The Appearing (2014) Will Wallace, Dean Cain, Don Swayze, Quinton Aaron Movie Review

The Appearing (2014)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Don Swayze and Will Wallace in The Appearing (2014)

A Disappearing Spirit... My Own

Following the loss of their daughter Michael (Will Wallace), a city detective, and his wife Rachel (Emily Brooks) relocate to a small country town where Michael takes a job working for Sheriff Hendricks (Don Swayze). Michael gets stuck straight in to work as he joins the investigation in to the recent disappearance of a local teenage girl which leads him to a mental institution where the girl's boyfriend is under the supervision of Dr. Shaw (Dean Cain) who thinks there maybe evil spirits at work. Whilst Michael is busy with the missing girl case Rachel keeps on having visions about a child which seems to be leading her somewhere, maybe to the missing girl.

"The Appearing" is one of those movies where even when it is at its best it only reaches the level of being just okay, it never passes that line where it starts to stand out from the crowd for the right reasons. And to get the best thing about "The Appearing" out the way with first, as it's nice to start on a positive, the actual writing is not that bad. If you close your eyes and listen to the dialogue there are some well written lines, okay so the actual storyline often feels like it draws on some genre cliches a little too often but some of it is good.

Emily Brooks in The Appearing (2014)

But sadly when it comes to "The Appearing" the negatives out weigh the positives and whilst Daric Gates may have written some of the good stuff in this movie his directing style is not my cup of tea. Shaky camera work which uninteresting close ups combine to make this movie feel visually weak. This isn't helped by what I assume were budget limitations as there is not only a first take feel to many a scene but the blurred nature of the image doesn't help matters.

And sadly the negatives keep on coming as whilst when you close your eyes the dialogue may some times sound good when you open them the delivery is often not so good. Whether it was the directing or the cinematography or just down to the actors themselves there is a lot of over the top reactions going on, strange facial expressions, overly dramatic hand movements and much more which makes "The Appearing" at times quite hard work to watch and in truth a bit amateurish.

What this all boils down to is that being in a charitable mood "The Appearing" could have been a better movie than it ended up as some of the writing is good. But sadly the negatives outweigh the little which is good and from the acting to the camera work it is more often then not hard work.


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