Rating: 3/5
Ted and Dani have purchased a country home. Ted, a doctor at a mental institution, works at night while Dani stays in the unfurnished house doing renovations and sleeping in a tent.
One night, while alone, Dani goes out to her car to fetch something. She hears rustling but thinks nothing of it. Dani returns to the house, only to be startled by a rapping at the door. She pulls back the porthole to see a man with a glass eye. It’s Olin Boole, a patient from Ted’s hospital. He tells Dani that he saw someone enter the house and that she needs to open the door and leave.
One year later, Ted visits Dani’s twin sister, Darcy, at her curio shop, passed down from her mother. Darcy deals primarily with cursed items and claims to be able to tell things about their owner when touching them. Ted invites Darcy to come by the house and visit him and his girlfriend, Yana. It’s a few days from the one-year anniversary of when Olin murdered Dani.
With no reply, Ted assumes nothing will come of it. But when the anniversary day comes, Ted and Yana receive a large, locked crate. Then, as Ted leaves for work, Darcy shows up on their doorstep. Ted tries to hint that he can drop her off at home, and they can plan a time to get together. But Darcy wishes to stay and pay wishes. Yana has planned to leave for the city. But she can’t find her keys.
What is Darcy up to? What’s in the box? What happened the night Dani died?
The way the film reveals information is unusual, and sometimes in passing. Or, we will revisit scenes from different angles to learn something new. At some points, it creates stellar tension. At others, it’s just frustrating.
But that strangeness is part of the charm. The director’s prior film, Caveat, was not one I liked, but it was out there. I hoped to see what he might do with a bigger budget.
This film is also tight in scope, focusing on three locations — the country house, the mental hospital, and the curio shop. The country house is where all the tension and questions live, so we spend most of our time there.
What I’m wrestling with is what I found unsatisfying about the movie. It twists and unveils, and I don’t have any questions that disrupt them. But I felt deflated learning some of them. I don’t know what I wanted. But it wasn’t what I got.
Still, this is a leap forward for the director, and I’m so glad I watched it in the theater. I was by myself, and there were some satisfying scares. I enjoyed this, but something is missing for me that I can’t quite pinpoint.