Director: Jennifer B. White
Year: 2014
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
After returning home following a disappearance, a teen’s sudden, drastic change of behavior and lack of enthusiasm for everything around her leads her mother to believe that her soul has left her body and is trying to return, leading her to try finding a way to save her daughter.
Review:
This was a generally troubling genre effort that could’ve been quite enjoyable. Among the better factors here is the way this attempts to build a kind of supernatural thriller element that moves the film along. Opening with the initial reaction to the missing time from the lake and how her personality has changed with the happy and outgoing flashbacks to the time before, compared to her current sullen and moody expressions, all manage to create a strong, engaging mystery that the family is forced to figure out what’s happened to her and why she’s behaving the way she is. The series of interactions here involving the spectral spirit of the young girl roaming around the house trying to connect with them or get back to her genuine body makes for a fair bit of suspense in trying to follow through the various incidents to make this come together.
Outside of this, the film is a genuine mess without much going for it. A lot of this is due to the outright confusing and generally chaotic storyline that doesn’t know what it wants to be. The whole thing is presented as if the daughter is acting moody and depressed, which is so far out of her normal pattern of behavior that it becomes a race to figure out what’s wrong with her, yet everything here is based on how the mother interprets the actions and feelings. This is immensely frustrating as it develops into a never-ending round of info dumps about the possible condition that’s just sluggish and draining on the film overall, and gives this a disconnected feeling when so much of this never focuses on the daughter because everyone is reacting to her condition. As it stands, that leaves this without much in the way of genuine genre fare, as the spirit doesn’t do anything violent or malicious, keeping this a massively disappointing genre effort.
Overview: */5
A flustered and mostly disjointed kid-friendly supernatural thriller, there are some worthwhile elements here, but those are mostly overwhelmed and overruled by the series of negatives featured here. Those with an interest in this style of genre fare, enjoy lighter genre fare, or who can overlook the negatives will want to give it a shot, but there’s little else on display for others to check out.
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