Director: Savvas Christou
Year: 2021
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: Katherine's Lullaby
Genre: Suspense/Thriller
Plot:
Following a fight with her boyfriend, a teen is wandering lost in the woods until she comes across a stranger's house and seeks shelter, only to find herself kidnapped and held captive by the owner of the house who mistakes her for his missing daughter and treats her like the missing girl, causing a series of complications in their relationship.
Review:
This was very little to like in this highly flawed thriller. The whole concept of her being held captive at the house and trying to get along deep enough into this one in order to find a way to escape is the best part of this one and tends to be the most engaging aspect. That this is bound to be built around numerous close calls and encounters that are built around the uneasy relationship they experience trapped at the house together fuels large portions of this one with a lot of tension and suspense. Whether it's taken a chance on escape attempts that go bust or simply trying to appease him but getting on the wrong side of his temper, the idea of her being there trying to survive which plays a big part in the shocking nature of the finale which is quite surprising overall. However, these are where the best positives come from.
There are some big flaws to the feature. The fact that barely anything about this one makes sense is the major stumbling block as we're supposed to infer everything that's happening in this one. The initial abduction and turning her into the basement-dwelling image of his daughter is fine enough but the fact that everything else that takes place is supposed to be based on his treatment of his old daughter who looks nothing like her and makes for a very unsympathetic turn. We don't feel sorry for him holding her like he does, as we're supposed to, because his bizarre mental state is too over-the-top to feel realistic and natural. With no information or even time to get us on his side and hope the relationship plays out in a beneficial manner, we get immediately dropped into this situation and not much in the way of explanations about any of this.
That goes hand-in-hand with the strangest aspect present here which is the alarming twist at the end that just screams as being unpredictable without any basis in reality. The various actions that result in the final few minutes of the film are genuinely surprising to see but that's only because there's nothing remotely set up to indicate this. Nothing about this comes off as realistic or believable with the twists that come off in rapid-fire succession at a point where it's hard to take in as quickly as this does since it just carries on with a new twist before explaining what happened for another one. Since nothing is explained or comes off in a believable manner, these issues are quite damaging and combined together hold this one down overall.
Overview: */5
With not much to like about it and a lot of flaws with the lack of a compelling storyline and some unbelievable action, these undo a lot of the potential elements that show up here leaving this one well-made if underwhelming in the end. Give it a look if you don't mind the flaws or are intrigued by the style of film overall but most others won't be that interested in the film.
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