undertone

'Evy' (Nina Kiri) is having an hard time caring for her bed-ridden and comatose mother and her only distraction is a regular podcast she co-hosts with her friend 'Justin'. That deals with all things spooky, with him being the more open-minded and she the sceptic. This week, he has received an enigmatic email containing ten voice notes. As ever, she is hard-wired in hoax mode, but as they plough through the snippets of bedtime conversations between 'Jessa' and 'Mike' they begin to open quite a confusing and sinister can of worms. 'Jessa' claims to have no knowledge of her night-time ramblings, so when they are recorded and she appears to be singing children's nursery rhymes backwards, the intrigue starts to mount - even for the doubtful 'Evy'. Before long we are steeped in the ancient cult of 'Abyzou' whose sole purpose was to feed upon children. Ok, so as far as that goes this could have been quite a tense little mystery, but instead of the pair taking a delve into the occult and the often malevolent nature of the rhymes that frequently portended the coming of evil, or disease, we spend far too long trying to guess what's going on with 'Evy'. Now to be fair, Kiri pretty much holds this together en seul, but the episodic nature of the podcasts and the huge emphasis on the accompanying audio really convinced me that had I closed my eyes and listened, this could have made for a decent fifty minutes radio play. Visually, it offers us very little and though the last ten minutes do breathe some life into it, for the most part this just comes across as a slow burn for the sake of it. It's a fascinating subject to tap into, but like so many other films recently released in this genre, it seems that the insatiable need from cinemas for content has created rather than crafted a production line mentality that spends far too little time on the storytelling and too much on elongating the shortest of short stories into full-length features.

WOW! I kept waiting for the director to get something set up and then GO in that direction...But, I waited, and waited.. And nothing. A big nothing burger of a movie, this is a LOVELY IDEA, but the execution lacks a construct to keep ones interest. The acting is top notch to be sure, but, it seems wasted on a nowhere script and a confused director. Not being able to choose between going the way of "haunted audio files" of the inner dynamics of family tumoil when tragedy strikes, it could have been something if a story was anywhere to be found.

The scares do not engage in this movie. It is understated, but far too much to actually pull you in. And since the characters are not worth engaging with, you don't care enough about them to build any true stakes. No true stakes means there can be no true horror. The cast is well directed, but it is too slow to hold interest, and even the ending is a bit of a convoluted mess. I would not recommend this.