Very Cool!!!

Sadly Over-hyped

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Not a terrible story idea, basic concept of a spooky house idea. I loved the real-time aspect of it. The thing that confused me about it was the choice to use shaky-cam/found-footage type camera work when it is not a found-footage film. It made little sense and actually detracted from the impact of the story rather than added to it in my opinion. Other than that, it's an okay film, drags at points but overall not a bad thing to watch if you're binge watching horror movies for fun.

This one kept me guessing. What I thought was going to be a straightforward Gothic slow-burn ghost story took me by surprise, and shows the severity of damage which results from a certain widespread form of abuse. The shots are genuinely spooky, the acting is quite good, the storyline is pertinent to societal concerns, and the pacing is classically brooding--all in all making this one worth the watch. This is a remake of 'La Casa Muda', a Spanish language film.

This movie.... could have been one of the scariest home invasion movies of this decade. But the decision that was made for the twist absolutely ruined it. The first act and most of the second act were honestly in my opinion horror perfection. The overall very good acting (especially by Olsen in her technical debut film), the mixture of a one take film, with no music to tell the audience when something is going to happen, and black house where flashlights are required to see make it such a suspenseful and terrifying experience. I found my heart pounding with anticipation of what we'd be shown, and I found myself also covering my eyes in scenes where it felt like the watcher was going into a room first and would be the first to be exposed to something possibly horrific. It worked so well. But then in the second half, when she gets out of the house (the first time) and see's the girl in the grass, but then looks away and looks back and shes gone, it instantly turned off the scare factor. It was like knowing that she was just seeing things and that she most likely wasn't in as much danger as initially suspected made me not as scared, because it's all in her head. But, with the car scene, and the Polaroid camera scene, it brought back that horror that made my heart race. But with the end of the second act and entire third act... it fell completely face first. *SPOILERS* After the Polaroid scene, when the "people" are in the room with her talking, and she walks through the house with the gun, it just didn't really work because the average movie watcher would understand that she's clearly seeing things, possibly she had schizophrenia, or she was just plain crazy, and again, it took away the initial home invasion feel. But the final scene... It was a complete mind f**k. She becomes multiple people, and then she hurts someone while also hurting herself, and then gets a little insane with her father, it didn't make any sense, and completely broke the rhythm that the film barely maintained after the psychological elements were introduced. Then the dad ends up beating her... it just didn't have any flow or make sense. And that's pretty much how it ends. She kills her father, the photographs that were hinted throughout the movie (Sort of) reveal that her father may have sexually abused her, but I couldn't really tell... it just fell apart. I think that if they would have kept with the home invasion suspense/thriller/horror, it could have been a gem of a movie, as long as they kept with what they had started with. I don't know why they felt the twist they made was necessary, it was just confusing, aggravating, and ruined the movie. Honestly if they would have just ended the movie when she ran out the first time and managed to leave, it would have been so much better than what it turned into. I give it a 6/10 and not a lower score because of how fantastic the good parts were. It's a shame that such potential was wasted.

Girl gets locked in a house and finds herself alone amongst family.Interesting, slightly twisted story. The outstanding thing is the lighting - lots of lamps and mirrors, and a truly weird contrast between inside and outside. Even the car-interior lights do something different.The lead actress is good, with excellent decolletage, and the pace is well developed for such a claustrophobic story.The problem I had is that it's a bit earnest in the end - you guess the twist early on, and that's about as twisted as it gets.Overall, not as good as it looks - but it looks great.