Rating: 3/5
We open on the first-person perspective of someone at a desk, writing out musical notation. They take a candle downstairs and grab a canister of gas. They step outside, open the canister, and douse themselves with the gas, dropping the candle at their feet and self-immolating. These are the last moments of Richard Marlowe (Rutger Hauer), a notorious British composer who disappeared at the peak of his career.
Rose (Freya Tingley) plays the violin in a sound studio. Charles (Simon Abkarian), her manager and legal guardian, arrives to inform her that her father is dead. She did not know her father, as he left when she was a baby. He was none other than Richard Marlowe. She inherits Marlowe’s musical copyrights and the keys to his secluded French mansion. One key came in a separate envelope with her name inscribed in delicate cursive.
She flies out to the estate, violin in hand. A beautifully inscribed mantle lines the stairwell up to the black halls of the second floor. At the end, a locked door — Marlowe’s office. She enters the disheveled room to find a locked desk drawer. The key from the envelope matches the lock. Inside, she finds a folder embossed with an unknown seal containing a violin sonata. Besides the standard musical notation, red ink annotates staves with mysterious symbols.
Rose brings the notation over to the piano. As she stabs out the notes, she catches in the corner of her eye a demonic silhouette forming in the light from the window. When she stops playing, it disappears. As she explores the house, she finds the mysterious symbols from the score and their sinister meaning.
The first act had me hooked. A brilliant musician inheriting a mysterious mansion and a satanic sonata is my deal. The film spends far too much of its runtime expositing on the mysterious Richard Marlowe, but the tight editing keeps it moving.
The film explores success and the lengths people go for it. The idea of someone stepping down at their artistic peak baffles and frustrates the artist who would love to have that attention. But nothing kills the artist more than when passion becomes business.
The soundtrack fluctuates between cliches and feverous intensity. The movie goes to dark places and saves its most intense music for those reveals.
Horror fans won’t find any surprises here, but if you like houses full of secrets, you’ll find plenty to enjoy.