Continuity mistake: The mom just said bye to the nanny, and her little guy is impatient. "Where's daddy?" he asks. There are three cuts for this simple sequence, and in each the kid is in a slightly different position, hands on/off the table and with the weapon positioned differently. (00:09:50)
Continuity mistake: Charlie shoots a dart with his toy blunderbuss. The dart falls on a well lit area in front of the fireplace. When he retrieves the dart 10 seconds later, the light changed. The position of the logs by the fire also changed. (00:09:30)
Continuity mistake: Charlie asks his dad to check the window. He gives him the "all clear" and the kid says "I love you, Dad", with the blanket up and a hand on it, on his chest. Next shot and the blanket is lower and his hand is down his side. (00:06:35)
Continuity mistake: Mike Lawford is at the college library. His phone buzzes. He has both hands on a book, then in close-up just one hand and the phone itself, the other not in sight, and then both hands again. (00:04:25)
Deliberate mistake: In the opening, the kids are looking up at the floor boards. Uniform light seeps through, but as it turns out, the house was small and swarming with an angry mob carrying torch. The light is not really compatible with that scenario, and in fact when the scene is shown later again, the lights are warmer and you can see the torches flickering. It's most likely a trick not to give away exactly what was hunting the kids in the basement. (00:01:00 - 01:11:20)
Continuity mistake: At the end of the movie, when the kid says "Dad promised me..." the mom suddenly has her hand on his face mid-sentence at the cut. (01:28:00)
Continuity mistake: Nicholas Cage sees his ghostly son through the window of a bus, and so he rushes after him. Right at the first left turn, the natural light couldn't be any more different in the two separate shots. (00:32:30)
Character mistake: The Latino girl who disappeared and whose dad is a junkie now, disappeared "two years ago" when Mike mentions her to his wife, and "two years before Charlie" when he talks to the detective (that would be 3 years ago, then). (00:46:20 - 00:48:40)
Factual error: A corpse that has been dead for hours is still bleeding the moment the coroner pricks the skin with a scalpel. Here it is particularly incongruous because the victim died 'cooked' from within and the internal organs, as shown, are all burnt to a crisp. The coroner also did not open the victim's mouth before getting to the cutting bit; it's like he did not perform the most basic check first. (01:04:00)
