Sexylocher
Masterful Movie
Cleveronix
A different way of telling a story
Fairaher
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
Paul Evans
The first thing I'd have to say about The Haunting of Radcliffe House (Altar) is that it's too long, the lesser elements of this TV film failed to hold my attention, I got a bit bored with it at times. The positives, who doesn't love a ghost story, it's been done a hundred times before, but it's still watchable, it still has a few jumps, and the story itself is an interesting one. Antonia Clarke, playing daughter Penny, was easily the best performer throughout, she was great.The bad bits, it's been done before, you could spend ages picking out the film references, there are too many to list, The Skeleton Key is heavily referenced. The acting is generally a little amateur, I'm a fan of Olivia Williams, but she isn't great here, maybe it's the clunky direction, but none of them seem well serviced, Antonia Clarke somehow manages to add something. I think they tried to be over creative, some of the 'arty' scenes were way off.A good plod. 6/10
quincytheodore
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.
Erika Loulabelle Pattison
I honestly quite enjoyed this. After reading the other reviews I was expecting to hate and turn it off but I quite liked the story and the pace didn't lose me. The filming reminded me of old school silent witness and the storyline was easy to watch. To me it was a typical watch on a rainy dark evening film with not too muchgoing on so you could watch it in relaxed fashion. Obviously it could of been better and I'll admit when I heard the first English accent I did think great this is going to be rubbish, we don't do horrors well, but the scene setting music and the ending really did give me that uncomfortable creepy ghost story kind of feeling so it was a slightly lacklustre hit in my book
Steven Hudson
Altar is a symbol of sacrifice oftentimes for all the wrong reasons. And as viewers we all know just how wrong those things can go in a horror movie like Altar. Unfortunately as much as I loved the movie I actually have some bad things to say about it. First of it's just not scary enough in parts. It makes up for this though by being more frightful in other scenes in the movie. The movie startled me though with its clever music that sent shivers up my spine. I also liked the close-ups they used showing the ghost running nearer and nearer. What I love more than anything though is the mood that was created of an isolated mansion that destroys people's lives. There was an efficient amount of blood used which is great because I don't like very bloody movies myself. Even in a horror movie too much of anything is never good which is the reason why Altar succeeded. They were always balanced especially in cinematic violence.
