I thought I'd go to sleep more than once during this film. Halfway in, I realized the film was only 90 minutes long, though I felt like I'd been sitting there for two hours or more as it were.

The lead seemed miscast. A favor must have been called in, because Ryan, Virginia, and Mark are well-established famous names. The lead girl? Never heard of her. Maybe she's a star in another country.

The story keeps you guessing and never answers any questions. Do people just keep buying portraits of dead family members to replace the dying loved ones they currently have? What's all that about?

Two stars for the three actors mentioned above, as they all performed fantastically. Heck, Ryan got a great gig because he didn't have to learn more than three of four words/lines in the whole thing. Talk about winning the lottery.

"What's my motivation?" he may have asked.

"You're getting paid to just look pissed off and cradle your right arm." "I'm in!"

I could see it.

Ryan Kwanten movies can be hit or miss, this one was a definite miss for me. In a nutshell, a married couple moves into a house and encounters a haunted painting. The majority of the movie is the wife dealing with trying to determine whether the painting is possessing her husband or she's just losing her mind.

All things considered, the movie offered nothing original regarding its premise and although the acting was solid, it couldn't make up for a lackluster script for a paint-by-numbers film.

I wouldn't recommend this one, not even as a way to kill time. Better to just watch paint dry.

-- -- --

The first and second acts of The Portrait had me fairly hooked. It's a slow-burn psychological drama/thriller centered around a supposedly haunted painting. Though the writing goes through the motions, at least director Simon Ross worked out the atmospherics quite nicely. The protagonist (played by Natalia Cordova-Buckley) isn't given enough layers for us to care, but the actress (especially her grief-stricken face) gives more to the character than the writing. The film mostly shuffles between supernatural horror and psychological thriller but doesn't firmly place its foot on either. As a result, we get moderately enjoyable scares, an interesting backstory regarding the person in the portrait, and how it may or may not be connected to present events.

However, the last act was completely lost on me. It works from a visual standpoint, but when perceived from the writing and performative fronts, it's a letdown. For this to have worked from a psychological angle, I think we needed more scenes of the couple in their past (in order to connect with their present better), as well as more light shed on the 1937 backstory. Here, it's all told in a rushed fashion, with a conclusion that doesn't serve this story right. There's also a closing shot (twist?) that only waters the entire viewing experience down further.. almost as if the story we just watched never really mattered in the first place.