Altar (2014)

A young family moves to an isolated house which the wife has been hired to restore, only to discover that the previous owner is reputed to have murdered his wife.

Director:

Nick Willing

Writer:

Nick Willing

Stars:

Olivia Williams, Matthew Modine, Antonia Clarke

Cast

Cast overview:
Olivia Williams	...	Meg Hamilton
Matthew Modine	...	Alec Hamilton
Antonia Clarke	...	Penny Hamilton
Adam Thomas Wright	...	Harper Hamilton
Richard Dillane	...	Greg
Howard Lee	...	Frank
Jonathan Jaynes	...	Sean Donnelly
Rebecca Calder	...	Isabella
Steve Oram	...	Nigel Lean
David J. Peel	...	Telephone Engineer (as David Peel)
Mark Heenehan	...	Brad Mason
Stephen Chance	...	Charles Kendrick Walker

Storyline

The Hamilton family move into a large country house on the Yorkshire Moors to supervise its restoration from a dilapidated B&B to the original Victorian grandeur. When Meg Hamilton, wife, mother and renovation expert first loses her London team after an accident, then a local Yorkshire team too superstitious to continue, she's forced to carry on alone. The discovery of a secret attic room, a Rosicrucian mosaic, a bricked up root cellar and many other unexplainable events gradually convince Meg, her husband Alec and children Penny and Harper, that they're not only restoring the house, but also its original Victorian owners who died 150 years ago. But before they can escape, the house - and its former occupants - force them to spend one last, terrifying night under its roof.

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Plot Keywords:

ghost | mother | country house | teenage daughter | altar | 

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Genres:

Horror | Mystery

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

17 February 2015 (USA)

Also Known As:

Altar - Das Portal zur Hölle

Filming Locations:

Yorkshire, England, UK

Company Credits

Production Co:

Content Media, Pygmalion Productions, Sandover Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

94 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

When first shown on Channel 5 in the United Kingdom, the film's title was Haunting of Radcliffe House.

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Goofs

While Meg is trying to break down the bricked up passageway through to the root cellar in order to find Harper, Penny falls into the root cellar via an open doorway in the floor outside the main entrance. Therefore, if Meg wants to reach Harper, all she has to do is enter through that doorway, meaning her smashing of the wall makes no sense.

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Connections

References The Shining (1980)

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Soundtracks

Westminster Quarters
(uncredited)
Traditional

User Reviews

Old-fashioned haunted house movie

Atmospheric haunted house horror about a designer who moves her husband and kids into a spooky Yorkshire manor she has been hired to restore. Beautifully shot on location, director/screenwriter Nick Willing makes the most of the subdued, wild beauty of the Yorkshire moors. I wish we had a better sense of the gorgeous house the family takes over -- for all the reliance on secret rooms and bricked up passageways, the internal layout of the house remains vague and generic. Also less defined than they should be are the couple's two children, who we don't get to know very well. This makes the peril they are in less compelling than it could be. Olivia Williams does a great job as the emotional center of the film, trying to hold her family together in the face of mounting financial pressures and a menacing presence that seems to grow more powerful. Like many such stories, the supernatural here is an expression of the resentments and strains that have crept into William's marriage to her failed artist husband, played by a miscast Matthew Modine. While it doesn't break any new ground, "Altar" builds and mostly maintains a high creepiness factor, especially when Modine discovers a new medium and new canvas for his art. This is a good, old-fashioned, restrained horror film, well worth checking out.