Director: Brandon Duncan
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Psychological
Plot:
About to give birth, a pregnant woman heads out to a remote hotel to recuperate and prepare for the baby’s arrival, but when she comes to find out no one believes she’s pregnant, she tries to point to a spectral being following her as proof that something is after her baby.
Review:
This was a solid if somewhat problematic genre effort. Among the better features of this one comes from the strong central premise that presents itself as a genuinely troubling psychological issue at the center of everything. Trying to make sense of the situation where she believes that she’s pregnant and expecting a child, going through the motions of gaining weight and hormonal changes despite all the evidence possible saying she’s not carrying a child in any way, creates an intriguing starting point for this to work along. The belief that she is, resulting from the weight gain and kicks she says she feels in her stomach, as the only evidence to that, even though every biological test and opinion on the matter says otherwise, creates a strong immersive point to feel sorry for her.
As well, this also sets up an extremely engrossing mystery about what’s going on while she’s staying there. The belief that she’s being stalked by a strange woman after her baby creates a startling setup that's created to help tie into the unraveling mental condition she suffers from, involving the numerous fantasies and visions she has of the baby being haunted in her dreams. These are quite chilling and revolve around the baby disappearing from her just before she can get to it, playing well with the few physical encounters she has with the strange woman in the woods that is soon revealed to be the culprit behind everything as that gets it’s own backstory explaining what’s going on as it leads into a tense, thrilling finale which gets in some thrilling action and enough psychological implications to wrap the story up smoothly, all giving this a lot to like.
There are some slight drawbacks that keep this one down. The biggest issue here is the overall lack of treatment and sympathy that’s exhibited towards her for this condition, as it’s hard to make out what the purpose of the trip out there is supposed to accomplish without help. There’s already enough going on with the attempts at trying to convince her of the situation, and she tries to get better as the situation worsens, so not having anything around to help her makes no sense as to why they’d let her go through the whole thing and not get help. Since the whole thing is designed for her benefit, not having that be a big factor in the film is a confusing touch with the lack of outside help only making it worse, and it tends to create a series of distressing intersections where it’s hard to side with her as everyone seems to think she’s gone mental rather than get better. Overall, these are what hold this one down overall.
Overview: ***.5/5
A wholly enjoyable psychological genre effort, this one manages to be quite worthwhile with some likable moments and features that are enough to hold this one up over the few issues at play here. Those with an appreciation for the subject matter, who are curious about it, or don’t mind the issues here, will have the most to like, while most others out there should heed caution.
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