Plot
A screenwriter who travels to an abandoned house to finish a script on time, but a series of strange events lead her to a psychological breakdown.

Release Year: 2009

Rating: 4.3/10 (2,341 voted)

Director: Sean McConville

Stars: Brittany Murphy, Thora Birch, Tammy Blanchard

Storyline
Alice, 32, a writer recovering from a psychological breakdown retreats to a remote Victorian house to convalesce and focus on finishing her screenplay in time for a fast approaching deadline. Shortly after her arrival, mysterious noises and strange happenings cause her imagination to run wild, sending her on a twisting and terrifying pursuit to find out what is behind the endless mind games. Frightened but intrigued, Alice gathers the courage to go down into the cold, dingy attic where she finds a shoe box filled with mini-dv tapes. The terrifying secret that lies within the tapes will unravel Alice's dark past.

Cast:
Brittany Murphy - Alice
Thora Birch - Lucy
Tammy Blanchard - Rebecca
Marc Blucas - David
Claudia Troll - David's Mother
Michael Piscitelli - Ben's Voice (voice)

Taglines: Focus your fear.

Official Website: MySpace |

Release Date: 29 January 2010

Filming Locations: Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA

Box Office Details

Budget: $1,800,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend: MXN 1,907,101 (Mexico) (29 January 2010) (47 Screens)

Gross: MXN 3,204,994 (Mexico) (4 March 2010)

Runtime: 85 min  | Germany: 89 min (European Film Market)

Guess the writer had to meet the deadline...

Rating: 2/10

We've had more than enough haunted house movies as it is, so Deadline would have had to come up with something pretty original to keep a guy weary of the same old creepy mansion routine happy. The story - writer moves to old creepy house where strange things happen caused by some probably violent event that had occurred in the place - is not. The main character's background - of course something terrible happened in her past, too, coming back to haunt her - is not. The shocks - chairs moving, doors closing, floors cracking - are not. The secret - did something violent happen to the couple who used to live here before Brittany Murphy's character - is not. I'm not going to comment on the ending but you see where this is going. The only gimmick is a video camera Murphy finds in the house with tapes that explain what happened here before. Well, in the 70s they usually found tape recorders in those haunted houses as the home video market wasn't exactly booming back then. Just adding some new technology, however, doesn't make a story refreshing, more so as the tapes - which take in a large part of the film - are uninteresting and didn't make me care what happened to Thora Birch's character. Murphy and Birch don't find much to do with their roles, while Birch's psycho husband is rather annoying than menacing. the direction is not so much bad as just as uninspired as the story. Some scenes feel rather cheaply made; without Murphy as the lead you could think you're watching a low-budget made-for-TV movie.

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