The feature debut of writer-director Francesco Picone makes a serviceable shock fest—but no more than that. It trades heavily in budget-conscious gimmicks (arguably ushered in by the Japanese horror hit The Ring and its Far East ilk) of ghastly apparitions who mainly appear as flitting, half-glimpsed, or silhouetted grotesque figures. Fortunately for collections, sex, profanity, and nudity here also get minimized.
Five years after infidelity marred their relationship, stay-at-home parent Alyson (Jennifer Mischiati) and businessman Richard (Christoph Hulsen), have mended their marriage with a new baby boy and moved into Alyson's family home. Flashbacks show us why this was not very sensible (except in creepy movies, of course). As a child, Alyson suffered abuse from her crazy seamstress mother and, after her mom's death, was abandoned by her father to an orphanage. The foreboding house became available to the young couple after the elderly father's recent suicide.
Now Alyson is tormented by weird sights, eerie sounds, and a sense of dread. Viewers learn she has stopped taking her psychiatric medication, but the film spends little time on that misleading plot twist. Instead, Dead Bride reveals that one of Alyson's ancestors was murdered by her husband as a pregnant new bride. The victim made a deal with arch-demon Asmodeus (not shown) to wreak a curse upon all family descendants. No longer skeptical, Richard brings in an occultist to help save their own little child from the skeletal specter.
There are plenty of uneasy "gotcha" moments to satisfy fans of the genre, but also bone-thin characters, unedifying dialogue (dubbed into English), and a predictably downbeat "trick" ending. Whereas some Italian terror-specialist filmmakers such as Dario Argento, Michele Soavi, and Lucio Fulci become feverish visionaries in this sort of thing (at risk of some truly stomach-turning material), Picone plays it relatively restrained, save for a few extended moments of gory violence (all the less effective for the camera dwelling on bloodshed).
The result, though nothing to be really ashamed of, is a moody, half-realized ghost yarn squarely for horror library shelves and the moviegoers who love them. An optional purchase for public libraries.