Audience Member
strange and confusing in middle
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/08/23
Full Review
jesse o
I don't really expect to write too much about this movie, there's really nothing to it. Well that's really misleading to say, because if I'm being honest, at least this movie makes some sort of effort to mix and match a few different things. But to say that they do so incompetently would be, quite frankly, the understatement of the year. That's obviously a bit of a hyperbole, since this isn't a movie that has really been on anyone's radar at any point. And if this was, indeed, ever on your radar and you were legitimately interested in it, can I please ask why? And I don't say that to be snarky or anything of the sort, I'm really curious what it was about this film that made you interested in it. This is just a movie that exists just for the sake of existing. If I hadn't seen this on Amazon Prime, I would have never known of its existence. This is the film equivalent of 'if a tree falls in a forest and no one's around, does it make a sound?' as there are only 8 people on Letterboxd who've watched this and only one person has reviewed it. Where do we even begin? The film tries to be many things at once without succeeding at any of them. First, it's a family drama about the struggle the parents (and stepfather) face when their little girl is brought back home after she went missing for a year. Then, at a later point, it is revealed that what you're watching with Emily (the daughter) back home with her mom and stepdad is all in the imagination of the stepfather. What's really going on is that Tim (the stepfather) is being interrogated by this man while Tim's under police custody to find out where Emily is. Everything you see in Tim's imagination, Tim has constructed using his surroundings. Imagine Stay with Ryan Gosling and that's, essentially, what this film is. But, the investigator is hopeful that engaging Timothy in his games will lead them to Emily's real location. So, essentially, it tries to be a psychological thriller that has as much to do with psychology as a bowel movement. Then shortly afterwards, the film turns into a demonic possession film as Tim reveals that a demon made him give Emily to it in exchange for Tim's own sanity or something. The demon transfers itself to someone else and then this person starts running around attacking everyone in sight like they're on bath salts. Now it's a gory horror movie. The last part of the movie is, quite frankly, the worst of them all (not that any of them are good to begin with). Because it has the private investigator (and his daughter) taken the investigation into their own hands and trying to find Emily on their own. Now it's a rescue film. And, stupidly enough, the investigator isn't even the one who finds out Emily's location. His daughter left him a voicemail that explained everything and where she believed Emily was being kept at. They rescue Emily and it ends. Boy. Where do I begin? The only thing I liked about this movie is the part with the demonic possession. I just thought it led to some of the more exciting things in the entire movie. I started off with a positive, since the negatives are many. The film tries to be clever by introducing several new genres into one film without any real care or thought as to whether or not it makes any real sense within the context of the story you're trying to tell. Jared Black (first time director and co-writer of this) clearly wanted to do something different, but it's obvious he doesn't have the skills enough to handle such a massive undertaking. The film is incoherent and nonsensical, it is everything that Jared Black probably didn't want this to be. It cuts off its nose to spite its face. Not to mention the fact that you totally handcuff your actors to these drastic tonal shifts, so there's not a real sense of who these characters really are and why you should care about them, because you're not invested in their plight. If this had been a straightforward ghost story, where Emily comes back and strange shit starts to happen, it still wouldn't have been a good movie, but it would have been better than the nonsense we did get. The editing of the film is absolutely dreadful, sometimes it just jumps forward and you're not exactly sure how things got to be the way they are. You don't know what happened and who attacked first, etc. I mean it's obvious that Jared Black was trying to be ambitious with this movie and I can't fault him for that. What I can fault him for, though, is not knowing his own limits. There's a reason people like Martin Scorsese don't typically do films with jarring tonal shifts, it's usually very difficult for people to adjust to these changes. Martin Scorsese is a legendary director and Jared Black, so far, is not. Part of being a great filmmaker is knowing what you can and cannot do. What I mean by that is realizing your limits and knowing there are certain things you won't be able to pull off. If I made an action film, I know I'm not gonna make a Raid or Mad Max, so I'm not gonna try. I'm realizing my limitations and I'm working to my strengths. I know that this is Jared's first full-length feature, but he's directed some shorts. He should know, in theory, what he is capable of doing. And I say in theory, since he clearly had no idea how to handle all these disparate genres. Mr. Black isn't without his potential, but it's clearly that he's gonna need to work a LOT on his screenwriting abilities if he is to become a viable horror filmmaker. As it stands, though, this movie is really fucking bad on all fronts. Poor storytelling, nonsensical tonal genre shifts and shitty editing. I can't recommend this and it's not even 'so bad, it's funny', it's just a really bad movie. Please avoid this.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
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