Plot
Couple Liz, a painter and Malcolm, a doctor head to his cabin in the woods for a romantic weekend getaway.
While there, Liz starts feeling haunted by the old cabin, and begins to have visions of the past… but whose past is it?
Direction
Osgood Perkins directs, and this feels more ‘serious’ than the previous films of his that I have reviewed (Longlegs, The Monkey).
He had some great use of camera angles, that really made the cabin feel like a character of the film… but I think he leaned to hard into this, as well as beauty shots of the outside of the cabin and the forests around it.
I quite enjoyed the way the cabin ‘sounded’ and this reminded me of other films in this genre (Cobweb, You’ll Never Find Me).
One thing that hurt this film, was that he didn’t write it (it was written by Nick Lepard – writer of Dangerous Animals).
Cast
Tatiana Maslany plays Liz. I think she did a stellar job of portraying the ‘terror’ that Liz goes through. She spends a majority of the film on screen, and portions of it alone.
Rossif Sutherland (son of the late Donald) plays Malcolm. This is the first project I’ve seen him in, and I wasn’t sold on his performance. I found it lackluster, and I’m not sure if this is his own struggles, or if it was poor directors notes.
Other cast include Birkett Turton and Eden Weiss as Darren and Minka.
Breakdown
Starting with a montage of ‘many’ women on a date (this is really the only foreshadowing the movie has) it cuts to couple Liz and Malcolm as they head to, and get to his cabin in the woods.
For the next ‘hour’ or so, we don’t really get a whole lot other than some odd conversations between the pair (they are supposed to be a couple who have been together for a year). There is an odd moment where Malcolm “insists” Liz eat a cake made by his housekeeper (which she can’t understand why a housekeeper would make a cake?), and even though she hates chocolate, she eats the whole damn thing????
Liz’s discomfort by the cabin is furthered by her vivid dreams, that she even has while she is awake (like the woman with the bag over her head), and then questions her partner… why was there a woman with a bag over her head in the kitchen (um… love, you’ve been day drinking, did you not think it was a dream???).
The real problem I had with the film… before the silly ending… was these people don’t really act like they have ever spoken to another person before. It’s a shame, because this screenplay comes from the not so terrible Dangerous Animals…. (actually come to think of it, that too had characters within it that didn’t really seem to converse with others in a realistic manner….)
Liz and Malcolm have no chemistry whatsoever, and unfortunately this comes down to a poor screenplay. This is the third Perkins film I have watched, and it is the first he did not write. I think he is stronger when he has written it himself.
The big reveal at the end of the film (which I am going to spoil now) is that Malcolm, and Darren are actually brothers… who are hundreds of years old. They attacked a pregnant woman 200 years ago (who is also played by Maslany) who then gave birth to monsters. The monsters feed on human women, and in exchange let the brothers have eternal life.
This is all told at the 70ish minute mark, in a 2 minute monologue by Malcolm.
At no point before this, was there any indication – other than Liz inexplicably finding a almost century old photo of Malcolm on the floor of the bathroom, days after arriving (why was it there, how did it get there? who put it there??? These are questions I wanted answers to. If this is going to be your big twist, you need to have better foreshadowing than a 20 second montage of women before the movie starts.
Also, how did Malcolm and Darren know this about the monsters??? There is even a line said by Malcolm when Liz is trying to escape – “don’t ask me why that happens, its just magic”… this is the epitope of lazy writing!
Also… did the monsters kill Darren off screen??? And why?? If he had just given them a sacrifice in Minka earlier in the film???
I didn’t “hate” the finale moments of the film, in which Liz – seemingly takes the role of the monsters (who aren’t all that scary FYI) mother, and gets her revenge.
Overall
This is my least favourite film I’ve seen of Perkins, and I feel that because it wasn’t his own written project this is why it came across so poor.
The characters are all either poorly written, or converse strangely like no people actually converse.
The finale is frustrating, and it is revealed in the last 20ish minutes of the film – with no real foreshadowing to what the reveal is… even the monsters that are shown on screen are hardly even frightening.
Sorry, this one is a fail.
2/5
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