2015 October Horror Challenge #41 "Neverlake"

This movie is about a young teen girl who goes to stay with her father in a creepy but beautiful old castle while on a break from dboarding school.  She's been in boarding school for awhile, ever since her grandmother, who raised her, became too ill to take care of her.  Her mother died years ago and her father is kind of a stuck - up twat.  I'm not a huge fan.  He shows disdain for poetry and refuses to believe her when she starts seeing creepy children around the estate.  I get that he's a "man of reason," but that's no excuse to be a jerk about everything.  Plus he prescribes meds for his daughter to take from the first day she comes to live with him.  Um...controlling much?  Maybe if he threw some Xanax in there it would be easier for her to deal with his crap.

The atmosphere of the woods and lake surrounding the estate is beautiful but suitably creepy, and the children who keep showing up add to the creepiness.  This is the perfect scary movie for kids.  I would have loved it when I was younger.  Not that it's half bad when you're an adult, either.  Anyway, she develops friendships with the somewhat creepy children, who live at a nearby orphanage, and she often visits and reads poetry to them.  The children are nice, but they seem to be keeping secrets.

Just the old, creaky, echoing noises in both the orphanage and the castle where the girl lives are spooky enough even without the other scary happenings, like the girl's nightmares or the secrets that the girl's father and the live in maid seem to be keeping as they whisper to each other in the night.  Everything seems to build an atmosphere of creepiness and mystery, and it's confusing and unsettling.  I don't trust anyone in this movie, especially not any of the adults.  Creepy fuckers.  Once everythong is revealed, it's hard to argue with one of the children from the orphanage insists that "horror is nothing more than truth."  This movie isn't for everyone, but for those looking not for gore but for a creepy story full of building menace and dark secrets,  this movie is one to watch.