Director: Rob Savage
Year: 2020
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Meeting together for a video chat, a group of friends stuck in quarantine attempt to conduct a seance for their apartments, but when they inadvertently insult the spirit guest they’re hosting the angry spirit exacts vicious and brutal revenge on the group for what they did.
Review:
This was a decent enough genre effort while there are a few detrimental issues here. When this one works is due to the idea of this all happening at once over the video-call, where the darkened atmosphere in their rooms creates a somewhat intriguing setup that allows all the supernatural antics to feel somewhat believably. The longer it goes on, the more the strange knocks, flashing lights and smashing objects feel more intense and creepy, especially once the attacks become physical as that’s where the intensity picks up. Several of these scenes are outright terrifying when viewed through the format, taking full advantage of the intimacy created to provide some fantastic shocks. These are what manage to hold the film up.
There are several issues to be had with this one. One of the biggest drawbacks is the inability to care about anything that the girls do which rarely seems to be worth following around. The first half here is insanely dull and bland before the seance actually starts with inane chatter and conversations between everyone about how they’re handling the lockdowns or screwing around on the various processes involved with the computer call to get anything out about them. That they then go through the cliched notion of outright disrespecting the seance and then lying and arguing about everything like it wasn’t their fault cements how unlikable they are.
The other issue with this one is the strange series of choices featured here for the attacks that make no sense. The byproduct of this one being done through the internet video chat means that a lot of what happens should’ve never been recorded. Taking the camera or computer with them when they’re being hunted and stalked by an unknown malicious source attacking them is the least of their worries and being able to capture what happens is quite unrealistic in this setup, while all that tends to crop up elsewhere on the chat is the others screaming without doing anything such as calling for help. This strikes as quite problematic and doesn’t do much to help this one, lowering the film somewhat.
Overview: **.5/5
While there are some highly enjoyable and outright chilling scenes at times, some aspects of this one do strike as being highly problematic and unrealistic which holds this back. It’s still worth a look for those curious about the process or enjoys this type of genre effort, while those who are turned off by those factors or the other flaws featured here might heed caution.
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