Ghost stories don't get much more formulaic than this disappointing Hollywood debut from Hong Kong film-makers Danny and Oxide Pang. Far removed from their innovative 2002 chiller The Eye, it's an uninspired tale that seems stitched together from other horror movies. There are references to everything from The Birds to The Grudge, as suburban couple Dylan McDermott and Penelope Ann Miller uproot their two children and move to a secluded North Dakota farm. But the family's new beginning is threatened when their troubled teenage daughter (Panic Room's Kristen Stewart) and her three-year-old brother start seeing ominous apparitions that are invisible to everyone else. The picture opens promisingly with a genuinely scary black-and-white pre-credit sequence that stylishly demonstrates the Pang brothers' talents. Yet while the creepy atmospherics and quick-hit jolts continue throughout, they seem like cheap and empty trickery the more the déjá vu narrative unfolds.

When the Solomons trade in the craziness of big-city life for the quiet of a North Dakota farm, little do they expect the nightmare that follows. Soon after arriving, teenage Jess and her younger brother see terrifying apparitions and endure attacks from a supernatural source. Jess must warn her disbelieving family before it is too late to save them.