Year:
2024
Rating: 7.0A fascinating film from Steven Soderbergh
that was shot in 11 days, all in one location. It is a horror film
on a few levels, but the ghost is the least of them. It isn't the haunted
house that crawls up into your stomach, but real life. The sterility of living
in suburbia, a marriage showing its cracks, children losing their way, the
pain of unending grief and the monster full of sweet words. Seeing this after
the Cornell Seven, that part particularly hits hard. The horror is us.
An upper middle class family moves into
an old house with beautiful wooden floors and a large yard. The family dysfunction
slowly leaks out. More through hints than directly, as truths begin to crawl
out of the darkness. Twenty years of marriage has erased the intimacy that
was once there and silence or irritation has become the default. the son
and daughter fight constantly, the careers of the parents seem to be in difficulty,
the son desperately wants recognition from his peers, the daughter Chloe
(Callina Liang) has had two female friends inexplicably die in their sleep
and her grief is overwhelming. And then there is the ghost. The presence.
Living in Thailand where most people believe
in ghosts, I have become more accepting of the idea. Most of their horror
films are about ghosts. My landlady is American educated, but during a lengthy
illness on my part, she asked me to please not die in her apartment. You
have to notify potential renters or buyers that someone has died in the apartment
and values drop. I promised to do my best.
Chloe's grief appears to attract the attention
of the presence, but not in a nefarious way. It is an observer shown only
by the quickly moving camera through the house. The film is in fact shot
from the ghost's perspective. It sees all. And makes judgements. It is a
benign presence. Mostly. Perhaps her dead friend looking over her, but we
never find out. But almost certainly a female. The few times it explodes
in anger is when men do awful things. And they do. Lucy Liu plays the mother.
Did you know her first acting credit was in a Hong Kong film starring Danny
Lee? I wasn't even sure because there are no close ups of anyone but Chloe.
Again, the ghost's perspective. A kick in the stomach ending.
