THE HAUNTING OF RADCLIFFE HOUSE

(A.k.a. ALTAR)

Alec (Matthew Modine) and Meg (Olivia Williams) relocate with their children Penny (Antonia Clarke) and Harper (Adam Thomas Wright) from London to the rural spoils of the Yorkshire moors. It's here that they plan to live in an old hall - the titular building - while Meg sets about fulfilling the task of restoring it to its former glory for the benefit of a wealthy American client.

For a very short time, all seems hunky dory. Alec is able to busy himself with his aspirations of being a sculptor during the day while Meg studies the building's form and conveys consideration from time to time via the art of frowning. The kids? Well, they're just there, doing whatever it is that kids do when they don't seem to exist on any school registers.

Before long, the expected strange occurrences begin. Of course. Spooky shenanigans persuade Meg's regular London-based team of assistants to leg it; local builder Sean (Jonathan Jaynes) does a runner too when he and Meg unearth a hidden room on the building's top floor, discovering an occultish mosaic inside it. This minor revelation seems to quantify the locals' beliefs that the place is in actual fact haunted.

Sure enough, there are more bad omens to come. Insistent banging noises that can't reasonably be explained; ghostly visitations in the dead of night; Alec's sudden fascination with the prospect of using human blood as a material in his artistic endeavours ...

Eventually it takes clued-up teen Penny to contact an online paranormal investigator, Nigel (Steve Oram). Can he help to unravel the secret of the house's grisly past and stop the malevolent spirits before the inevitable possession comes into play?

Nick Willing directed the accomplished PHOTOGRAPHING FAIRIES back in 1997. His prolific career in TV includes being at the helm of a surprisingly proficient 21st Century adaptation of ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Since then, he's remained quite quiet on the filmmaking front. Until now: he returns with this, a project he wrote and directed.

Alas, it never fully gels.

This is a particular shame because, taken in isolation, THE HAUNTING OF RADCLIFFE HOUSE can boast a lot of components worth recommending.

For a start, the Yorkshire scenery is shot attractively, lending it the correct amounts of beauty and ambience. Nowhere is this more evident than in the film's promising opening minutes.

Then there is the house itself. Brodsworth Hall in Doncaster has been used to great effect, proffering an imposing presence that suggests an authenticity to the tales of its murderous history. It boasts more than enough character to pull off its sinister role.

Williams offers a solid lead performance which ably wins the trust and support of her audience. The kids convince too, thankfully being given more to work with than your average "genre film child" as the screenplay progresses. If Modine's Hollywood overplaying seems out of step and Oram badly misjudges the film's tone (he appears to playing it for laughs, which is unwise given the reserved nature of everything and everyone else), then at least they're counteracted by the aforementioned stronger players.

Willing has a firm handle on the scares too. Refreshingly, he eschews hackneyed jumps and sudden loud noise jolts in favour of a more austere form of carefully mounted atmosphere and slowly incremental dread.

Complete with keen cinematography and a decent original score from Simon Boswell, you'd be forgiven for expecting the film to be great, based on the above attributes.

However, working against all of that are some fairly substantial setbacks. First, there's the fact that the director's script never satisfactorily answers the many questions it raises. Clues are presented at an early stage in the text, only to be totally discarded and never again addressed; a labyrinth of hidden rooms becomes a focal point during the final act, despite there being no reference to or even mileage for this earlier in the film. Considering the careful pacing of the film for the most part, the script's lack of continuity, lack of sense, is sometimes startling.

Then we have the absence of originality. That may be understandable from a newbie, perhaps. But from someone as experienced as Willing, you'd expect more than what ultimately emerges as being a simple patchwork of ideas culled from bigger budgeted films. THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, THE SHINING, THE WOMAN IN BLACK, POLTERGEIST ... take your pick, they're all non-discreetly pilfered from here.

The results are muddied further by Modine's aforementioned "square peg" performance (he's looking old too ...). Consequently, THE HAUNTING OF RADCLIFFE HOUSE boils down to be being an adequately atmospheric, occasionally creepy film which is certainly worth a look ... but you can't help walking away from it afterwards thinking it could've been so much more.

Originally picked up by Channel 5 and aired on UK television in December 2014 (where it was rescued from its former nondescript title ALTAR), the film now enjoys its debut on DVD courtesy of RLJ Entertainment (Image Entertainment's British wing).

It looks perfectly good in this 16x9 presentation which respects the original 1.78:1 framing. Each composition is easy on the eye, making Willing's film look naturally attractive in the main. A low budget is apparent though, and this seems accentuated at times by the sharp picture on offer. Colours and blacks manage to be simultaneously stable and unremarkable.

English 2.0 audio serves its purpose without cause for raising grievances.

A static main menu page leads us into a similarly motionless scene selection menu allowing access to the film via 6 chapters.

There's one token bonus feature relating to the film here: a 16-strong stills gallery. This runs over the course of 48 seconds and consists of crisp stills taken from the film.

The only other extras are a trio of trailers that the disc is defaulted to open up with: THE DEVICE, FRANKENSTEIN VERSUS THE MUMMY and ZOMBIEWORLD.

THE HAUNTING OF RADCLIFFE HOUSE is capable enough to recommend for an evening's viewing. But it does get rather messy in terms of storyline, it does crib too liberally from its cinematic forefathers, and it does fall short of its initial promise. All of which is unfortunate: what looks like could've been a very good film emerges as being simply an okay one.

The DVD's presentation of the film is good; the disc as a whole is basic.

Review by Stuart Willis