The Changeover is about a girl named Laura (Erana James) and her younger brother Jacko (Benji Purchase). The meet an creepy old man Braque (Timothy Spall),who seems to take a liking to Jacko, and ends up giving him a stamp on the hand. But the handstamp is an evil handstamp and effectively allows Braque to invade Jacko's soul. Brague is a parasite that lives off young kids.

Laura teams up with Sorensen (Nicholas Galitzine),a boy who turns out to be part of a family of witches. The two try to save Jacko from the clutches of Braque and after ~20 minutes of WTF, she ends up saving him.

The movie starts out well enough. Laura and Jacko's father is dead and the mother is busy with her job, so the two have a close bond. When Jacko is "taken", he falls into a coma. Mom thinks it's a medical issue, Laura knows better, but of course Laura's explanation is just a bit south of believable. Timothy Spall is great as the creepy Braque. The idea of witches was pretty neat and I was looking forward into them delving into that world.

Unfortunately, what happened is the movie meandered in the middle, and the ending 20 minutes just came out of nowhere and made no sense, only to resolve itself at the end. It reminds me of the Yada Yada Seinfeld episode where the important part of the story is "yada yadaed" out. And that's what happened here -- the last 20 minutes were confusing with little basis in what was previously set up. Laura becomes a witch, sees weird stuff, does weird stuff, brings Jacko back from the dead, sleeps with her boyfriend in his dream, or something.

5/10 with points for being at least interesting in the beginning.

Based on the classic of literature, this is a short film that seems to me to be a long, interesting story but very ornamental to be taken seriously, there is no context of history and no development, you disconnect, and it becomes heavy, not enjoyable.

It's very hard to be original in the modern age, because everything has already been done, and done, and done. This movie is the kiwi version of Twilight, and in its effort to change some elements in order to overcome outright plagiary by changing a few details, they had to go to some ludicrous places. An old boneman with a handstamp in a shipping container instead of werewolves; witches instead of vampires; and Melanie Lynskey instead of a kiwi actress. The song during the motorcycle ride is properly haunting. The girl is supposed to be "psychic", yet she perceives the Hero as a threat when he tries to help her & runs from him, yet trusts the old scary boneman long enough to enter his shipping container for a chat and let him cast an evil spell on her. So she is about as "psychic" as my big toe. Her mom is right; the girl just has an overactive imagination.

Verdict: ok for a kids' movie.