Where's Rose

Not sure why the good reviews are getting bot down votes. The movie is low budget, but decent! I wavered in my thinking who the real monster was, and in the end, my gut was right.

Only by then I assumed the movie had gone in a very different direction. It might seem like the same old "Changeling" type of movie, but if you stick with it til the end you'll likely be surprised.

The acting is fine, nothing that stands out as either fantastic or awful.

I don't want to spoil the plot so I'll end here, hopefully within the new required character minimum needed for reviewing. There's not much else to say, aside from the fact there are no real jump scares nor stomach turning effects.

I really liked this little film. I'm quite surprised that it only has a current rating of 4.x. Yes, as others have said, the acting isn't the best, especially the mom is quite cringeworthy, as well as some of the supporting cast. But, I felt the little girl and her brother were quite good and definitely carried the movie.

What I particularly liked about it was the very engrossing sense of Mystery, where you really begin to wonder WTF is going on. Nothing seems quite right, and SOME of it is fairly clear. BUT... it is not until you get to the end that you truly understand what has been going on.

It is a nice blend of genuine Mystery, Psychological Thriller, and the Supernatural. And, I feel that the director did an excellent job at balancing everything. Again, yes, it WOULD have been nice if he could have elicited some better performances by the supporting actors, but I think overall he guided the story quite well.

Now you have to be very, VERY patient with this one, because it would be quite easy to get impatient with all the ambiguity and lack of 'Action'. If you honestly get bored really easily, then I would humbly suggest that you give this one a pass. But, to me the whole point of the story and the way it is developed, is that the audience is drawn along with a strong involving sense of 'What the hell is going to happen next?' and 'Why the hell did that happen?' And, when you do get to the end, the explanation I feel is indeed very satisfying. Because it ties together some feelings and questions that the audience may have had, but didn't quite know why (I KNOW that sounds super vague, but I don't want to give anything away : )

Anyway, IF you don't mind a really slow burn story, and you can be very patient and deal with the ambiguity of what is going on or where it is going and do not get bored easily, and if you appreciate a good Mystery with Supernatural elements, you might have a good chance of enjoying this one...

Day #2

So, this is a bit of a strange one. The ambition was there and Mathis does a great job overall but the treatment used to cover the overall theme may have been a misstep.

Hovering somewhere between a Lifetime Sunday Feature, Arthouse and Fantasy (think Guillermo del Toro) the movie is over before you can truly commit.

The flow and pacing were acceptable, and I credit Mathis for attacking such brave subject matter, however it never truly gels and one feels sated solely from the socially conscious message, getting nothing from the horror elements at all.

Also, the acting was very uneven, save for Ty Simpkins, Annaliese Judge and Skyler Elise Philpot.

5.5/10

#31DaysOfHalloween2022.

Took me a while to get round to this purely because some of the reviews were very negative.

When I did eventually watch it, I was so glad I did.

It's a great little mystery horror. Despite a low budget, the cinematography is great, the acting is on-point (with a few forgivable exceptions) and the script is clever. Theres' a twist that is sign-posted throughout but never obviously enough that it ruins the ending. I had suspicions of what was going to happen but still found the final reveal rewarding.

There are several negative reviews on IMDB but, for the most part, these seem to miss the point. In particilar, a review titled "Doesn't make any sense" misses the point entirely. There's more than one way to interpret this film and there is a lot of scope to unpick the symbolism; that reviewer clearly just took the whole thing literally.

As I said in the title, if slowburn horror appeals to you, and you don't mind lower-budgey (but still very well made!) indie films, you could do a lot worse than this!

My main question after finishing this one was: What?

Seriously, I have no idea what this movie was about or how it wrapped up. It began with a simple enough plot: A little girl goes missing and when she's found, her overachieving older brother feels there's something different about the lass.

And thus ends the only part of the movie I understood. Maybe there's a lot of symbolism flying over my head here, but to my eye, they just mangled this story to a bloody, unrecognizable pulp and put haunting music over it to fool you into thinking it was a horror movie.

I'd be worried about spoiling the ending for new viewers, but truthfully, bros. I don't think I could if I tried. I honestly don't know if this was a story of madness, a creature feature, or a tender Lifetime film about the importance of family, or perhaps a cautionary tale about the trouble with killing siblings.

I thought the little girl was a fine actress. She was downright spooky at times. So there. I said something about the movie, can you just leave me alone now?