I found myself on a cold and lonesome Missouri morning flipping through streams on Justin TV via my Roku box. Upon finding a film that was just beginning I began to become enthralled in "The Marsh." I must say that in reading several other reviews of this film I became a bit aggravated and even somewhat confused by the harsh tone which many reviewers attacked the film. This isn't a great film but it is a very good film, especially for horror fans that spend so much time searching for something that qualifies as decent. Yes, "The Marsh" does seem to rehash some common horror themes and at time the film is a bit predictable, that being said, I found enough originality in this little gem to appreciate it. The best thing "The Marsh" has going for it are the it's solid performances and it's stylistic and heartfelt directing. These things alone seem to elevate the film far above many other straight to DVD horror releases. I honestly felt compelled to write a positive review for this film after reading so many negative ones. The film deserves a better wrap than what it's been given by overly pretentious movie goers, the kind only pleased with over hyped and over produced piles of Hollywood crap-fest. I think many of these reviewers should have just watched their copy of "Forrest Gump" again. In conclusion it is my sincerest hope that the true horror fans out there will give "The Marsh" a look and a fair trial.(looking at you in shame DVD Verdict.)

THE MARSH is an absolutely typical ghost story about a lonely woman moving into a lonely house that turns out to be haunted by...yada yada. The end result is that it plays out exactly as you'd expect, featuring the few unlucky actors to be caught up in this mess finding themselves at the mercy of various CGI-augmented spirits whose appearance has been crafted in the most ordinary way.The script is poor and the direction worse, with none of the creative people involved failing to make anything of the premise. It says much that my memory of the film is already fading, at a rapid pace, a mere 24 hours after I watched it. Gabrielle Anwar (THE TUDORS) fails to bring life to a rather stiff and uninteresting lead character and seems to be trying to get her American accent right rather than delivering a decent performance. Forest Whitaker (PHONE BOOTH) appears slightly befuddled and is probably wondering what he's doing caught up in this nonsense.Because this is nonsense, I'll make no bones about it. Every haunted house cliché in the book is played out, from the restless ghost of a kid (a little blonde girl, of course) to the vengeful spirit with the scary eyes. The jump scenes are predictable as is the rest of the plot and the effects are poor, taking you out of the movie every time they pop up. A dismal effort, this.

Claire Holloway (Gabrielle Anwar) is a children's book writer specialising in nightmare bedtime stories. Most of those are taken straight out of her own dreams full of marshes, weird houses and things that go 'chlup' in the middle of the night. By freak chance she watches a glimpse of a house which haunts her dream in a ecodocumentary about swamps. Interneting away she quickly finds the dream-house and naturally decides to confront the situation by making a nice little vacation by renting the house. Soon after dreams start becoming more real and soon she must confront the nightmares that have been scratching at her brain for years. Fortunately she has a trusty sidekick parapshycic Geoffrey Hunt (Forrest Whitaker) to hold her hand on the way of solving this truly Scooby-Doo mystery.The Marsh is truly a movie bogged down by its own script. It starts out promisingly enough only to spiral into absurdity and illogical plot solutions. The multiple twist endings make you smile instead of say 'Ahhh!' as they make the story consistently... well... dumb. Most key to the story: A dead ghost kill off people whose only fault was being asleep at the time of tragedy. But in general plot points stick out like a sore thumb and basically nothing makes much sense. Questions answered are answered badly. And if the two very last scene in the movie doesn't bring out a smile of pity for the movie I will be sincerely surprised.Other than that acting and tech credits are fine, but nothing memorable. Passable at best, laughable at worst.

When I first sat down to watch this movie, I had the notion that it would be something that would not be that good. Just looking at the ratings, I knew that I probably would be telling myself at the end of it that "I just wasted time on this!" Well, all I can say is that I knew what I was going to say, and I ended up saying it.The first thing that I would like to say is that I pretty much would consider the title of this movie to be "The Rose Door", being that very little of what happened to any of the central characters in this movie actually happened in the marsh and it all happened behind the Rose door.So, on to the story. To sum up the story, basically it the classic ghost story that tries to through in a few twists in the mix. I won't go into great detail about the story, just to say that it is about Claire Holloway, performed by Gabrielle Anwar, who is hunted by nightmares and feels the need to find out clues to what is going on in these nightmares. She sees a house in her dreams and decides to investigate it. This is how she ends up in a small town at the house from her dreams, which happens to have a marsh as it's front yard. Of course she tries to make sense of the things going on in the house, so she goes to Geoffry Hunt, played by Forrest Whitaker, who just so happens to be a paranormal expert of sorts. No matter how good of an actor Whitaker is, I just could not see him as a paranormal expert so I was already somewhat mystified by his casting. This is where I will end my description because I don't want to give everything away, even though I do have to bring up some spoilers just to prove my point. To clarify my ratings though, I will point out a few things that I thought was lacking. First, the entire process of Claire finding out important events to the little girl's story seems to be a little drawn out. Usually, I'm all for a movie that wants to be thorough in this regard, but for me this movie seemed to want to force this feeling onto me and ended up failing miserably. Also, there was no tension in this movie, whatsoever. I mean, for a supposed horror movie, I believe tension is what can make or brake it. Having drawn out death scenes where the tension is built up is fine, but to not have any unexpected tension elsewhere in the movie will make it seem stale when death scenes do come around. The last thing that irritated me about this movie was that ending. Specifically, the scene with Geoffry, Claire, and Phillip getting the blanket back. I don't know if the writers or the director was trying to give any redeeming value to Phillip or Phillip's son or not, but here is my reasoning for being so upset about this scene. I felt they were trying to force me to be sorry for Phillip's family. Why would I feel sorry for this man who, not only knowing allowed his son to be brought up by a despicable mother in which he explained to them when he gave them blanket, but in some respect allowed his son to be a deviant in the first place? Was it not his son that killed the girl and stated that they should all just keep quite and let his father handle it? There had to be a reason the son thought he could go to daddy to clear things up.In the end, I wasn't disappointed by the acting. I would have given this movie a lower rating if it had not been for the decent acting. The visual effects, though sparse, where actually pretty good and weren't overly done. Other than the casting of Whitaker as previously mentioned, I thought the rest of the cast where believable.