Coventry "Neverlake" isn't necessarily a great horror movie, but one thing's undeniable: the plot contains more than enough potentially strong ideas to fill at least three movies! I almost overlooked this film because it looks so mundane and derivative, but then I discovered that it's Italian (my favorite country for horror movies) and that it stars David Brandon (semi-successful lead actor of "Stagefright", "Delirium: Photos of Gioia" and "Caligola: The Untold Story"). The film is reasonably well-made, but the script is too ambitious and director Riccardo Paoletti makes the rookie mistake that he desperately attempts to uphold the various mysteries for far too long. It's complex, with a lot of references towards Tuscan culture and particularly the Etruscan civilization, but also supernatural themes and mad surgeon twists. Gorgeous young teenager Jenny Brooks visits her father in his birth region of Tuscany, Italy, for the very first time since her mother died. Her father used to be an acclaimed doctor but now he's into archaeology and researching the nearby Etruscan Lake of Idols. Jenny was hoping to visit the beautiful region, but her father is always locked up in his study room or away on business, so she sets out exploring herself and meets a group of disabled children in a ramshackle hospital. Riccardo Paoletti builds up a lot of tension and mystery, but why, in fact? From the very first moment that Jenny's father walks into the screen, it's abundantly clear that he's malicious and unreliable. The atmosphere in "Neverlake" is admirably ominous and spooky and the filming locations and set pieces are often astounding, but the film could have used a better pacing and more frequent bloodshed. The finale, however, is terrific and reminiscent of the good old- fashioned Gothic Italian horrors of the fifties and sixties. The acting performances are quite good as well. Daisy Keeping looks like a slightly young version of Danielle Harris, which is always an example if you want to make it in the horror industry, and is even credible as the clever young girl who's a fan of Gothic poetry (Percy Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, etc…)

myspecialparadise Did I say this was a sick film? Well, upgrading that opinion to total demented ... and that comes from a person that know the full definition of both those words! It takes a little while to catch on to what the writer has done ... but, the real tangible proof occurs in a graveyard ... but surprise turns into disgust once you witness the madness! And the deeper you go, the sicker this movie gets! And when you reach the final secret ... you want to slap the writer's face ... at least I did! This is a writer I never want to meet ... or even discover his/her name.Okay ... the writer did a great job of bringing out the viewers worse moments, worse emotions, and that means the writer did exactly as planned. However ..... raping one of the world's greatest children's story is a pretty sick way of accomplishing his/her aims! The acting is quite good ... each actor accomplished their role with adequate precision! The talents in this film are quite remarkable ... except when it comes to the part of Olga ... nothing surprising there, her story was obvious from start to finish. Poor scripting? Possibly. But it could also be poor casting! She does come to fruition by the time the movie is in its final lap of the race ... unfortunately, she just isn't a thoroughbred ... not in this film anyway. The part of the father was played well ... but his part in this film was all too obvious! The ones that took their roles and ran away with it ... in other words, those that stole the film ... were the children, which includes the star role of Jenny! The bottom line ... the children made this film watchable ... but the story, itself, was totally demented! I will say this ... this is the first film I have reviewed that has said what needed to be said, without giving away any actual part, or plot, of the movie! Should you watch the movie? I think so ... but expect a whole lot of emotions to come pouring out of your mind!

daggersineyes As usual I'm completely gob-smacked by the negative reviews. I read some of them and it's clear to me that some people don't bother paying attention when they're watching movies. Someone was sneering at a ghost supposedly being able to carve figures into walls - clearly they failed to understand that it wasn't ghosts who did that it was actual children, flesh and blood real life kiddies. I mean seriously, if you didn't bother to pay even a cursory amount of attention to understand that fairly basic yet important point how can your review have any credibility? I wish people who don't watch the movies properly would stop giving reviews & pretending they know what they're talking about. Clearly, if you didn't watch it you don't know. At least state that you didn't really watch it so it's honest (eg sometimes I skip whole sections of boring movies - and if I review it I'll say so! It's only fair).Sorry, rant over - it just infuriates me that really good movies, like this one, get undermined by people who haven't even had the decency to give them a fair viewing but go ahead and write slamming negative reviews anyway.This is a fairly slow-paced, dream-like and beautiful movie with some moments of shock/horror and a very nasty underlying story. Good acting, well written, excellent cinematography/direction/editing and some endearing child actors all add up to a movie worth seeing. With all the rubbish out there it's a crime that something like this is being rated so low. My score for it is slightly higher than it deserves but I wanted to balance out all those negative nellies who've given it a score WELL below what it deserves. It's probably a solid 7 in reality.

petra_ste I believe it was Aristotle who claimed that in fiction the impossible works better than the improbable. In other words, a horror movie with Etruscan ghosts haunting a Tuscan lake? I'm along for the ride. A guy managing to keep many people in captivity for years, successfully performing complex surgical procedures on them and getting rid of the corpses, all without anyone ever noticing? And not somewhere in the Gobi desert, but in one of the most densely populated European countries, to boot? I'm not buying it. And I will mention neither his demented motivations nor a spoiler - his connection with the victims - which make the premise even more ridiculous.Neverlake suffers from a case of overplotting. Either you go with the supernatural storyline or with the "medical experiments/abductions" cases: pick one and run with it. The two don't glue together well, and structure gets wonky; any horror movie where a medusa-like monster is there merely for a cameo, where a surgeon performs ludicrously difficult operations and follows them up with esoteric rituals, or where the protagonist first has to throw some relics in a lake to appease phantoms and then to recover other relics from the same lake to appease other phantoms... well, it should probably rethink its storytelling choices.5/10