Okay, so…much like The Vow, we have a little bit of false advertising here. Unlike, The Vow, I actually think the movie this winds up being is stronger than the one advertised. This is a definite “See it.”
What Works: This is advertised as “Elizabeth Olsen gets terrorized by random strangers in a house for 90 minutes.” And it is that, but it’s also a little bit more than that (don’t worry, I won’t spoil exactly what happens). I enjoyed the direction it took (let’s just say the terrorizing isn’t so random), even though I could tell the majority of the audience may not have. But fuck ’em, the audience is usually wrong about these kinds of things—-they like predictable, predictable, predictable, and I don’t want to watch the same movie over and over again—-and this is no exception.
Also, the movie’s chief strength can be summed up in two words: Elizabeth Olsen. I thought she was good in Martha Marcy May Marlene and she’s just as strong here, widening her expressive eyes in spasms of fear that made me really worry for her safety. When a horror movie can get you to say “Please, please don’t kill her” instead of “Kill this annoying person NOW!” Then it’s doing it’s job. And the direction—-which simulates one long, fluid take—-is artful in the way it lets fear show itself around the edges. It’s pretty rare that horror films have any kind of poetry to them, but this one does.
What Doesn’t Work: Well, the audience didn’t seem as enthused with this movie as I was, so there’s that. But again, fuck ’em. I would just say to come into it with an open mind, and you’ll be fine.
What I Would Have Done Differently: I can’t say this movie is as out and out scary as some might hope for, and so maybe there could be a couple of more “boo!” cheap scare moments, but other than that I really appreciated the craft behind putting together one horror movie that never leaves the main character’s point of view WITHOUT the “found footage” gimmick that’s become stale already.
This movie was an okay movie but it wasn’t the best. I thought they could have done a better job on it. I really like movies that have a plot like this. Some parts in the movie kind of freaked me out a little bit. I rate this movie a 5 out of a 10.