Audience Member
"I'm the only one who can find her"
Cinematography is nice, has a good "Australian bush" aesthetic but the storyline doesn't land and it's not super easy to follow as it moves a bit slow, however, it does blend together genres of sci-fi, medical horror and psychological thriller well.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/27/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Absolutely hooks you, then drags to a snap ending. Frustrating. Not great folks.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
10/01/20
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Audience Member
Some decent acting, tries to get over its low budget with some interesting production techniques though this sometimes comes over as forced as in the case of the music, for example putting "creepy" music on a regular scene.
The most unforgivable fault of this film is that it's a vastly inferior ripoff of the French film "martyrs", which really is creepy
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/30/23
Full Review
Audience Member
As a identical twin, who lives in Australia, I completely get this creepy dark film.
My twin was forcefully taken away from the family home and institutionalised because the Government promised to give her special needs care due to her severe autism. This happened when we were 10 in 1985.
We have had 30 years of hell. She was abused in every sense of the word, including being used as a guinea pig and was tested on pharmaceutical drugs.
I fought the bureaucracy for thirty years to be reunited with her.
I finally one the fight and we were reunited on our 40th birthday.
She was a complete mess. The trauma had damaged her so severely, she now has bi polar and ptsd (mental illness) on top of her intellectual disability.
It was as though she was possessed by several different demons. The pain, the screams, the self harm, the rocking, the locking herself in a cupboard.
What a nightmare!
Five years later she is doing a lot better, without any help from anyone because this is a selfish narcissistic world we live in, full of parasitic evil doers who can't seem to stop using her as a commodity and exploiting her and profiting from our misfortune.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/24/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Unlike your regular, run-of-the-mill trashy thriller/horror movie with a predictable and/or tacky storyline (which are enjoyable in their own way), this movie left me feeling deeply unsatisfied because it had all the ingredients to be a well-made, intelligent, artistic debut feature from director Shanahan; I kept expecting more right up until the last disappointing moment.
There is a well-created off-kilter, uneasy sense of foreboding using a strong soundscape, smart direction and eerily beautiful cinematography of Adelaide's surrounds. There is brilliant acting from lead Clemens as twins Maude and Cleo – the fascinating phenomenon of crytophasia – a disturbing mansion on grounds that are unplaceable in time and space, with a strange array of characters sporting accents from various countries, creepy mannerisms, mysterious motives – the intrigue of no escape, secrets, brutal injuries with no explanation, experiments and surgeries, flashbacks. Unfortunately, all of this loses its appeal due to the lack of a compelling storyline with depth or meaning.
There is no turn in the story where things start to come together or progress towards an end. You are kept in a state of confusion due to lack of detail and seemingly no exploration of the characters or themes. You want for there to be character progression, reveals, meaning, or even just the pieces for you to put together a matrix of that yourself, but the story is so sparse that I found that impossible. Even with the voiceover at the end offering some kind of conclusion, it is too little, too late, and by that point it is so out of place it seems like shallow attempt to give meaning.
I wanted some enlightening details about the couple that ran the project, the group behind it, its history, the weird employees, the children trapped at the mansion, the fake fiancé, the deaths, what crytophasia means in the context of the story and why it is being focused on – just some pieces to tie the whole thing together, give it meaning, so that I could get something, anything out of it. I finished with nothing – no feelings, thoughts or emotions other than frustration that there wasn't enough story for me to feel like I'd just engaged with any characters or a story of any substance.
It feels like a first draft that still requires someone to sit down and figure out what they actually want the movie to say/show/do/incite, and then for that person to refine and pull all the promising facets together into something that packs a punch, that takes the audience along with it, that has purpose. It is like watching a work-in-progress that I wish I could come back to a few years later after they have re-worked it into what it has the potential to be when they have spent a little more time on the story and figured out what that is.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/22/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The worst musical score ever, to a pointless piece of disjointed cinema.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
02/12/23
Full Review
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