After the wonderful short I, (2021-also reviewed) I started looking at the list of feature films screening/streaming at the Soho Horror Film Festival, and this ghostly tale caught my eye, giving me a creeping suspicion to see it.
View on the film:
Creeping round the Reynolds household, editor/co-writer (with Helen Miles) / director Jamie Hooper makes a feature film debut with a refine Gothic Horror atmosphere, thanks to Hooper closely working with Ben Hecking in exploring the house with elegant long panning shots, that when the music box springs opens, spins to jagged whip-pans as the family attempt to flee the ghostly presence invading the household.
Brewing an eerie fog over proceedings as a CGI ghostly figure emerges,the slow-burn score from Stephanie Taylor gets hurt, by being plucked for needless whacked up to maximum volume for a quick shock, with Hooper's impressive staging of inventive set-pieces (such as a sequence involving an exhaust pipe) being matched with ill-fitting short bursts of jump-scares.
Returning home in order to care for her demented grandmother Lucy, Riann Steele gives an excellent performance as Anna, thanks to Steele delicately linking the screaming terror Anna gets from the ghostly family secret, to the compassion, and love that Anna has for Lucy, who she tries to defend, even when that shadow of a ghost draws near them.
Opening a music box to play fragmented flashbacks over what led to the ghostly events, the screenplay by Miles and Hooper unveils refine slow-burn chills, via the haunting entity slowly seeping into every corner of the household, and bringing into sharp focus horrors that the family has faced in the past.
Whilst the haunted house shocks take place, the writers pair the supernatural terror, with the personal, family drama anxiety in quiet moments, where Lucy's suffering of dementia becomes extremely visible to Anna, who starts to hear from an empty room, the floorboards creep.
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