Rating: C+
Dir: Kevin Van Stevenson.
Star: Hanna Mandel, Andrew Chen, Coral Cataldo, Chris Spinelli.
Sharon (Mandel) and Niv (Chen) have just returned from the funeral of her mother, bearing the urn in which the deceased’s ashes are contained. Barely have they sat down in their apartment when the weirdness starts. Neighbour Thomas (Spinelli) pops round to tell them while they were away, he glimpsed somebody sitting in a chair, through a window. Unexplained noises and odd occurrences follow, and Sharon begins to act out in increasingly bizarre fashion. She’s convinced her mother’s spirit has come back with them, and refuses to let Niv scatter the ashes. But as Sharon continues to spiral downward, Niv and friend Ash (Cataldo) begin to suspect there might be more going on than a familial reunion.
There’s no particular attempt to reinvent the wheel here. The audience know, right from the opening voice-over, that there is another restless spirit at play in the apartment, and it might have been wiser to keep this information concealed longer. As it, we’re waiting for the characters to discover what we already know. However, it’s not long enough to be a major issue: the whole film runs under seventy minutes, and it does feel like that’s an appropriate length. I did wonder if we were going to end up with duelling ghosts, Sharon’s mom going up against the resident spirit. Instead, it goes in a more conventional direction, with an exorcist being hired to repossess Sharon. Naturally, this is not entirely successful.
It mostly takes place in one apartment, which is a good way to reduce costs. There are occasional audio issues, with the dialogue sometimes having an odd echo – this is more apparent near the beginning. But in general, the lower budget is not particularly obvious, and there are little moments which I did like. For example, their landlady (Laura Meadows) drolly proclaiming after a plumbing-related incident, “You are saying the sink had teeth? That sounds disturbing.” Or their chosen medium, Madam Elena (Deborah Benson Wald), demanding payment: “Two thousand for the visit and another three thousand if a ritual is needed.” Money is not typically something which crops up so explicitly in this kind of film. I guess exorcists have to eat too.
The performances are decent enough, in the main. While Mandel does well in her role as the disintegrating and grief-stricken woman, Chen is somewhat less successful, never quite able to strike the right balance between stoically supportive and concerned. Stevenson previously gave us Girl Upstairs. I think that worked better, mostly because the script there wasn’t going down a very well-trodden route. For any horror fan will have seen this kind of thing before, particularly in the “restless and vengeful spirit” basics. But there is a reason this kind of film keeps getting made: people like watching them. This may not break new ground, yet is a movie which knows its limits, and works within them effectively enough. From my perspective, it helps that, up until earlier this year, my late mother-in-law was sitting on a shelf in our living-room. Fortunately, it is no longer the case.
The film is now available on Tubi.