Plot: Lisa Pailey (Rose McGowen) and Dr. Jennifer Pailey (Joanna Going) take a trip to a story book town, only to find it deserted, almost. A couple of weird-looking corpses pop up, and then they find the town Sheriff, Bryce Hammond (Ben Affleck) and his deputies.

Things only get stranger when they conduct a search of the town. A name written on a mirror seems to be the key. When things seem to get too much, they call in the cavalry, who just happens to actually be the military.

Just when it looks like everything is well under control, the nasty lives up to its name.

DVD Special Features: Region 1 encoding,Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby, Widescreen letterbox format.  Brings nothing extra to the table.

The Good: It opens right up into the realm of the weird. No over extensive character background where we learn why the character voted Libertarian one year, but sufficient characterization that you know who they are, and most important in a horror film, who you like.

The evil force comes from a really great original idea.

The Bad: Some horror writers have this problem. Starts out great. Some horrible deaths. Some mysterious and ominous occurrences. Then some really cool chilling things that suggest a terrible evil is behind it all. Suddenly, the lame explanation that maybe doesn' t exactly fit with everything that actually happened and the climax/ ending.

That' s what we have here minus the climax. You just sort of watch the movie then when you sort of expect something really cool to happen it ends instead.

I could go on an eleven page analysis of Dean Koontz but suffice to say I always see pretty much the same characters in his stories. You have some great casting for some medium type people. In other words, don' t go just because you see Rose McGowen' s or Ben Affleck' s name in the cast.

Bottom Line: Big potential, but in the end another movie about an evil entity.

Rating: 2 cocktails.