Even though I've never actually been to Canada, I first started watching horror movies in the early 80's "slash-for-cash" era when a lot of horror films were made in Canada, thanks to government tax breaks there, and distributed in the US. Of course, a lot of these films tried to LOOK as American as possible, but being low-budget efforts, they often didn't succeed. Now, of course, Canada is pretty much "Hollywood north", but Hollywood movies filmed in Canada today are completely indistinguishable from Hollywood movies filmed in Los Angeles, so the essential "Canadian-ness" of movies like "Black Christmas", "Funeral Home" or "Curtains" has really been lost. What really made a lot of these low-budget films is the wintry Canadian settings and the ATMOSPHERE. These films aren't slick and bombastic and hyper-edited like bigger-budgeted Hollywood films. They let the tension build up slowly (too slowly perhaps for many people today) instead of bludgeoning you with loud music, countless "jump-scares", and expensive CGI effects. They're spartan, but often strangely effective.
As far as things like acting and dialogue, low-budget Canuck indies are definitely inferior and at times even incompetent. The plot of this movie is pretty weak and the ending is really weak. But this movie has a great setting of a wintry, isolated B-and-B where SOMETHING creepy is going on with the sick daughter of the innkeeper, who a young male guest becomes infatuated with after finding her diary. Strangely, the mother of the sick girl seems to be sexually pushing the guest towards her daughter (in a plot reminiscent of another obscure Canadian film called "Cold Comfort"). The resolution of the mystery is very dissatisfying, but this doesn't add up to the entire movie being worthless. It's actually quite effective in places.
Mention should also be made of actress Kimberly LaFerriere. Yes, she's probably not a great actress based on this and the only other thing I've seen her in (the TV series "1,000 Ways to die" where she plays a nympho who has a fatal encounter with a cucumber). She has a very good LOOK though, a very interesting combination of creepy and sexy (particularly memorable is her flashback ice-skating scene which graces the film poster). Except for the flashback scenes, she spends most of this movie literally in bed, but she still has more nude scenes than the ridiculously "hot" actresses that headline most Hollywood horror movies. (I also find it annoying that the obscure Canuck actresses of the "slash-for-cash" era have been replaced by Hollywood actresses like Meagan Fox, Alexandra Daddario, and Odette Yustman, who really aren't any more talented, but are just so "hot" they don't have to actually do nude scenes in lowly horror movies).
None of this makes this movie any kind of low-budget masterpiece (far from it, really), but it has some refreshing, kind of old-fashioned virtues of a truly Canadian horror indie. I definitely didn't hate it.
