Written by: Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing
Directed by: André Øvredal
Starring: Brian Cox, Emile Hirsch, Ophelia Lovibond
Rating: R
Plot
A father and son, both coroners, are pulled into a complex mystery while attempting to identify the body of a young woman, who was apparently harboring dark secrets.
Verdict
This starts out great, but half way in spirals wildly out of control. I like the story, but we lose the grim earnestness that made this feel unique. The last half includes a lot of tropes and is just lackluster compared to the beginning. I wanted a a conclusion that would have an impact and wasn't satisfied.
It depends.
Review
This has a great mood from the onset, though the foreshadowing is a bit heavy. In a house with multiple dead bodies, it's the body in the basement that's a mystery. We get it. Then we move to the coroner's office in an old house. We get some coroner humor, but this is really graphic, though using a burned body makes it a bit easier to take.
The two coroners get this dead body and the cops need answers quick. This sets up the anticipation and tension wonderfully. The body's eyes are cloudy like she's been dead for days, but there's no rigidity or rigor mortis. The camera frequently cuts back to those cold dead eyes, and it's effective. You keep wondering if the body will breathe, wake up, or blink. Did the nose just quiver? This all happens in just one room and it's really well executed as the coroners mark their findings, bewildered by what the internal analysis tells them compared to the external observations. The body shouldn't be in pristine condition.
As I reached the half way mark I wondered if this was going to turn the corner. We've got the mystery, and the characters are beginning to make some silly decisions. Will we get answers? If we do will they be satisfactory?
Hallucinations, murder, and even an elevator heart to heart follow. This was becoming illogical and then the son posits they must forgo escaping and find the answers to stop the supernatural manifestations. That's a bit of a leap, and rather convenient for the plot.
This set up a great dynamic, the wise father training his son, but it doesn't follow through. A nice, focused story starts spiraling wider and wider. I like the revelation of who this body is, though we take too long to get there and it ends up being a bit of a throwaway. Where does the movie go after that? We're certainly going places with leaps and bounds to avoid logic. The movie stretches just a bit too far to bridge the gaps.
While I was waiting for a jump scare from the body on the table, it never rose to the occasion. The scares are mostly tension based and the final scene is just a bit too quaint and tropey. It's very mild. I wanted a twist or revelation, something big to make me remember this. It just didn't happen. It felt a lot like a conclusion to an episode of The X-files, meaning I wondered if I had seen it before.
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