If I had a nickel for every supernatural horror movie where a guy named Josh was hanging out with a generational demon and in one scene a horrific jump scare happens behind someone talking in a close-up, I’d have two nickels. Insidious jokes aside, this is a solid, tense horror film with occasional sparks of terrifying imagery and deeply unsettling subtext. It starts to feel a little drawn out and flimsy as it goes on, but the scene where Beth gets tucked into bed next to Z left a sour taste in my mouth that recolored the whole thing. The child sexual abuse implications come into immediate focus after that moment and remind me of that one scene from The Haunting of Hill House where the psychologist discovers Mr. Smiley.
In the present, a son lashes out inappropriately and violently to his peers and his father hides the behavior from his wife. Z murders him before burning down the house they lived in. In the past, a daughter faces the stern commands of a father behind the camera, a man only seen in a single photograph and a ghostly nightmare swinging from the ceiling fan. Z is a protector and a perpetrator, trapping generations in their trauma while hiding the true nature of what’s hurting them. Beth meets him again when her mother dies which forces her childhood back to the forefront of her memory. This film balances familiar tropes and a unique iteration of the trauma/grief horror narrative to create a decently effective supernatural story. The handful of glimpses we get of Z were plenty.
P.S.: Subtext aside, hilarious that the therapist suggested these parents play with their kid and they try like one time. This is effective propaganda against only children.
If I had a nickel for every supernatural horror movie where a guy named Josh was hanging out with a generational demon and in one scene a horrific jump scare happens behind someone talking in a close-up, I’d have two nickels. Insidious jokes aside, this is a solid, tense horror film with occasional sparks of terrifying imagery and deeply unsettling subtext. It starts to feel a little drawn out and flimsy as it goes on, but the scene where Beth gets tucked into bed next to Z left a sour taste in my mouth that recolored the whole thing. The child sexual abuse implications come into immediate focus after that moment and remind me of that one scene from The Haunting of Hill House where the psychologist discovers Mr. Smiley.
In the present, a son lashes out inappropriately and violently to his peers and his father hides the behavior from his wife. Z murders him before burning down the house they lived in. In the past, a daughter faces the stern commands of a father behind the camera, a man only seen in a single photograph and a ghostly nightmare swinging from the ceiling fan. Z is a protector and a perpetrator, trapping generations in their trauma while hiding the true nature of what’s hurting them. Beth meets him again when her mother dies which forces her childhood back to the forefront of her memory. This film balances familiar tropes and a unique iteration of the trauma/grief horror narrative to create a decently effective supernatural story. The handful of glimpses we get of Z were plenty.
P.S.: Subtext aside, hilarious that the therapist suggested these parents play with their kid and they try like one time. This is effective propaganda against only children.
