Director: Mitch McLeod
Year: 2019
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Troubled by the loss of her daughter, a woman plagued by brutal nightmares heads off with her husband to a remote house in the countryside to help move on, yet when she’s convinced someone is haunting the house from her past she sets out to figure out what’s going on to save her sanity.
Review:
Overall, this one proved to be a wholly enjoyable effort. One of the greatest aspects featured here is the exceptionally strong and well-balanced drama that starts the storyline. Bolstered by a believable tragedy with the daughter’s death that has already happened, the grief and shock from the incident rightfully keep her hesitant, reluctant and withdrawn for a large part of the film’s first half as they move into the new house. Understandably unable to cope with the tragedy despite the efforts of a shrink to help her on top of moving to a new, quiet house out in the country as a complete surprise that all moves towards making for a reasonable rationale for her behavior. When this is enhanced by the interactions they have trying to settle in, ranging from the disrupted sexual encounter when he is injured in the process to the threatening notions against the friendly neighbor and the reactions to her medication, the first half her is quite impressive at building an engaging and immersive drama.
Hanging off this build-up is a fine collection of haunting scenes that are wholly chilling and creepy. A dream where she ventures out into the woods thinking it’s her daughter only to be confronted face-to-face with another ghost entirely is really creepy, as is the encounter alone in the house where the spirit attacks her and drags her across the floor. A later nightmare involving a figure killing and cutting up others in front of her has some surreal moments with the bright red lighting throughout the scene, much like the frantic nightmare she has later featuring plenty of flash-cut images and distorted camera angles of the ghosts appearing before her which also doubles to fill in some of the missing plot-points about his extramarital affairs from earlier. The finale, featuring an incredibly gruesome and brutal outcome based on the various sideplots that have gone on, gives this a solid and satisfying conclusion to this one.
While there isn’t much wrong here, the film does have a few issues. One of the biggest problems is the utterly cliched and unnecessary sideplot involving the husband who hits every single trademark in these movies without exception. Despite initially appearing as though he’s trying to help her, every time she brings up the ghosts he dismisses her story and calls her crazy, has a backstory featuring him cheating on her yet was forgiven for it and as a result, he doesn’t do much overall here with him spending more and more time away from her later in the film. It’s lazy and hackneyed to keep going to these same tropes for this character in these movies as it doesn’t produce drama at all but instead contempt for utilizing that setup once again when numerous other films have already done this concept better.
The film’s other big problem is an exceptionally overlong running time hampered by the puzzling ability to think it’s interesting to watch the husband go about his life while she’s spiraling out of control. There’s almost nothing about the ghost haunting the house for what seems like ages, almost to the point of forgetting that there is supposed to be a film about ghosts happening throughout here, while it changes tactic s to include him going around town cheating on her with the neighbor. The scenes at the bar where they get together and then showing them actually end up sleeping with each other are just inexcusably boring happening this deep into the running time and just not interesting at all when there’s a ghost movie supposedly happening. There’s no reason for this type of film, without action happening especially with the ghosts involved, to be around two hours but otherwise, there aren’t many other flaws here.
Overview: ***/5
Despite one of the biggest genre cliches in the scene and some troublesome pacing issues, the film features enough to like about it that it’s a highly engaging and at times chilling ghost story. Those who can appreciate the flaws and not get bothered by the specifics will find much to like here, while those who are completely unappreciative of these dramatic, slow-paced films should heed extreme caution.
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