Let’s start with a great big Thank You to Peter Jackson for keeping it under three hours! In case you’ve forgotten, after a stint with cooky, horror films Jackson directed a wee trilogy called Lord of the Rings before revamping and overrunning King Kong. Since then Jackson has done some producing stints (District 9 anyone?) and has returned to the director’s chair for The Lovely Bones.

The Lovely Bones, based on the book by Alice Sebold, tells the story of fifteen year old Suzie Salmon, her death and what comes after. While in the in-between Suzie watches as her family struggles to deal with their loss and as her murderer continues to prowl the neighborhood unnoticed.

I found myself with mixed feelings as I watched the movie. On the one hand Jackson managed to bring out truly emotional performances from his actors, in fact I defy anyone to watch this movie without at least some tear-blurred vision, but on the other the story felt choppy and the computer generated in-between would sometimes spill over from the surreal to the annoying and confusing.

Rachel Weiss and especially Mark Wahlberg deliver powerful performances as Suzie’s distraught parents and the tensions between the two caused by their different coping techniques adds to the sense of suffering. Susan Sarandon as the chain smoking, heavy drinking grandmother brings a sense humorous relief to the film when she arrives to help out (which for her consists of sweeping dirt under the rugs, burning dinner and overflowing the washing machine) that keeps the movie from becoming too overwhelming and heavy in the middle. And let us not forget Saoirse Ronan as Suzie. Mark this as another tally on Ronan’s short but impressive list of strong roles. The girl can seriously deliver be it giddy innocence or world weary sadness.

The Lovely Bones isn’t just about the grieving Salmon family. While in my opinion Jackson fails when it comes to the weaving together of the three stories he is ultimately telling, his choices in stylistically differentiating the three are intriguing. Though I found the world of the in-between to be a little too dazzling, the stark, uncomfortably close style Jackson utilizes for the scenes following Suzie’s neighbor and murderer Mr. Harvey—played by Stanley Tucci who plays creepy politeness with a delicacy that induces what Suzie would refer to as the “skeevies”—really serves to heighten the tension.

For myself, as a young woman, I found one particular moment to be frightening and too true. When Mr. Harvey has lured Suzie to the hang-out he’s supposedly created for the neighborhood kids she rightly begins to feel suspicious and uneasy. It is at this point that Harvey, quite agitatedly, informs Suzie that one of the rules of the club house is that you have to be polite. Let me just say that the desire instilled into women (and to some extent men) to “be polite” has probably done more harm than good. Watch just about any show or read any book or article about a survivor of some assault and I’ll bet you good money if she saw her attacker before it happened there was a gut feeling that got ignored for fear of “being rude.” And that was what really made me feel for Suzie.

Ultimately the good performances weren’t enough for me though. Where I was hoping to find a film I’d be moved to see again instead I found myself with only luke-warm feelings. While I hope a lot of people do see the film and really think about the things it brings up about who the dangerous people really are (and it’s usually not strangers) I won’t be saving this in my Netflix queue to watch over again.