Director: Kurt Martin
Year: 2026
Country: Australia
Alternate Titles: The Walrus and the Oyster
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Plot:
Coping with the loss of her son, a struggling writer looks for him in every child she comes across, eventually resulting in her holding a young boy captive who reminds her of her dead son and trying to help heal him while trying to fight off the monster supposedly living in the basement.
Review:
This was a problematic, if still enjoyable enough, genre effort. Among the better factors to be had with this one comes from the rather fun psychological mindset at play here that tends to throw the situation completely out of control. Focusing nicely in the first half on her deteriorating mental state and the way she’s gone completely functionally psychotic, with the visions of her dead son around wherever she goes and the various dreams about making sure we get that the death of her son has changed her, it features some strong starting points to get this going. This all paints the kind of initial psychosis in her mindset that means kidnapping the boy and putting him through the series of trials and tribulations that show how far gone and deranged she is to undergo these types of tortures on a kid with the type of mindset she does.
The main thing that everything going on here accomplishes, though, is that it creates a massive amount of sympathy towards her for doing this as her tender side, while doing everything makes for a more intriguing time looking through the various sequences. That makes for a fun enough time here, even though it just continually highlights the fact that little happens throughout here, as it’s pretty much just her holding him captive without any actual threatening or macabre action going on. Her attitude is more about being sympathetic and understanding about everything, and hardly any of it makes for a thrilling time until the end. That’s when the whole thing finally becomes a genuine genre effort, and with the majority of the running time spent on a really underwhelming detective angle to uncover her crimes, this one has a few issues that bring it down.
Overview: **/5
An intriguing if somewhat flawed genre thriller, there are some likable factors to this one that manage to make everything better than it should, but it is also brought down by some big issues present. Those with an interest in this type of approach or who are curious about it will have a lot to like here, while most others out there might want to use caution.
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