Safe Haven Reviews

Honestly, I didn't like much 'Dear John' but since I have a weak spot for Lasse Hallstrom's work, I thought I might as well give it a try with this one as well. By now, I have managed to watch almost all the movie adaptations of the books written by Nicholas Sparks (I'm still missing 'A Walk to Remember' and 'The Best of Me'), those movies have pretty much become a brand but, to be honest, except for 'The Notebook' which started this whole fad, I didn't like any of them and this movie was not an exception, I'm afraid. I mean, Hallstrom is a decent director, Julianne Hough and Josh Duhamel were both really charismatic (even if Hough's performance was rather weak) but I just had a really hard time to care about this story. Above all, the twists were just cringe-inducing. The first one explaining that she didn't in fact kill her husband was really stupid because, if she was not a killer, why wouldn't she tell her new boyfriend that she left her abusive husband and live with a different name so he can't stalk her? That would have made more sense. I have to admit that the 2nd twist, involving the ghost of the dead wife was really unexpected but it was also terribly random and rather lame. To conclude, I have seen worse but I though it was still pretty damned average and I don't think it is really worth a look, except if you are die-hard fan of the genre.