Something I have started to realise – I only ever review thrillers and horror films. I review every kind of book, but the kind of movies I find myself watching are very limited.
It might be because I spend ages scrolling though lists of movies, trying to find something I actually want to watch, and I know for a fact that I enjoy movies that fall into those two genres, so I try to restrict the amount of time I spend searching by choosing a film from those genres.
Who knows.
Anyway, let me introduce you to this film, and then I can share my review!
Following a tragedy, a mother and her teen son move to a relative's vacant vacation home, where eerie and unexplained forces conspire against them.
My Review!
After the death of his father, Logan and his mother, Naomi, find themselves traveling to Naomi’s sister’s house in the mountains. They don’t have the money to stay living where they were, and going to the mountain house is a break, not only from everything going on, but also from the worry of having to find the money to keep a roof above their heads.
The house is massive, the kind of place you don’t live in, but vacation in. It is for sale, but Logan and Naomi are free to live there, to look after the place, as long as they make themselves scarce during open house events. But, strange things start to happen. Logan starts to hear strange banging sounds, and things go missing from one room, only to turn up in another. The water heater turns itself off, and Naomi repeatedly has to go down to the basement to relight the pilot light.
I was not entirely sure what I was getting myself in to when I clicked on this movie to watch. I honestly thought I was clicking on a thriller, not a horror, so you can imagine my surprise when there were creepy camera perspectives, and I started to wonder if I had perhaps clicked on something I didn’t realise. I must say, though, the camera shots are great. There are plenty of angles that have a little room for something creepy to just be in shot in the background, and it’s almost scarier when there’s nothing there.
It’s not really a spoiler, but if I don’t mention it, I can’t talk about the film at all. This film is about a home invasion, of someone hiding within the house while Logan and Naomi are there. The person is practically living there alongside them, but they don’t know. I think the reason I found this film as creepy as I did was because home invasion is a massive fear of mine. I am constantly afraid of getting up in the night to go to the bathroom, as both Logan and Naomi do in this film, and realising I am not alone. The camera shots really bring all of that together, into a film that actually creeped me out, and not many horror films have ever done that.
Something I liked about this film was that Logan and Naomi are not a strong team, fighting together against the grief of losing Logan’s father. They are divided. Logan never wanted to move anyway, and was not given much of a choice on the matter. Not only did he lose his father, his life was turned upside-down. Meanwhile, Naomi is just trying to get by on what little money they have. They fight, accuse each other of doing things. The house they are in is much too big for just two people to be living in it, so in a way, they are more than just alone, they are isolated from each other and the outside world.
I have never really come across open houses as a method of selling a house. It might just be not done in the area where I live, I am not sure. To me, the idea of people just wandering around your house, and you not having any idea where they are in the house, or what they are doing as they walk around, is ridiculous. There is a perfect quote from the film, that entirely sums up what my thoughts are on the matter:
I mean, you give your keys to someone you hardly know, they stand in one room and welcome in a bunch of complete strangers, and those people just roam around the house. And the realtor doesn't check the house when it's done, right? They just... turn the lights off and go?
Doesn’t it just seem like the perfect opportunity for people to walk in and steal stuff, or plant things… or stay... the list of bad things I can think of happening is endless, and yet, this isn’t just something that happened in the movie, people actually do open houses? Maybe it’s less creepy if the house isn’t quite as big as the one in this film. I just know if strangers were walking around my house, I would want to know where they were at all times. I am getting off topic!
It seems to be becoming a thing, where I watch a film, and when I look the film up afterwards, so I can get all the necessary information about it to write a review, I find it has countless bad reviews. At least this time, there are some good reviews to counter the bad. Yes, there isn’t much of a conclusion at the end, and yes, there isn’t much plot. But, the entire movie builds suspense, and the ending was creepier without a conclusion. There was no answer to the why, and it’s the not knowing that makes this scary. Logan and Naomi don’t know there’s someone in their house. The viewer doesn’t know who is in the house, or why. I knew this was a good film while I was watching it, for the simple reason that I realised I was scared. I don’t get scared at horror films, this is not me bragging, I just don’t. I see the camera shots, predict the jump scares depending what is in the scene. I try to guess the ending before the film has even started. But I went into this film thinking it was a thriller, so I wasn’t trying to guess a horror film ending. Yes, I appreciated the camera shots, but there weren’t many jump scares, if any, really. This was a film built on tension, about something that scares me in real life, and I was sucked into the film so much that I actually felt scared. I do think this is a film that you will either love or hate, but for me, I definitely love it.
And done!
This is actually the longest review I have ever written for a movie. It might be the longest review on this blog. It does include a quote from the film, and a rant about why I think open houses are a bad idea, but still.
Also, that tagline on the cover? You can't lock out what's already inside. It makes me shudder just thinking about it.
Anyway, that's all for now...
Bye!
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