Many of the scares are inventive and interesting, but I couldn't identify any connective tissue between them. It felt like every arc started from the base premise "evil ghost family" independently, and there's no momentum or escalation as a result. There's a little more sauce put on the last kill of the movie, but there's nothing about the circumstances of that death that seems to warrant the extra effort.
Great sound effect work, at least.
I appreciated the slow pace and limited scope of this movie. Just one primary character, and the people in her immediate orbit. Early scenes were mediocre, but they do an acceptable job of setting the stage for the climax. The scene at the well does an excellent job of paying off the rising tension up to that point. I loved the light peeking through the slats of the log cabin's porch providing the only visual evidence of the passage of…
Constantine is a complete mess of a film. It opens well in media res with an intriguing, mysterious setting, and then cuts its own legs off by spending fully the next hour laboriously explaining every possible detail about that setting. At any point it threatens to be interesting, one of the worst romantic subplots I've ever seen committed to film intrudes to cut the momentum again.
Against all odds, it manages to stick the landing with an unexpectedly great ending (further buoyed by getting to see Tilda Swinton in frilled leather), but it can't fully salvage everything that precedes it.
Great set work, fun performances, and decent action. There are some glossy CGI visuals (especially the opening narration) that clash severely with the otherwise muted tone of the movie. The John Wick-style mythologizing of the protagonist was largely unnecessary, I think the movie would have been better if it were just about a really, really pissed off prospector. The river crossing scene was notably bad, but the quality of the rest of the movie is enough to make up for…
