Out of the Dark (2014)

If you can get past the Americans with a British child.... okay.If you can make it past the complete lack of chemistry between the co-star couple.... good luck.If you even make it past the boner of a story..... I'm impressed. I know I'll never get that time back but it was on Hulu so at least it was free.

Greetings from Lithuania."Out of the Dark" (2014) is more of a mystery thriller with some horror elements rather then a horror movie. It's not scary, yet it has some jump scare moments, which are kinda generic and predictable. If you will start watching this movie in hope to see a great horror movie, you will end up disappointed.That said, "Out of the Dark" is more of a mystery movie. Plot is simple, yet not that bad. The best parts of this movie in my opinion was solid cinematography, gorgeous locations (shoot at location in Columbia), nice acting by J.Stiles (unfortunately Scott Speedman was miscast here) and some very nice pacing of this movie. Director did kinda nice job, but script in here should have been improved.Overall, "Out of the Dark" is not a bad movie, it's just not a horror as it's advertisement says. It's nice to see some scenery change once in a while, and this movie has one. Good pacing, nice acting by lead actress, solid cinematography and some mystery story with horror elements makes this movie a worth seeing once.

Not scary (often boring) ghost movie about an American family in Colombia terrorized by local spooks mad at grandpa. Gramps is a businessman so, like every movie businessman ever, he's got blood on his hands. It's all pretty clichéd stuff and not the least bit unnerving or frightening. The jump scares didn't even make me twitch. My butt was asleep by the end of it. Speaking of the end, there's at least one bit that's unbelievably corny. If you have the guts to sit through this, you'll see what I'm referring to.Julia Stiles and Scott Speedman have both done better. They have no chemistry and their work here is forgettable. Pixie Davies plays the young daughter in constant danger. While she is certainly a cutie patootie, she's not a very good little actress. She has a heavy British accent while both of her parents are Americans. Even Stephen Rea, playing her grandpa, is using an American accent. I missed it when I watched but apparently there was a throwaway line of dialogue in the beginning that said the family had been living in London. Pretty flimsy but there you go. This was the first English-language film from this production company so perhaps it went unnoticed by everybody that Pixie couldn't change her accent until it was too late to recast. Or maybe they just didn't give a flip. It's not like it would have saved the movie or anything. It's a dud regardless.

. . . a message that should go without saying, let alone requiring an entire feature-length film to get the point across. Any American with their head screwed on straight realizes that Antarctica, New Zealand, Iceland, plus parts of Australia, Western Europe, and Canada are the ONLY places to visit without risking the high expenditure of U.S. taxpayer dollars and possible peril to our brave Special Forces personnel for the so-called "thrill" of selfishly traipsing around world trouble spots slumming. However, "Sarah" (Julia Stiles) and "Paul" (Scott Speedman) set fit to drag their young daughter to a haunted portion (what isn't?) of Columbia, South America. (Since Ms. Stiles has been paired on screen at least once with every minority actor in her age group, she has NO chemistry with the white-bread Mr. Speedman, proving the adage which rhymes "Black" with "back.) This atmospheric horror tale has plenty of rain, thunder, lightning, mist, fog, and gloom. Mostly what it lacks is a compelling story line and characters who are not total idiots.