Director: Andrew Jones
Year: 2015
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Haunted House
Plot:
Desperate to finish his work, a writer rents out a remote house in the countryside to find inspiration for his latest work, but the more time he spends there, the isolation and the infrequent visitors start to play tricks on his fragile mindset to the point of thinking something might be in the house.
Review:
This wasn’t that great of a genre effort, but it does have some positive factors going for it. Most of its attributes are focused on the idea of the loneliness suffered by the writer while he stays there, as the mental unraveling and isolation start to get to him. The remoteness of the house, the grandness of its scale, and the Gothic layout all provide numerous opportunities for him to come under the type of psychological breakdown that usually accompanies these types of films, with the whole thing turning into a decent enough character study. As there’s nothing new about the story involving him being there to finish his latest writings and finding distraction and procrastination instead, there’s a fun sense that everything going on slowly starts to weigh him down as he continues on his quest. With the gradual idea that the whole idea is the work of a haunting and the need to uncover the truth about everything, leading to some decent enough ideas at play in the final half, where the haunted history is brought to the forefront, setting everything in line rather nicely.
Outside of all this, though, the film’s main issue is just how deadly dull and bland the film is. There’s so little going on here that’s actually entertaining or thrilling, with the main focus of the film being endless conversations about the house’s origins, his crippling writers’ block, or the burgeoning romance he starts up, that film is just immensely uninterested in the film being presented as a horror effort. The possibility of there being something paranormal living in the house doesn’t even come into play until just shy of an hour into this one, with everything else concerned with these outside aspects to the point of never devolving into the more traditional genre thrills required here. The pace and tempo of these scenes do this no favors, with everything feeling like there’s no hope for the film to pick up as there’s no energy or anything else to pick up what’s not been happening, lowering this one considerably.
Overview: 0.5/5
A bland and generally dull feature without much going for it, there are some watchable and worthwhile factors in this one, but it’s just plagued by some immensely problematic factors to rise above that. Give it a shot if you’re intrigued by this kind of storyline or are a fan of the creative crew, but all others out there should steer clear of this one.
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