Director: Mary Gallagher
Year: 2023
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Separately arriving at the same house, different couples who booked the same house through a rental agency try to make the most of the situation until it's resolved, but the longer they stay there together the more they realize that something supernatural might be behind their visit.
Review:
This was a pretty disappointing genre effort. One of the better elements of this one comes from the rather realistic means of getting the main concept going and setting everything in motion. The natural reaction of the couples double-booking the house and arriving at the house pretty much at the same time feels like a plausible enough occurrence to get them to the house and interact with each other. With this giving them the time to get to know each other that allows them to overlook the presence of the creepy figures hanging around the house and the strange disturbances that build up over time, this provides quite a solid background for the supernatural shenanigans to play out which is pretty much all reserved to the final half. That's when the real purpose of their visit draws them into a genuine supernatural specter that makes this come off quite well.
That, though, is pretty much the issue with the film in a nutshell. It's not so much that the setup is bad as the realistic situation and the way it goes about isn't bad but the fact that so much of the film is wasted on a potentially dull and uneventful dialog that just grinds the film to a halt. Offering endless scenes of the couples spending nothing but time yakking with each other about their relationships, their pasts, what they do in their free time, and other nonsense relating to how they got into the situation that there's hardly anything genre-based at all until those few encounters at the end. Featuring several twists that don't mean much of anything and very little atmospheric build-up that tends to make the scenario threatening due to all the time spent not focusing on that element being introduced into the story, it's what tends to undermine the film and hold it down the most.
Overview: */5
An overall disappointing effort that could've been much better, this one features a potentially intriguing setup that gets undone by not having anything happen to capitalize on that starting point. Those who appreciate this kind of genre effort or are tolerant of the flaws might like this the most but most others that are turned off by these features should heed caution.
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