The Awakening

"The Awakening", the directorial debut (from what I gather) of director/writer Nick Murphy, may not be as unpleasant or frustrating a watch as most mainstream horrors, e.g. "Paranormal Activity" "Insidious", etc. mostly down to its haunting soundtrack, half-decent cinematography and acting (although John Shrapnel is taken out far too early) and...actually, that's about it, everything else is terrible. When it's not ripping scenes straight from other films (the shot-for-shot copy of the ball on the stairs scene from "The Changeling" has to be seen to be believed) it's creating throwaway characters or completely non-nonsensical plot points which are rarely explained and when they are, you just want to punch the director. Simply just making a film that's supposedly celebrating the horror days of old isn't good enough anymore, especially when it's done as badly as this.