Cinebuffs Recommends
Crikey, this must have been a hard sell, but thank goodness they bought it.
A couple of weeks ago, my youngest son asked me what I had heard about that I would recommend to watch, knowing my now notorious penchant for time-wasting.
I had heard about this only a couple of days before, glanced at a trailer and was moved to mention it as it looked, well, interesting. More than most, at the moment, at least.
Being a big Communion and Signs fan, this was really like catnip to me, if I'm honest, so this maybe didn't have to work quite as hard as other efforts in the horror genre, if you can even call it horror per se, as sometimes it's almost comical.
Delivered largely without dialogue to speak of (unless you speak 'alien'), this relies heavily on its sound design and score, which it uses very effectively, no doubt making script writers everywhere more than a little anxious.
Plot-wise, it's admittedly difficult to swallow (no pun intended, you'll see) before you even get into the story which is even more bizarre. Narratively, Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) makes decisions that you or I wouldn't even consider, purely out of self-preservation, a talent for which she seems cognitively bereft. Leaving town would be front and centre, especially given how loathed she is by her neighbours. But no, she stays and fights this extended home invasion with all of the gusto of the proverbial woman wronged.
Dever is terrific as the unluckiest and most disliked woman in town, delivering a mostly muted performance with excellent and formidable range which should be admired for that reason alone, as pulling this off remotely convincingly must have been tricky.
Far from your run-of-the-mill horror or alien abduction, this is an engaging, often riveting hour and a half, full of tension and a perfectly paced thread skirting furtively underneath its main storyline.
Ruby Murray has never held quite so much menace.