Agoraphobia (2015) by Lou Simon

Director: Lou Simon

Year: 2015

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Supernatural

Plot:

Trying to deal with her anxieties, a young woman is left alone in her father’s old house to try to get over her issues, and the longer she stays there the more she begins to experience visions of someone or something else in the house with her and must overcome her fears to find out what’s going on.

Review:

Overall, this was a fairly solid and enjoyable genre effort. Among its better qualities is a strong central setup that allows for a wholly sympathetic showcase while also providing the requisite starting points for the later shenanigans to follow. While highly cliched, the central setup involving the woman trying to get over this condition involving her being stuck inside the house with a crippling case of agoraphobia and trying to maintain all sorts of stressful scenarios that provide all sorts of enhancing factors to make her paranoid about staying there. With the situation further enhanced by the growing belief that the house is haunted by a figure trying to get to her or drive her crazy as the situation becomes more obvious that an unnatural presence is in the house.

This starts the rest of the film off on a great note involving her belief that there’s something genuinely in the house against the constant assumptions that it’s just her condition playing on her anxieties. The scenarios are constructed just right for this to be the case, with objects being manipulated against her eyesight, doors being opened or closed against her knowledge, and shadowy figures appearing where no one else can see them. With the surrounding incidents also involving other physical factors that seem to point to it not just being in her head, the resulting paranoia that arises here is incredibly effective at letting this kind of scenario feel more believable and suspenseful which is altogether quite a lot of positives to hold this one up.

There isn’t much here to hold it back but it does have some drawbacks present. One of the biggest drawbacks here is the series of wonky twists into effect that are played out to try to provide a more human antagonist rather than a supernatural one. This is quite lazily explained to what the entire purpose of it is all about which is so cliched and expected that it doesn’t register as much as it should but the fact that it’s all designed to switch focus away from the supposed ghost haunting the house as that was a far more compelling storyline. Rather than going for this simple setup, the switch into this type of storyline comes off rather awkwardly due to changing the point. With the stripped-down, low-budget nature of the film also holding it back, these are the few issues here.

Overview: ***.5/5

A generally impressive if somewhat cliched ghost movie, there’s still more than enough to like here as the majority of the positives featured here are enough to hold it up over it’s few flaws. Give this a shot if you’re intrigued by the style attempted here, appreciate this style of indie feature, or are fans of the creative crew while most others out there should heed caution.