Written and directed by Damian McCarthy. Starring Carolyn Bracken, Gwilym Lee, Tadhg Murphy, Caroline Menton, Steve Wall and Jonathan French.
Plot: After her twin sister is brutally murdered, Darcy Odello (Bracken) goes after the people she knows are responsible.
It’s been a while since I did one of these so I thought I’d begin again with one of the best horror movies I’ve seen in recent years. Originally, and probably because of all the hype, we weren’t very excited to see it, but it called to me eventually. Not totally sure why though, so I watched it without DJ the first time, thinking I may not get much from it. Boy, I have never been happier to be so wrong.
The Irish film intrigued me immediately after pressing play. It all starts with a young wife, Dani (also Bracken), who is married to Dr. Ted Timmis (Lee). She’s lonely though. Because her husband is often working and they’ve just bought a house to renovate in the middle of nowhere. She spends a lot of her time working on the house and trying to find enough of a signal for her to call her twin, Darcy, that she is more than close to. They are connected. Honestly, this grabbed me because of how close I am to DJ and how odd people think that is most of the time. Siblings are often seen as volatile towards each other, in real life and in the movies. It’s nice to see relationships like this. I myself think I could tell if DJ died, even if he were halfway across the world at the time.
Dani is alone at the beginning of the movie. She goes out to her car to get something out of the trunk and that’s when the story really starts. It’s dark outside and very late when a patient of her husband shows up at the door. At first he tries to get inside by telling her he knows her husband, only he’s scattered in mind and movement and he isn’t someone she wants to open the door for. Then, he begins to beg. He tells her he had been outside long enough to see her when she went out to her car. However, he says that while she left the house alone, she didn’t go back inside alone. There was a man that crept in before she reentered herself and he believes that man to be a danger to her. If she lets him in, he can help. If she doesn’t let him in, he can’t help.
This whole setup got me going as the obvious questions started swirling around in my brain. You know this woman is going to die, but how? And by whom? Which beyond stupid thing did she do? Did she open the door to a mental patient who has already confessed to being outside her house for some time? Or did she refuse him, hoping that he was just a mentally ill liar and that no one was already inside her home? Obviously, this man outside begging to be let in wasn’t going to wind up being her savior, right? He was simply a run-of-the-mill psycho killer that lied very well. Right?
The movie doesn’t give us the answers we’re looking for right away, which led me to wonder about what I would have done. Being mentally ill myself (Bipolar 1 if you want to DSM it), I’m prone to say I wouldn’t have let his illness deter me from letting him in. Being a woman though, I understand a certain hesitation to let ANYONE in, at night, when I’m all alone, in a giant house I’m not yet familiar with. It’s revealed slowly that (and this is not giving much away at all) the man who came to her door, Olin Boole (Murphy), was accused of her murder and a year later he’s killed inside his own room at a halfway house. Tim brings Darcy Olin’s glass eye because she claims to have psychometric powers and wants to “read” the eye. Tim doesn’t really believe in these gifts of hers, but he brings it nonetheless.
Darcy’s belief that Dani wouldn’t have let a man she didn’t know into her home is a source of contention between her and Tim. He is very dismissive of any suggestion that his wife was killed by anyone but Olin. Another fact causing a reasonable upset with Darcy is that Tim, just one year later, has moved in with Yana (Menton), a woman he met at the hospital where he works.
The lengths Darcy goes to in her quest for the truth are extensive and so brilliant I was rooting for her the entire time. She’s weird for sure, but she’s also one helluva sister. I made DJ watch this movie with me only a few days after I had watched it for the first time. Honestly, it was the final frame that did it for me. It was one of the single most gloriously insane, surprising and satisfying endings I’ve ever seen. I mean, not only did I have to show DJ as soon as possible, but those first two times I watched it, I went back and rewatched the final 2 minutes over again. I just needed to. DJ and I both needed to. I haven’t watched Caveat yet, but after seeing this, I just might have to. I am so impressed by the storytelling here that I’ve written a very long blog entry that says so much and sort of nothing at all at the same time. LOL
Just watch this movie. Even if you don’t think you want to, you should. Even if some nitwit told you it was boring, trust me that it isn’t. Slow doesn’t mean boring. Not at all. I didn’t jump out of my chair really, but I did cover my eyes a time or 3. The acting is captivating. The moral center should be celebrated. And when the system is corrupt, every one of us should have a golem to turn to.
DJ’s score: 85. My score: 94.
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