Director: Katherine Dudas
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Desperate to try her hand at acting, a woman lands a role in a revered director’s latest play and starts in rehearsals with the rest of the group, eventually causing her to believe there’s something wrong with the group as she tries to understand why they’re so diligent and committed to the project.
Review:
This was a fairly solid feature if lacking genre effort. The whole thing revolves around the constant attempts to ingratiate herself into the community of theater acting and the world of what’s going on with his play, yet is constantly unaware of the true nature of everything happening around her is really like. The psychological mindgames that come about her with her earnest attempts at trying to make friends as well as perform up to the standards of the director make the interactions her seem genuine at first, even with the inherently terrifying undercurrent of everything happening with the film playing nicely on the idea of trying to make it a mystery whether it’s in her head or actually happening. With the fun, silly cast involved in this and bringing together some fun interactions when she’s trying to be friends with them, the setup to this one comes off incredibly well.
When it switches gears into outright horror instead of using the psychological mind games that this has been playing with, the idea of what’s going on makes everything feel far more fun and goofy. With the training she’s undergoing, operating the same way as the different interactions with the cast and crew who are slowly revealed to be something else entirely, which causes this to turn into a significantly different type of film when combined with the way it suddenly begins aligning with the different setup we’ve had so far. It does this in a rushed manner, as the entirety of the film until then was based on a quirky comedic tone rather than delving into outright genre material, so this does come slightly out of nowhere. Most of what’s gone on before it has been based on the psychological intonations of the situations, where nothing gives hints of what’s to come. That's somewhat awkward, but it’s the main issue to be had here.
Overview: ***.5/5
A generally enjoyable psychological genre effort, there’s plenty to like with this one that manages to hold it up over a few slight drawbacks that don’t mean much in the end. Those with an appreciation or interest in the subject matter or who are curious about this one will have a lot to like, while most others out there should heed caution.
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