SILHOUETTE *** USA 2019 Dir: Mitch McLeod. 115 mins
When Amanda and Jack Harms lose their young daughter to pneumonia, their already weak relationship starts to fall apart. Jack (Tom Zembrod) wants them to make a fresh start so they move to a secluded, fully furnished house in the country. Jack is hoping to rekindle what they once had however Amanda (April Hartman) is so severely traumatised by the loss of Sarah that it seems impossible she will ever get over it. She is haunted by visions of her even in the new house. Believing he is doing all he can for Amanda yet feeling like he is being pushed away Jack finds comfort with someone else leaving Amanda to fight her demons alone. The question here is are these visions she is having a warning to them or is Amanda just going insane?
Met with really high praise on IMDB ‘s user reviews with it being hailed as scary, weird, disturbing and captivating I was very excited to see this. I successfully made my way through all 1 hour 55 mins of it to find myself a lot less enthusiastic about it and not at all captivated. I will say this though it is very well shot and a lot about it creates a creeping atmosphere. The set pieces are cleverly thought out and their house in the country with its very religious interior is definitely eerie. It is very typical of the super natural type movies; jump scares, partial flashes of disfigured ghouls and people being dragged into wardrobes happen sporadically throughout but didn’t strike me as particularly scary or disturbing. The real story matter is bold and the way the couple deal with their own grief does hit hard which is portrayed incredibly well by Hartman. She had a lot of quite difficult scenes that she handled very well but became increasingly shouty as it went on. It probably didn’t help that this is a very long slow burn of a movie which lingered on some of her scenes way too long for them to have a lasting impact. It is interspersed with little flashes of drama throughout but not really enough to hold my attention completely which as a result left a few things a bit confused in my mind but the final scenes were effective enough. The soundtrack is sparse but added power to the movie exactly when it needed it.
Review by Sarah Budd
