The Skeptic, a truly scary film
If you're looking for a scary movie (as we were on Halloween) but don't like to sit in front of a gore fest then this is definitely the one to watch for you. Although I wasn't expecting much, I was pleasantly surprised and entertained by The Skeptic, not to mention scared half to death by this tremendous piece of work.
I didn't recognise any of the cast except for Zoë Saldana, who at the time just looked vaguely familiar and I discovered the reason later, she was in the new Star Trek film. Okay, so I don't really pay too much attention to the names. If I like a movie and an actor or actress, I'll go look them up otherwise I'm more interested in enjoying the film. People can get to bogged down with all this "who's in that..", "who directed this..." etc. I just like to watch a good film or two and this was definitely one of them.
If you remember the old Hammer horror films, in particular the psychological thriller variety that came along in the seventies, then the format of this movie might look quite familiar. There's plenty of suspense and at one point, my girlfriend and I both screamed out together and sent both our cats running for the door. We had to press 'pause' and calm down a bit before continuing on. Looking at it again, that particular scene wasn't anything special, there were now cool effects and nothing out of the ordinary; the fact that they had built up so much suspense in the preceding scenes meant that it you were already on the edge of your seat and the slightest scare would set you off. Truly ingenious even if a little 'old school'.
Actually describing this as 'old school' probably sums it up best. Back when I was a young lad watching my first scary movies this is the kind of thing that I might have watched. Interesting how today's genre of horror film can't be shown to younger people because of the incredible amount of violence and gore that needs to be included to scare today's audience. Were we really that much easier to scare back then? From where I'm standing I'd be more inclined to say that film makers back then knew their craft and could pull it off with a few subtle suggestions and a bit of atmosphere. There were no high tech special effects so you had to let your imagination do some (or a lot) of the work. I think that it is possible to "see too much".
The Skeptic probably isn't going to win a basket full of awards - which to my mind is a shame, because the accolades and attention is often wasted on far less worthy films. Ten out of ten from me!