Skeletons in the Closet (2024) by Asif Akbar

Director: Asif Akbar

Year: 2024

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Supernatural

Plot:

After a series of setbacks, a family confronted with the idea of a returning spirit that has haunted her from childhood that seems to be caused by a longstanding curse as the reasoning for everything and must resort to dangerous practices to protect their family from these forces.

Review:

This was a massively disappointing and barely worthwhile effort. Among its few bright spots here that makes this a decent enough setup with the family going through their personal struggles which gets everything going in a decent enough clip. The family history that includes a series of confrontations and counters with spirits from a child into adulthood that signals the start of a tragedy which starts to rear its head again with the newfound diagnosis on the daughter which puts them into the mindset of trring whatever means necessary to save her. This upsetting of the supernatural realm manages to be somewhat chilling as a concept due to the use of the demonic figure as a starting point to get the central deal together. This is all pretty much the best part about this one.

That leaves the film with a veritable slew of issues.to hold this back. The main problem is that it’s nearly impossible to care what’s going on since all the sub-plots present here don’t come together in any shape or form. Featuring a series of sidestories involving a gangster holding him accountable for a monetary loan to cover the necessary surgery for the removal of her cancer, the mother’s struggles with her faith go nowhere which is due to the sudden introduction of the strange spiritual figure that comes for her, and the interactions of the rother who just got out of prison that sets him up with the mob boss in the first place, this one has way too much going on that's just not interesting as it features way too many things happening to make any of these plots feel connected to each other.

In addition to this kind of scattered approach, there's also the fact that the pacing is so slow it's nearly impossible to care about what's going on. As so many of these elements getting brought up make the film feel far more like a family drama with a bit of suspense thrown in with the mob connections, it's so light on the sightings of the spectral figures around her that they almost feel like an afterthought introduced simply to make it more marketable. Very little is explained in a way that connects everything and it tends to come off more like an extra setup to add even struggle to the family since they take up far more of the running time here than anything else going on.

That becomes a big component of the rest of the film as the final big issue is the lack of threatening genre action. As there's barely anything here in the first part where the few shocking inserts of the spirit haunting her are so haphazardly inserted it could easily be taken out without upsetting anything and then almost ignored until midway through the film for a briefly written explanation that tries to retcon everything into a functioning explanation for the setup. It's done so lamely and without any kind of genuine genre thrills that hardly any kind of interaction with the spirit occurs so there are no kills or anything like that happening throughout here, rendering all these aspects enough to completely downgrade this one.

Overview: 0.5/5

Dull, dreary, and barely a horror film, there’s so little to like here that it’s few positives are overwhelmingly overcome by a multitude of flaws that hold everything down quite impactfully. Those that are fine with this approach or are fans of the creative crew will be the only ones that appreciate this one as most others out there should outright ignore this one.