Altar (2014)

Absolutely Fantastic

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

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

You've got two choices,1. Watch, The Shining, a classic horror with great acting, directing and inspired cinematography. Or, 2. You can watch, Altar, which is literally a rip-off of that movie which also manages to misunderstand everything that made that movie brilliant and combines that ignorance with bad acting, bad directing and a poor script.I would leave it there but unfortunately these reviews have to be ten lines minimum, so although I'm tempted to just write...'Ripping off a superior directors work makes Altar a dull movie' ...over and over again, I'll just add this;Some still shots of the Gothic English landscape in this movie are quite nice to look at, but nothing about this film, not even that, is original, and there was no point I can think of that would have justified spending the money to make this motion picture. The money would have been better spent on...well...anything else! So to conclude, before watching Altar, I highly recommend you 'Alter' your mind...eh?...see what I did there?

The film is not too bad but I have seen very similar ones with almost the same characters,why is it theses days you have young boys that look like little girls,the wife looks nothing like the kids and in fact seems to be two generations ahead of them especially the boy,no real character development and also characters that came and went for no apparent reason what happened to the ghost hunter for example ?I was hoping the daughter would get more involved instead of the wife as she would have been the logical choice for the ghost to be interested in not someone with one foot in the grave already.The usual old chestnut despite the obvious haunting of the house that the main character refuses to believe something is going on till two thirds of the film is over is getting very tired indeed

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.

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.