Reviews

The first half of the movie is your basic setup. Fiery defiant daughter won't listen to their parents. Defies their wishes. Goes out anyway with the "bad apple" boy. Goes missing.

Without rehashing all the middle parts where all the wrong ppl are suspected, let's go to the final act.

Let's face it. The "big secret" that the dad is a baddie involved in bad things was unguessable. Fair enough. But once the victims sister finds HUGE incriminating video evidence - I mean, the dad couldn't have incriminated himself so indefensibly - does she go to the police? No "not yet"... because "she has to do something first".. That's right, take that huge piece of evidence to your dad's house and show it to his wife - your non-biological would-be future foster mom... who frankly may or may not be in on the whole operation.

Of course, long story short, predictably, that evidence is destroyed - not even in the cloud. And, no, she didn't think to make a copy or email it to someone or text it to her guy friend. Once an "enforcer guy" is dispatched to retrieve the evidence is defeated (btw, just knocked out), do they go to the police NOW?

Of course not. Why? According to the mom"Who's going to believe a crazy lady and a runaway?" Hmm.. maybe a guy dressed in black lying on your living room floor who brought a gun with him might sway the police?

No, let's save the missing girl OURSELVES though there is really no reason to believe she's alive in the first place. And frankly I'm perplexed why the baddies were even keeping the girl alive since they already disclosed they had no regard for human life.

Incidentally, the mom takes out both "the enforcer guy" and later the villain dad with the same golf club. Could you show a little more creativity? And I'm pretty sure when you strike someone's head with a golf club it doesn't sound like you're hitting an iron railing, like we heard...

These annoyances aside, the movie was a watchable, but readily forgettable.

I usually am very tolerant with the quality of Lifetime movies... but this was one of the worse I have ever seen.

First the idea that are woman sympathetic medic who blames herself for a man's death.. in fact suffers PTSD over it... would not know the man's name or his wife's name or would not have gone to his funeral out of sympathy and "apologized" to the wife and known fully who she was is entirely implausible.

The idea that at the climactic moment the grieving widow is just now learning from the heroine what the dead man's actions and intentions and last words were is hard to fathom.

The "main" hitman was the most incompetent hitman imaginable ... and apparently never attended Kidnapping ducttaping 101 classes because the heroine managed to escape TWICE.

The mom and daughter flee the abduction house in the middle of a street simply walking casually and inconceivably could not see the Hitman's BIG WHITE VAN approaching on the wide open roadway until the van was literally 10 feet away.

The daughter describes to her mother in explicit detail her observing the hitman in a house reconfiguring a TV, and pointing a gun at her with the intent of killing her and her "mom" dismisses this critical revelation out of hand...She seemed to blame her PTSD to an extent for doubting her daughter... which frankly is a disservice to ppl who actually have PTSD because PTSD may affect your judgement but to my knowledge not your intelligence.

When mom and daughter were captured for a SECOND time I was begging the movie to end already because the stupidity at every turn actually was becoming numbing.

And finally when the widow demands the heroine to "pick the person to die" you knew from the first moments of the movie that the whole movie would be painfully contrived to get us to that point. So silly.

I first encountered the movie on a free streaming channel, catching the movie two-thirds of the way through. I found the last third artful, suspenseful, and engaging - enough so that I watched the first two-thirds that I missed when they replayed the movie 12 hours later. Now having watched the portion I missed, I must say it detracted from my positive impressions from the final third - almost entirely due to the sheer volume of awful mis-guided decisions of the victim. To name a few off the top my head:

1) Escaping the killer by returning to the cliff where the killer "killed you" before

2) Escaping the killer by returning the killer's house where the killer brutalized you before

3) Escaping the killer in a CAR driving 60 mph scot-free only to decide to return (unarmed at the time of the decision) to the killer's house

4) Attempting to stealthily track down the killer in their own house that they grew up in and therefore know like the back of their hand

5) Calling out the killer's name while you are trying to secretly kill them

6) Using an untested, unproven "antique" gun as your first line of defense with a psychopathic killer

7) Poking your head up into an attic - and in so doing leaving your torso and legs unprotected

8) Being able to strenuously row a boat for your life - after having fallen from a cliff seemingly to your death, rendered unconscious, and suffering a sprained ankle, laceration of the abdomen (requiring stitches), and a broken thumb. I don't know about you, but if I ever SPRAIN my thumb, I can't even hold a spoon let along grip an oar powerfully.

