Director: Karen Lam
Year: 2020
Country: Canada
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Having just been released from prison, a woman trying to deal with the situation and make ends meet is soon faced with the harsh reality of people in her condition when she’s forced to look for outside help to survive which eventually results in the discovery of supernatural help to try to accomplish that.
Review:
This was a solid enough if overall problematic effort. In pretty much every technical aspect out there, this one works incredibly well with the sterling camera quality, impressive physical attributes when it comes to the overall construction and presentation of what’s going on, and the general approach here creates the kind of high-art performance piece loaded with sterling quality throughout here. That continues with the film’s approach as a character study of her as we see just about everything takes place from her singular viewpoint including strong social commentary on the struggles of recently-released-from-prison youth, drug addicts, and homelessness that come about through the film. It’s incredibly effective and manages and keeps this one moving along nicely with these elements generating a sympathetic lead with a fantastic series of technical qualities.
It’s when this one tries to be a genre effort that it falls flat, with almost no overt chills, scares, or anything remotely resembling a horror feature for the majority of the running time. There are a few brief bits about these deformed spectral beings following her that signal the move into a supernatural-tinged genre effort but that’s pretty much the extent of the content here as the rest of the film has quite obviously very little if any at all. The concept of her being blessed with powers of some kind is only really known through outside sources since it doesn’t become apparent at all through the film, and it takes nearly an hour of her going through the other subplots first before there’s even a glimpse of anything dark going on which is an eternity for those looking for something more overt and obvious. This can be quite troublesome and overwhelm the positives depending on the viewer.
Overview: */5
A great technical showcase for nothing all that interesting, the outright lack of genre material present here will be the main takeaway for those looking for spooks and chills in their fare as this one has nothing in that regard. Those who are more in tune with the technical qualities or are looking for something with this kind of approach, while those interested in traditional genre content will be well advised to look elsewhere.
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