If you're going to make a new life for your family in the country you'd normally opt for a pleasant clapboard pile with a nice verandah for those balmy nights. Not Monster House.

Quite what Roy Solomon (McDermott) was thinking when he signed the deeds for this creaking ruin is known only to the people who make this sort of movie.

It's dark, foreboding and home to corpse-like critters who happily skitter across the ceiling or attempt to lure the unwary into the cellar.

The clever catch here is that they can only be seen by Solomon Jr - a three-year-old toddler who hasn't spoken since a mysterious incident back in the Windy City.

Think The Amityville Horror piled up against The Sixth Sense with The Birds perched on top and you won't be far wide of the mark.

There's jump-out-your-seat moments a-plenty but these tend to be cheap shocks and not the sort of creeping dread that distinguishes the best sort of horror.

In fact, fear turns to full-blown titters with the mis-casting of John Corbett as a pony-tailed drifter who winds up helping Roy plant his sunflower crop.

On a positive note, the ghouls provide a spin-tingling spectacle even if this variety of marauding spirit has been - literally - done to death.

The Pangs showed they could hack it with The Eye...but this move to America sees them cobbling together a rag-tag array of horror devices well past their sell-by date.

The Messengers? Return to Sender.

Tim Evans