Director: Francesco Picone
Year: 2022
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
After moving into a new house together, a woman begins to become concerned about the strange incidents around the house which soon gives way to the truth about a malicious entity from her past coming back to haunt the family forcing them to extreme measures to stop it once they target her son.
Review:
This was a generally enjoyable enough genre effort. One of the stronger features here is the overwhelmingly familiar if still worthwhile setup that lets the rather chilling action take place. With the various cliches present here from the family strife brought about by the move to a new house, the idea of the subtlety involved in the house being written away by this condition brings about the expected sense of sympathy towards her as this goes along. When the reveal about the history of the entity attacking and targeting her mother that includes several bits about her own troubled upbringing as well as the gruesome exorcism attempt on her possessed mother that has some graphic effects-work alongside the setup of the family apparently being targeted by the entity for awhile now.
That becomes quite evident with the film transforming into a decent enough genre outing the second half involving the reason for the curse to follow them and affect the family. Learning of the past interactions that her mother had suffered which prepares her for the same treatment once the daughter goes missing, this one turns into a rather fun exploration of the spiritual dimension that has a much darker and more vibrant energy throughout here with the encounters featured here. With the impressive-looking ghouls tormenting her and the desperate race to get her daughter back, this has a frantic sense of energy that goes along with the revelations made involving the connection between the ghosts haunting them and the house itself which has a lot to like about it. Combined with the expected but still quite a dark finale that twists everything quite nicely, these factors are enough to give this a lot to like overall.
There are several drawbacks to be had with this one. As mentioned, the main issue here is the films' overtly-obvious and generally unmistakable familiarity with what goes on here. There's very little here that comes off as original or unique with the determined wife attempting to convince her skeptical and aloof husband that something's wrong with the house, that there's a family history of dealing with the very same entity plaguing them, and that everything gets solved by a journey to a separate dimension, which is what we get here. Moreover, this one doesn't do much with these issues by speedrunning through some of these beats to bring about more cliches including an infidelity storyline that goes nowhere or to clumsily introduce not only the priest that has ties to the family but the need to go into the spiritual dimension which is introduced out of nowhere and accepted readily seemingly because that's what needs to happen. It all makes this feel like a low-rent carbon copy of other genre efforts and is what holds this back the most.
Overview: ***/5
A fun if wholly generic supernatural genre outing, this one carries enough to like that makes it watchable although the flaws present here do manage to stick out quite heavily here. Those who don’t mind those features and are mainly looking for a solid supernatural genre effort will have the most to like here while most others should heed caution for others that are much more original than this one.
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