2 out of 10
 

The haunted mansion, the industrialist and the atmosphere looks like what it is, a dead lift from "Citizen Kane", so similar, I`m surprised DreamWorks haven`t been sued...and I do mean "dead" - the industrialist`s ghost has more life in it than the lousy script and the non-existent plot.

Once again, half an hour before they finished shooting the film, one of the software programmers seems to have suddenly remembered that there ought to be at least the hint of a storyline amongst all the atmosphere. The wafer-thin premise for all the gimmickry, is that a crank industrialist`s ghost from the Nineteenth Century returns to haunt a bunch of misfits assembled by a Psychology Professor, doing a study on group fear.

Despite a talented cast including Liam Neeson, the dialogue is so poor that it permanently resembles reject clips from "America`s Funniest Home Movies" with Catherine Zeta-Jones, almost kicking her heels with nothing to do as if she had sleepwalked her way onto the film set that morning. Indeed, some moments of high drama were so poor that they were met with peels of laughter from the audience. As they left the Cinema, they were still wondering when the story would start.