several times.

Lindy Booth was nice to look at, as usual, but that's literally the only good thing I can say about this film. The credits were the best part. Save yourself an hour and a half of your life and skip this one; you won't regret it.