Simply Perfect

i must have seen a different film!!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Even though I have watched hundreds of horror movies, I have never seen such a twist end. Very clever story, to such extent that ordinary people can't understand the plot of the movie. That's why it's underrated. We can give 10 stars simply for the cleverness of the director alone. If we consider the creepy horror elements in the movie, we can give additional 5 stars. It's a real treat for fans of intelligent horror movies.

Eastern Europe is undoubtedly attractive to today's American horror films. Movies like "Hostel" or "Chernobyl Diaries" have made good use of the gloomy environment of these regions and the virtually void knowledge that American public has about them. This is another of these films, setting in Poland where, curiously, everyone can speak English well, even if loaded with a forced accent. The story happens in a small village, apparently stopped in time, where locals are very hostile with foreigners. What tourists are unaware of is that they seek to keep a terrible secret from the eyes of the world, which insists on entering through their doors. This could be extremely xenophobic to the peaceful and friendly Polish people if, in the end, the story did not completely change its tone (I will not tell you what happens to not spoil it). To summarize it is enough to say that the film has a vulgar script punctuated by some original solutions, always misused, a third class cast that never surpasses average and to whom were given mediocre characters and a very bad sound, visual and special effects, direct consequence of the low production budget. The natural result is a histrionic film that is far from good, reaching only a bearable quality.

THE SHRINE is a Canadian horror film set in Poland. To begin with the plot is nothing special, involving the usual trio of American tourists abroad who find themselves in trouble when they stumble upon a grove containing an ancient shrine that has something evil about it. The second half of the film gets a little more interesting by skewing the usual angles and builds to an impressively high octane climax.The problem with this film is the lack of budget. There isn't much money to go around so the director substitutes noise with quality. This is one of the noisiest horror films I can remember watching and particularly at the climax it gets very headache-inducing. Plus the usual EXORCIST clichés are played out again which is a bit wearying. On the plus side, there's some very graphic gore in this film and it's nasty stuff indeed, wince-inducing in places. Shawn Ashmore's twin brother Aaron stars.

I was expecting another typically bad horror movie, but this one really worked.Most horror today is so bad you are rooting for the monster to kill the actors because you hate them so much. This one was able to make you care about the main characters and that made it worth staying to the end.I admit I was fooled by how things took an abrupt turn near the end.What surprised me were the many hateful reviews this got. I'm usually the one telling everyone how terrible a horror movie is, so I was confused by the number of reviews that just hated this movie. Did the director and writer rub a few people the wrong way?Anyway, I think it is well worth watching.