The movie is exceptionally poor in pretty much all aspects.

The acting pretty much gives away what kind of movie it will be from the start. The performance is akin to a high school play with nervous kids that force their lines and overact. The cinematography is not too bad, although that alone amounts to nothing in the end considering the convoluted and disconnected plot. You know how in a dream you are convinced certain things make sense but when you wake up you wonder how come you didn't see the glaring contradictions with reality? That's how this movie plays out. There is a multitude of cliche horror elements - an eerie red balloon, a psycho kid killer, children hurting children, mysterious plot device shadowy man, a toy of unknown significance which the camera zooms in on regularly, etc. etc. Events do unfold, but saying they are in any way coherently connected is like answering a math problem with "green". I wouldn't even call this one pretentious as to me this is simply a bad movie due to bad writing and directing.

This is the type of movie that will have a few people pretend to understand its "profound" meaning and will insist that it is so deep that nobody gets it but do not be fooled. Deep applies to this movie like "dry" applies to "ocean".