• A noteworthy slow-burn arthouse horror from director Natalie Erika James – her debut film
  • Bound to frustrate traditional genre enthusiasts with her pacing—James is far more concerned with telling a nuanced story of dementia as horror metaphor, reoccurring visual imagery and some nice Polanski-like framing and use of the camera as voyeur
  • The stained glass door window is a great visual focal point for James—it has a meaning in the narrative, it is bounced off of formally several times, it is set up in the opening, the ending, and it is certainly pretty to look at
  • Elliptical editing in a few spots to create tension and the feeling that Emily Mortimer (daughter) and Bella Heathcote (granddaughter) are not alone
  • The editing overall is great- cutaways to reminder notes as part of the film form that Edna (played by Robyn Nevin—haunting) is leaving for herself as she loses her memory (of course there is a horror/sickness mirroring reading of the film)
  • In at least a few instances- James places the camera (or characters in dialogue) just behind a door or wall—gives the viewer an eerie leering feeling – again this was used in Rosemary’s Baby.
  • Hard not to think of Ari Aster’s generational horror film Hereditary
  • A solid horror setting- a beautiful house, run down pool and tennis courts
  • Dementia as a physical blackness taking over—that metaphor (which as it turns out with the end, is actually hereditary)—a strong (if not confusing at first) ending
  • Fine final image of that stain-glass window
  • Recommend