Don't Listen

Pretty good with lots of jumps. Storyline was a bit basic with a few holes. But aside that it does make you jump. Plus the ending not traditional and I thought was really good.

Pros: The story and the screenplay was good, never let me skip any scene. Jump scares are decent and were plotted where its needed. Unpredictable climax and the twist. Cast performances were good. Sound and cinematography was good, enjoyable with home theatre.

Cons: Not much but I felt some slowness in-between the movie.

I watched it without expectations. And then it turned out to be really scary and good. I love when that happens. Loved the twist at the end, too. There's a post credit scene that hints at a sequel.

The plot: after a family moves in to an old house, the parents become concerned that their son is hearing voices.

Haunted house movies tend to be pretty cliched. You have to really like the formula to sit through most of them. It helps if you shake things up by watching the occasional non-English film. But, even so, you frequently end up feeling like you've already seen that movie a few times already.

"Don't Listen" doesn't stray from the template used by so many other haunted house movies. There's the standard bit of exposition about why the family can't leave the house. And, of course, someone finds a book that explains the movie's plot in detail.

However, quite a few of the scenes were well-acted, and the characters were all pretty likable. Each of the characters got to have their own spooky moment, where they sloooowly reach toward something they probably shouldn't be reaching toward. Then there's a sudden, loud noise, and the character sloooowly backs up, not realizing that there's something spooky behind them. If you can handle such cliched scenes, it's actually done pretty well.

Near the end of the movie, everything is explicitly and tidily resolved. There is absolutely no metaphor here, and there is literally no chance that you walk away from this movie scratching your head. It left me wondering if maybe this was meant for a younger, less jaded demographic than me.

I really liked the first 20-30 mins of the movie: The build up was good. The visuals give you the creeps (and depending on your level of scare, they might even seem scary) and you can tell that it's about to go down, the movie does a good job of building the anticipation. Watch this movie for the first half if you'd like to. Would recommend that! The acting was good too!

But halfway through, I lost interest. The movie had so much potential but it was a let down then on, especially in the final 30 mins. A couple blatant things were missed to move the plot on that made a character seem dumb, only made me care less for him. The narrative around the "paranormal/witch/ghost" in the final third felt weak and rushed. The lore could have used more time and stretched bit.

The final twist - Interesting. I'm torn with this one though but I'll take it. I guess the first 20-30 mins and the this final twist are the two things that I'll take away from the movie. That's about it. Turns out, there was a post-credit scene, that I missed, about a new story. I don't think it's worth the time to go back watch it, it's not gonna salvage the story in this movie for me.