Director: Remi Weekes
Year: 2020
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
After leaving their war-torn village, a man and his wife are granted asylum in a small suburb in London where they’re to remain for the time being, but as they remain in the house a disturbing presence makes them believe they’re being haunted by a vicious spirit after them for malicious reasons and must find out why.
Review:
This was a pretty impressive and enjoyable effort. A lot of the films’ impact stems from the stylish and intriguing setup that brings about quite nicely here with the intriguing setup. Taking the backstory of this one into account where they have to remain in the house part of their conditional release from the holding facility where they’re unable to move away or generally cause trouble for themselves or anyone else around them in order to keep the sense of freedom they have, it creates a rather chilling scenario for them. Essentially unable to leave the house even if they wanted to not just by the orders of the living arrangement but also the growing realization that they’re trapped in the presence of the spirit, it generates plenty of creepiness and suspense throughout here.
That becomes far more intense when the film capitalizes on the situation to bring about some solid scare scenes. The outlay of the house is somewhat creepy enough and then adding on the scenes of him trying to unspool the cloth to fix the hole in the wall who then sees the ghostly hand emerge and grab it away suddenly, the bouncing ball that keeps rolling out of the shadows to then stop suddenly in front of them or the stand-out sequence of the spirit showing itself and attacking him in the darkened room. Even the hallucinations work, from the dream of encountering her disfigured corpse in the sea of similar beings around him or the torment caused by all the various spirits and is only just barely saved through outside circumstances. These here manage to make for a wholly enjoyable and chilling effort
There are some issues to be had with the film. The main issue here is the absolutely nonsensical decision-making that goes on here with their house clearly being haunted by an unknown entity. There’s plenty of evidence here to support the notion of that yet his stubborn-ness and single-minded nature to keep them both in the house in its crosshairs doesn’t make any sense when he isn’t aware at all of what it wants. Since he finds this out later, there’s a disturbingly unlikable quality that washes over him with his insistence on doing so, even moreso with the lame and lackluster reasoning given for doing so. That doesn’t come off in any believable manner at all which just makes this whole thing seem quite pointless.
The other problem with this one is the somewhat scattershot ending that loses quite a bit of the punch of the story. Turning into a confusing series of scenes about them going from their present situation to hallucinations back in their native village within the span of several minutes which is quite a jarring effect. Given that the use of so many of these scenes are dependent on going through the various hallucinations and visions that are quite jarring to go through while also contradicting the storyline by switching around a characters’ point-of-view for no reason how they’ve been all fine long since it does nothing special. These are what hold it down slightly although the other issue is more impactful.
Overview: ****/5
Without too many truly detrimental issues as the few flaws aren’t in the slightest bit enough to drag it down over the positives, there’s a lot to like with this one that it manages to hold itself up overall with its positives. This is definitely for fans of impactful supernatural genre efforts or these kinds of efforts in general, while those who aren’t into this style should heed slight caution.
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