...and on and on.

Those things said, the cinematography was thrilling to watch, with long trailing shots and tracking shots. And there was enough (contrived) suspense to keep me engaged throughout the movie. So overall, I did enjoy the movie - but I have to take off a point or two due to the distracting decisions by the victim.

P. S. If I watch one more "slasher in a cabin" movie where there's "no internet reception"...I will jump off a cliff myself. You would think - even in 2018 - that people visiting an isolated cabin, isolated camping site, isolated destination would routinely ask the host or trip planner "Will there be wi-fi?"...

Yes. It's formulaic and derivative of Bourne and Taken and Bond and probably several Dwayne Johnson movies where the wife, girlfriend, rebellious daughter is captured, and the bad guys want the good guy to hand over the money or the "thing" to the bad guy, or commit a major theft or murder, to get the loved one back. We've seen it a million times. So what? Comes with the territory.

All these films have the same elements: the former ops or assassin "whatever", the duplicitous CIA or NSA chief, the corporate plot, the ex-lovers, the double cross or "switcharoo" at the end. I'm ok with that . There are some some edgy variations here.. and a new cast of characters. Plus Olga Kurylenko is delightful to look at and I enjoyed her role..

I will agree with everyone who feels that the whiny daughter (as happens in a lot of these films) who does something stupid to put themself at risk of being captured, and therefore puts the world at risk, makes you want to scream.

How do you stretch a horrid 45 minute movie into a distributable 74 minute movie? You add an incomprehensible prelogue scene and an incomprehensible epilogue scene, then have everyone speak slowly, walk slowly, and die slowly.

The director clearly thinks that you build suspense by having everyone investigate noises, peer into rooms, and look under beds excruciatingly and painfully slowly - with no payoff.

The Mandy doll is seemingly an off the shelf doll with no mechanisms to control head movements or open and close the eyes, so I guess they just move it around by hand.

Phoebe Torrance. As others have stated, is a pleasant to watch, but is an embarrassingly poor actor. She takes an obligatory horror movie bath/shower and we don't even get a gratuitous nude shot. Instead the director felt by lingering on her shapely legs and pretty feet we would overlook that expectation.

There are no kill scenes to speak of. Everyone inexplicably runs to hide in MANDY'S ROOM!

Illogic after illogic make this a truly painful movie to watch. I was praying that the movie would end.

I feel sorry for anyone that spent money to watch this. Hope that Phoebe Torrance shows up in Maxim one day...

For a movie in a genre we've seen many times before ie "the kidnap victim who got away"... the movie could be considered very conventional. However early-film career Amanda Seyfried is exceptional in her acting and stunningly adorable and beautiful that you simply can't overlook.

The movie is literally "stuffed" with potential whodunnit suspects, including the "new" creepy overly concerned detective to the underconcerned boyfriend of the kidnap victim to the "squirrely" neighbor across the street... basically every guy she meets while searching for her sister. Is that plot strategy prthaps over contrived? Perhaps. But not to the point of distraction.

The movie did effectively have me wondering whether this was all in Seyfried head... whether the conversation with killer was even real or imagined... did Molly stage her own kidnapping?

I was both shocked and disappointed the movie was given a drastically low critic rating because I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.

The movie ending is very similar to "The Call" with Halle Berry. Loved both!

Expected a cheap ripoff cash grab, but it actually turned out to be a thoughtful provocative homage that aligned very well with the original. It does have a modest number of freak accidents that we come to expect in an Omen film but to the film's credit, it doesn't try to capture the same shock value those scenes had when we were first watched Omen one and two. Of course we have seen countless "devils baby" movies, and frankly, this may not be one of the better "devils baby" movies, but it necessarily has to be a "devil baby" movie as a necessary plot point to go to the original Omen movie.

Overall, I came out of the theater very satisfied. The movie was very well done, was paced very well. Was acted very well, and has some great twists and turns. I'm also intrigued by the idea of a parallel spinoff...