This is one of those horror movies where I couldn’t quite decide how I felt about it afterwards. At first, I thought, “That was terrible.” But the more I thought about it, the more I decided it did have its merits, if you can manage to not fall asleep during the first half.
Emma is a young caregiver, just arriving in the English countryside to begin her first night shift watching over Arthur, an elderly dementia patient. As he sleeps, she decides to snoop through his closed-up manor house using only the light from her cell phone, and we, the viewer, get to follow along via a shaky hand-held camera. And by follow along, I do mean follow. Into room after room. Through door after door. Inside closet after closet. For thirty+ minutes.
Now, if you haven’t left the premises yet, don’t. The movie finally begins to pick up around this point as creepy haunted house-type things begin to occur and Emma continues snooping instead of keeping an eye on her patient. Several nice jump scares help build tension and suspense, even if the story itself doesn’t, and, finally, the last twenty minutes of this mercifully short film kind of (maybe) make up for the first forty, including a not-entirely-predictable twist at the end.
- Top Scare: Arthur’s daughter
- Heartbeats: 2 out of 5
- Gore Factor: 1 out of 5
- Suspense Factor: 2 out of 5
- Recommended for: 16 and up