Altar (2014)

The first thing I'd have to say about The Haunting of Radcliffe House (Altar) is that it's too long, the lesser elements of this TV film failed to hold my attention, I got a bit bored with it at times. The positives, who doesn't love a ghost story, it's been done a hundred times before, but it's still watchable, it still has a few jumps, and the story itself is an interesting one. Antonia Clarke, playing daughter Penny, was easily the best performer throughout, she was great.The bad bits, it's been done before, you could spend ages picking out the film references, there are too many to list, The Skeleton Key is heavily referenced. The acting is generally a little amateur, I'm a fan of Olivia Williams, but she isn't great here, maybe it's the clunky direction, but none of them seem well serviced, Antonia Clarke somehow manages to add something. I think they tried to be over creative, some of the 'arty' scenes were way off.A good plod. 6/10

There's an inkling feeling when watching Altar that it's nearly identical with other horror movies. The isolated moor seems like the one in The Woman in Black, its haunting resembles The Shining or even Poltergeist at some point with the CG. It presents a few dreadful scenes only to lose its effectiveness as audience realizes the shoddy effect and unimaginative scare.A woman is hired to do restoration on an ancient site. She brought her family along and needless to say, the site has a troubled past. Between the eerie occurrence before and increasingly haunting presence, The plot follows a strict formulaic premise and it brings too many elements, it becomes burdensome at times. The most dubious bit is how this entity is presented.Altar wants to give many subplots of the horror came to be, but it's done in sloppy fashion. There are too many strange developments, especially with the possession gimmick. Acting and script can barely handle the weighty sporadic subjects, and it's just fumbling from one horror attempt to another.Its location is pretty nice, gloomy and practically screaming horror. It's already a good vista, but the movie spends too much on bantering. Not to mention it also takes some flaws from other horror movies like the clueless characters or overly cryptic sacrificial ritual. The worse is its use of CGI, what could have been a decent terror is decreased to silly overlapping images like scenes from old TV show.Altar scrounges many aspects from other movies of the genre, it's eventually overwhelmed by the cumbersome direction and doesn't even produce the same thrill it's inspired from.

A young family move to an isolated house which the mother has been hired to restore only to discover that presences still linger casting a hold over her artist sculpturing husband. Taking a leaf from a James Herbert novel and channelling countless haunted films Altar is an effective ghost story chiller, however, what sets director/writer Nick Willing's offering apart are the practical and some special effects which have an optical natural feel as opposed to the usual ineffective blatant CGI. Willing delivers some genuinely eerie visuals and creepy moments, this coupled with a great score and on location shoot help give some credence and atmosphere to the proceedings. Matthew Modine's Hamilton sports a Shining Jack Torrence like woollen jumper (the writer character is replaced here by an artist) and mimics Torrence's transformation (although quite speedy) still Modine gives an intense performance. Both the younger actors are effective, actress Antonia Clarke is notable as Penny. Olivia Williams gives convincing performance which complements the naturalistic writing and setting. While it breaks no new ground in terms of ghost stories or twist endings it's a solid old school British horror.

No, this is not great filmmaking.(Must be a lot of cast and crew having rated this on here.)Just going to ramble about this in no special order. Some places it seems like they have used, I don't know, Adobe Premiere effects, or worse yet, effects that are in the camera itself.. Thats a little wtf, right?As far as I can remember, one or two short scenes are almost creepy, actually. But they are way outweighed by what is wrong, and bad, and not creepy.Olivia Williams is annoying as crap! She has the worst looking hair, and it is even a point in the movie! I got mad just looking at her stupid hair. That's not good.There is nothing new here, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but what is here, is not done very good, and that's a bad thing.The plot with the wife and the husband and the story of the house and the this and the that, could have been cool, but it is just not good enough.One scene with a sculpture and some smashing is kind of cool. Best part of the movie.