The film has quite a clever premise that hell is other people. Sadly that’s about as clever as it gets. The film starts with a woman clearly distressed running through the woods. We are introduced to two families. The first is the Hays family. They are a bit dysfunctional family, there is Susan (the stepmom) who doesn’t get on with the daughter (Emmy) and the father trying to keep the peace. Then there is the Thomson’s. In this family the Dad isn’t exactly getting on with his son. The dad is an idiot from start to finish he is an idiot. It seems that they suffered a bereavement as the mom sees someone who is apparently her daughter though she isn’t really there.
Just as the Hays are leaving they come across the woman that we saw at the beginning. Both families are connected by a weird guy in a funny hat (not funny ha ha but funny weird). He convinces them to go and look at the house. When they try and leave they keep finding themselves at the house. As this starts in daylight there is the obligatory wasting of time until its get dark. The woman doesn’t have a tongue so can only communicate by making a noise. The character is given a name called Hanna played by Rebekah Kennedy who is easily the best thing in the entire movie.
At one point the dads don’t trust each other, the moms start bonding and the youngsters start getting broody. Well the guy is the girl seems to be not as interested. The film then leaps forward by a month (for no clear reason) and they are still there and they still look around trying to find a way out and the seven cans of stew are still there.
Why doesn’t someone watch the cupboard with the stew to see who puts it there?
There is a kid who appears in the window and we find out that the guy in the weird hat killed him.
As the story progresses there is a jigsaw and every so often they find bits of it. After a long time it shows the daughter in the picture of the house but when the son looks at it then she has disappeared.
It’s not long before they start to turn on each other and through the early stages of their imprisonment there are various sharp objects that flash in front of the camera to make us aware of something. However these never seem to actually become part of the story, its like they pick on this idea and then give up on it.
There are a lot of things that don’t make sense in this film such as why they don’t smash the box that speak every morning or why they don’t give the girl with no tongue a pen and paper to write things down and especially after a month.
The mommy Thomson is the first to die. Her death seems to fuel the fire of distrust between the two dads.
There is a scene where we see what the son did in recently which involved a hit and run. This definably proves he was an arsehole and it’s the start for him as he goes slowly downhill. He impales himself on a twig and to be honest after trying to rape Emmy and also with what we learnt about his hit and run I thought he deserved it. Even after being impaled he was still lying to his dad and this just got a bit frustrating for me.
It’s easy to see it coming but basically the families are pitted against each other. That is fundamentally the problem with the film because normally I cant see these things coming but it was like setting flares off at these moments because if you couldn’t see them coming then you just weren’t trying. The psycho dad ties up the other family and tries to get help. Seems like an odd way to help people but anyway this is an odd film.
After the daughter does the walking backwards thing, the psycho dad tries it. There are moments when they have been doing it for so long that they then get to a moment and turn around thus meaning that they erase what they have done. This is another moment that makes the heart sink. Whilst the psycho dad is out the son goes into a ‘seizure’ and the phone starts to ring. The son was being strangled by the girl that he ran over. This leads to him confessing to his psycho dad and the dad is about to set the others free before the mom plants an axe in his back. The woman seems to be the mother of the weird man in a hat and the boy.
Susan is made to look like she has stolen the food which causes the dad to kill her. This is just after the stepmom confess to killing the daughter’s mom and made it look like suicide. The dad has now gone psycho. But not in a convincing way because instead of being in fear, I found it to be quite boring and just thought it was another silly thing that was wrong with the film.
The daughter is encountered by a new family that seems to be looking at the house and it seems to be starting the whole cycle. The last shot is of her tongue being cut and that was something else that was obvious and as I said earlier, I don’t normally pick up on these things.
The story starts to get frustrating as there are fundamental problems with the whole story. It gets a bit interesting when there are no cans in the pantry as it seems like their time is running out. The main problem with the film is that It drags on and on and on and it feels like it was going so slow that it was almost standing still. At nearly two and a half hours its an interesting idea that is drawn out. It could easily have been cut in half to make it a really good film.
Just as the Hays are leaving they come across the woman that we saw at the beginning. Both families are connected by a weird guy in a funny hat (not funny ha ha but funny weird). He convinces them to go and look at the house. When they try and leave they keep finding themselves at the house. As this starts in daylight there is the obligatory wasting of time until its get dark. The woman doesn’t have a tongue so can only communicate by making a noise. The character is given a name called Hanna played by Rebekah Kennedy who is easily the best thing in the entire movie.
At one point the dads don’t trust each other, the moms start bonding and the youngsters start getting broody. Well the guy is the girl seems to be not as interested. The film then leaps forward by a month (for no clear reason) and they are still there and they still look around trying to find a way out and the seven cans of stew are still there.
Why doesn’t someone watch the cupboard with the stew to see who puts it there?
There is a kid who appears in the window and we find out that the guy in the weird hat killed him.
As the story progresses there is a jigsaw and every so often they find bits of it. After a long time it shows the daughter in the picture of the house but when the son looks at it then she has disappeared.
It’s not long before they start to turn on each other and through the early stages of their imprisonment there are various sharp objects that flash in front of the camera to make us aware of something. However these never seem to actually become part of the story, its like they pick on this idea and then give up on it.
There are a lot of things that don’t make sense in this film such as why they don’t smash the box that speak every morning or why they don’t give the girl with no tongue a pen and paper to write things down and especially after a month.
The mommy Thomson is the first to die. Her death seems to fuel the fire of distrust between the two dads.
There is a scene where we see what the son did in recently which involved a hit and run. This definably proves he was an arsehole and it’s the start for him as he goes slowly downhill. He impales himself on a twig and to be honest after trying to rape Emmy and also with what we learnt about his hit and run I thought he deserved it. Even after being impaled he was still lying to his dad and this just got a bit frustrating for me.
It’s easy to see it coming but basically the families are pitted against each other. That is fundamentally the problem with the film because normally I cant see these things coming but it was like setting flares off at these moments because if you couldn’t see them coming then you just weren’t trying. The psycho dad ties up the other family and tries to get help. Seems like an odd way to help people but anyway this is an odd film.
After the daughter does the walking backwards thing, the psycho dad tries it. There are moments when they have been doing it for so long that they then get to a moment and turn around thus meaning that they erase what they have done. This is another moment that makes the heart sink. Whilst the psycho dad is out the son goes into a ‘seizure’ and the phone starts to ring. The son was being strangled by the girl that he ran over. This leads to him confessing to his psycho dad and the dad is about to set the others free before the mom plants an axe in his back. The woman seems to be the mother of the weird man in a hat and the boy.
Susan is made to look like she has stolen the food which causes the dad to kill her. This is just after the stepmom confess to killing the daughter’s mom and made it look like suicide. The dad has now gone psycho. But not in a convincing way because instead of being in fear, I found it to be quite boring and just thought it was another silly thing that was wrong with the film.
The daughter is encountered by a new family that seems to be looking at the house and it seems to be starting the whole cycle. The last shot is of her tongue being cut and that was something else that was obvious and as I said earlier, I don’t normally pick up on these things.
The story starts to get frustrating as there are fundamental problems with the whole story. It gets a bit interesting when there are no cans in the pantry as it seems like their time is running out. The main problem with the film is that It drags on and on and on and it feels like it was going so slow that it was almost standing still. At nearly two and a half hours its an interesting idea that is drawn out. It could easily have been cut in half to make it a really good film.
Rating - 3/10 (I'm being very generous)
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