Director: Charlie Steeds
Year: 2020
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Haunted House
Plot:
Arriving at a mansion in the countryside, a woman and her son are called out to visit their ailing father stuck at the house while on his deathbed, but the longer they stay the more they’re convinced something sinister is happening to them, and upon uncovering the secret rush to stop it from overtaking them.
Review:
This was a pretty serviceable haunted house effort. Like most entries in the genre, this one gets a lot of enjoyment from the creaky Gothic atmosphere of the house where everything happens. Filled to the brim with the expected layout, artifacts, and tropes found here, from the long hallways, drafty furniture and old-school wooden architecture that serves as perfect fodder for letting something creepy occur within. Moreover, with the location offering sufficient build-up for this series of events happening the gradual psychological break suffered within by the three living there gives this an even creepier vibe.
As well, there’s a lot to enjoy with the fun build-up of the supernatural within the house. Not only are the expected bits of background elements and unnoticed occurrences featured here, but the investigation that he does into looking at the house's history provides some nice clues as to what’s going on from the items he notices around the house to the recordings left behind. As everything slowly begins to make sense about his condition and what that has to do with what’s affecting the house, it grows into a rather fun and creepy storyline that works rather well here.
The last plus here is the creepy final half that gets far more active with supernatural activity and thus generating much more of a frenetic pace. With the shadowy figures getting some screentime to do something with several fine shocks and the full reveal of the haunting secret within the house, these have quite a lot to like much like the series of hallucination-based visions they force upon them which have some creepy moments. The series of revelations and twists that arrive from that are quite creepy and chilling, turning this into a darker effort than expected which is quite impressive. These manage to hold the film up overall.
There are some slight issues to be had with the film. The main issue to be had here is a rather bland and sluggish pace that makes for a rather difficult time to get going. This one takes quite a while to get going, using the family tensions and acclimation to the house as reasons for taking up more time than needed to get to the point of the film which is so late into this one. There’s also the convoluted setup about the mother’s insanity which tends to bounce back and forth through several somewhat confusing states where she switches from lucidity and outright uncontrollable trying to keep him safe just seems odd. These are the films’ flaws.
Overview: ***.5/5
An extremely effective and fun haunted house effort with a lot more going on than expected, this one seems to be undone more by its sluggish pacing and tempo than anything else which may be a factor that works for some but not all. Those who enjoy these slow-burn haunted house films, modern British genre cinema, or are fans of the creative crew will find a lot to like here while those who aren’t fans or turned off by this style for the most part should heed caution.
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