When I was growing up, one of my aunts had a crush on Nicholas Cage, so we would always watch his movies. I had an uncle who would bootleg recordings of any movie onto VHS and it seemed like he could find any movie you wanted, so he would find all the Nicholas Cage movies and she and I would watch them together. Our favorite was "Raising Arizona," and that one was my mom's favorite too. Over the years it seemed like Nicholas Cage got more adept at chewing the scenery, or maybe I just got older and didn't jive with his acting style anymore, who knows, but I was still hoping that he would be in a horror movie one day so I could mix my love of horror movies with my love of Nicholas Cage. He was in the Wicker Man remake, but I don't really count that because I hate that movie, so I was excited when I heard about this movie, because finally I could watch Nicholas Cage in a horror movie, and I hoped it was a good one.
This movie is about a man named Mike whose son disappears one year during a Halloween carnival. Mike and his wife Kristen are devastated by the loss and they wind up estranged from each other, living in separate homes, with Mike's home turned into a mini shrine to finding his son. Mike is obsessed with finding any clues he can as to his son's whereabouts. Three days before Halloween a year after his son Charlie disappears, Mike starts seeing visions of his son and he believes his son is reaching out to him, begging to be found. Will Mike be able to unravel the mystery in time to find his son?
This is a highly stylized ghost story with a lot of jump scares and an undercurrent of shame leading back to the times of witch trials when many innocent women were burned at the stake and accused of being witches simply because they were different. In this story, parents must "pay the ghost" by giving up their children, and it's a creepy idea, but I don't think it's explored very fully, and the ending seems rather abrupt. It's still a creepy little story though, and it would be a good movie to watch with kids on Halloween to stress the importance of staying with your parents at all times. Overall, I enjoyed this one in spite of its flaws.
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