AllMovie

How this exercise in cat-and-mouse suspense has developed a cult following since its aborted release in 1980 must be attributed to the presence of cultural icon Bette Davis. The slowly moving ghost-alien story abuses the subjective camera angle from the beginning -- including the title, if you think about it -- and after a few dozen shots of someone or something peering at the human children from behind trees and bushes, you begin to get antsy. Davis is appropriately creepy, but the soggy story simply sags under the weight of an unseen terror that is not very frightening. Even keeping in mind it's a "family-horror" film -- and there's a reason this is one of the only ones in the entire genre -- it's lame by today's high-tech, faster-paced standards. Even younger children will have trouble sitting through it. The DVD affords an opportunity to see director John Hough's original ending and to hear his explanation about how his laughably oversized alien puppet could have saved the movie, but even the alternate ending is hardly worth 80 minutes of cheap, sneaky "gotcha!" jolts.