Written by: Luke Harvis, Alistair Legrand
Directed by: Alistair Legrand
Starring: Vinessa Shaw, William Atherton, Aaron Stanford
Rated:
Plot
In this horror movie, a psychiatrist tries to put her life back together after a violent attack by helping a patient that has his own terrifying past.
Verdict
You know this will have a twist, it's just a question of what mind numbing twist will be used. It's difficult to guess because the movie introduces supernatural elements just to trick you. It's insulting, a contrived element to hide an underdeveloped story.
Overall as a movie, this isn't that good. Even rating this against horror movies, this isn't that good.
Skip it.
Review
This wastes no time getting started with lots of blood when psychiatrist Jane Mathis's patient Nora flips out and attacks her late at night.
Months after the attack Jane is in therapy to deal with the traumatic events and her inability to help Nora. She's stopped seeing trauma patients.
Instead of building a solid framework and indicating that Jane has been seeing visions of Nora, it cuts to the chase and has Jane hear a noise outside. While she sees nothing outside and is perfectly safe inside her home behind locked doors, she's goes outside with a bat to investigate. This makes so little sense it's infuriating. Once she's outside she goes towards a sound in the shrubbery. There is no reason to go outside. Set this scene inside so it at least makes a little bit of sense.
Coincidentally, Jane gets a new patient overcoming his own trauma. Alex has been disfigured in a car accident and despite not liking therapy, he's going to try it out.
The setup is that Alex's trauma is reminding Jane of her past. Are these visions Jane sees of Nora real or imagined?
Alex ends up in Jane's house one night sleepwalking. Did he drive while asleep? Did he fall asleep a few days before and walk over? Does Jane not lock her doors? There are so many things wrong with the explanation and the movie doesn't even try to answer these obvious gaps in logic.
I got the sense this movie was playing a game with her trauma and his as we fall into dumb horror movie tropes. Nora, who I assumed was dead, has been getting treatment for two years and has just been released. Despite that, Jane still saw visions of Nora that defy physics.
That's how this movie gets you with the twist ending. It defies physics so you assume there has to be a supernatural element to this. Jane has a break down, other stuff happens, the twist is revealed, and finally the movie ends.
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