Ethan and his girlfriend Hannah are developing a project that would produce wireless electricity. However, once while he was at the lab, his parents figured in a fatal car accident. Because of this unfortunate tragedy, Ethan had to drop out of college and more responsible for the care of his younger siblings Matt and Becca, who were both devastated by their sudden orphanhood.
Ethan continued his experiments at home. It seemed that even if his machine is not generating electricity, it is generating some form of energy that seemed to be summoning the spirits of their parents back into their house. The younger kids are excited with the development, so Ethan sought ways of strengthening the signal as their "Mom" had suggested to Becca. Big mistake.
The special ghost effects consisted of blank inky shadows forming itself into a human form (as you see in the poster). These were not really scary. It is only because the spirit was targeting cute Becca which made the urgency more compelling. To make things more interesting, they made the signal of the machine reaches beyond Ethan's house. For convenience, there is another neighbor who just so happened to be an electrician, and another one could provide the history of the house.
Thomas Mann did well as Ethan, with all the emotional baggage he carried. They made nerds like Ethan in audience happy by giving him an impossibly attractive girlfriend Hannah, played by Nicola Peltz (the girl who replaced Megan Fox in the "Transformers" films). The younger kids did even better. Percy Hynes White was the picture of repressed anguish as middle child Matt. Kate Moyer was delightful as little Becca, as the girl who first felt the presence of the spirits (so typical, I know.)
Writer Nathan Parker adapted the script on based on another film "Ghost from the Machine" (Matt Osterman 2010). As directed by Anthony Scott Burns, the film was actually more of a family drama for most part. There was a science fiction aspect with Ethan's invention, but the spinning machine looked very corny. The horror aspect started to creep in very gradually more than midway through the story already. By that time, some horror film fans may already have zoned out for lack of any action. Ethan frustratedly waiting for his bulb to light up is like the audience frustratedly waiting for this film to become more exciting. 4/10.
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