I saw this as part of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival this year, and I wasn't sure what to expect. It looked like a fairly modestly budgeted horror movie, but I was interested because I liked the two leads (Shawn Ashmore and Narcos's Andrea Londo) and the director's previous film, The Triangle. Still, my expectations were tempered. The gist: a woman has gone through something truly horrific (quite the opening sequence - yikes!), and after attempting suicide she's struggling to regain her memory. Her husband is by her side as she gets stronger, but is he understandably overprotective... or is there more going on in the house?
Fortunately this movie - which shifts between psychological thriller and horror - kept me guessing, and it actually did a few things that I (a pretty avid horror watcher) didn't see coming. There were plot elements I suspected by about halfway through, but there's a surrealist quality to the twists that start coming around that midpoint that make that moot, because by then you're so uneasy as the viewer that it doesn't matter if you've guessed a direction. No spoilers: there's a dinner party scene that really starts to make you wonder wtf is going on, in a good way. The writer and director does a very good job at keeping you as off-kilter as the main character is clearly feeling. Who is being gaslighted here, and who's doing the gaslighting? Is it the fragile wife? The controlling husband? Is it the wife's mysteriously absent sister? Or the Danvers-esque housekeeper who seems to have an agenda? And who are the people who keep showing up outside the house...?
Bonus points to Ashmore, who plays into the "is he evil/is he protecting her" qualities of his husband role exceptionally well. He walks a thin line and keeps you vacillating between two extremes throughout the film, and it's quite fun to see. Another bonus point for the ending, which threw another angle at me that I hadn't anticipated at all.
A strong 7/10 rounded up to an 8 for Ashmore and the truly trippy direction it takes halfway through. It may not be groundbreaking but it's certainly entertaining!
Fortunately this movie - which shifts between psychological thriller and horror - kept me guessing, and it actually did a few things that I (a pretty avid horror watcher) didn't see coming. There were plot elements I suspected by about halfway through, but there's a surrealist quality to the twists that start coming around that midpoint that make that moot, because by then you're so uneasy as the viewer that it doesn't matter if you've guessed a direction. No spoilers: there's a dinner party scene that really starts to make you wonder wtf is going on, in a good way. The writer and director does a very good job at keeping you as off-kilter as the main character is clearly feeling. Who is being gaslighted here, and who's doing the gaslighting? Is it the fragile wife? The controlling husband? Is it the wife's mysteriously absent sister? Or the Danvers-esque housekeeper who seems to have an agenda? And who are the people who keep showing up outside the house...?
Bonus points to Ashmore, who plays into the "is he evil/is he protecting her" qualities of his husband role exceptionally well. He walks a thin line and keeps you vacillating between two extremes throughout the film, and it's quite fun to see. Another bonus point for the ending, which threw another angle at me that I hadn't anticipated at all.
A strong 7/10 rounded up to an 8 for Ashmore and the truly trippy direction it takes halfway through. It may not be groundbreaking but it's certainly entertaining!