Review of Altar (2014) by Fil M — 20 Aug 2015

Lacking any real identity and resorting too much on cheap effect.

There's an inkling feeling when watching Altar that it's nearly identical with other horror movies. The isolated moor seems like the one in The Woman in Black, its haunting resembles The Shining or even Poltergeist at some point with the CG. It presents a few dreadful scenes only to lose its effectiveness as audience realizes the shoddy effect and unimaginative scare.

A woman is hired to do restoration on an ancient site. She brought her family along and needless to say, the site has a troubled past. Between the eerie occurrence before and increasingly haunting presence, The plot follows a strict formulaic premise and it brings too many elements, it becomes burdensome at times. The most dubious bit is how this entity is presented.

Altar wants to give many subplots of the horror came to be, but it's done in sloppy fashion. There are too many strange developments, especially with the possession gimmick. Acting and script can barely handle the weighty sporadic subjects, and it's just fumbling from one horror attempt to another.

Its location is pretty nice, gloomy and practically screaming horror. It's already a good vista, but the movie spends too much on bantering. Not to mention it also takes some flaws from other horror movies like the clueless characters or overly cryptic sacrificial ritual. The worse is its use of CGI, what could have been a decent terror is decreased to silly overlapping images like scenes from old TV show.

Altar scrounges many aspects from other movies of the genre, it's eventually overwhelmed by the cumbersome direction and doesn't even produce the same thrill it's inspired from.