stevie (2008)

This is another re-watch, I seen it once before, I liked the first time I saw, which wasn't that long, it's only few months ago that I saw it.

However did forget the name of the movie lol, The movie wasn't forgettable

after a long and unsuccessful period trying to have a family, Claire and Adrian finally adopt a girl. The coming of Isabel is desired by almost the whole family but making a eight-year-old girl with a past of her own fit into her new life might be something more complicated than they expected.

With this plot you maybe think of a The omen rip-off, well it's not, it Actually about Girls invisible friend but there turns in story, not twist, there more curve ball.

There some good scenes in this movie, which liked, As it was TV movie there no blood or anything and it's wasn't that creepy, yet some seen really stand out!

I enjoyed how the movie flowed really well, I didn't get bored, I really liked how plot came to a end, I thought a Nice and very moving ending to this movie.

It made all sense in the end!

Really good movie 7 out of 10

Catherine McCormack is a wonderful actress (I've been a fan of her ever since Braveheart) but even she couldn't pull this one up to par. She gives it the old college try though, and frankly her performance is about the only redeeming feature I can find in the movie.

McCormack and Molla play the adoptive parents of an eight year old girl called Isabel who quickly finds an 'imaginary' friend in her new home. The invisible presence goes by the name of Stevie and, as you guessed, isn't entirely imaginary. The screenplay is average at best, mostly circling around the tired old cliché of the mother trying to convince the husband that the house is haunted. There are very few effective scares and you can see the end coming a mile off.

Clichés in a ghost movie can be passable though and the script is really not the problem here. The movie has two much bigger weaknesses - the child actress and the directing.

I'm not going to dwell to much on the child's performance. A cursory glance at her IMDb page shows that this was her first (and only) movie so I'm guessing she was perhaps cast as a favor to a friend of the crew or something similar and doesn't deserve a battering from an armchair critic like me. Suffice it to say she's out of her depth here... by a long, long way.

What I will rip on, though, is the directing. Bryan Goeres - the guy at the helm - seems to be one of those people who just somehow ended up in the wrong job. The directing in Stevie isn't just boring and uninspired, it's also just... bad. There are tracking and framing errors here that I wouldn't even expect from one of my parent's flip phone vacation videos. It seems that Goeres isn't even aware of things like the rule of thirds. The camera sticks on uncomfortably amateurish perspectives that pulled me right out of the movie. To say it looks like a TV movie would be doing TV an injustice. Frankly, it kind of looked like rejected Mexican soap opera.

In conclusion, despite a brave effort from McCormack, Stevie was just too amateurish in many other important aspects to earn more than a 3/10 from me.

It has, shall we say, a less than favourable rating on the "big" internet sites, but this is not a creeper movie that should readily be dismissed. Certainly it puts to shame some of the bigger budgeted horror films that have come our way in the last ten years.

Plot finds grieving parents Adrian (Jordi Molla) and Claire (Catherine McCormack) moving to Ireland. After a tragedy befalls one of their neighbours, they adopt orphaned child Isabel (Ida Jorgensen). Their life finally seems to be on track, but when Isabel starts talking about her imaginary friend, Stevie, Claire becomes convinced that he may not actually be imaginary after all. Especially when things appear to get malevolent.

The makers aren't setting out to make a terrifying horror film, they want, and achieve, to make a psychological thriller that is more about grief than anything supernatural. The reveal at film's finale is actually fine closure, even if it asks much of its expectant audience.

A made-for-TV creeper that's well produced, well performed and not without genuine moments of unease. It's unlikely to be anyone's favourite movie, but there's good value here if expectation levels are set at "late night time filler" mode. 6/10