Amuleto

Guys...stop. Having a bunch of well-shot footage of forests and obnoxious experimental music doesn't make something a high quality horror film on par with things like Hereditary and The Lighthouse. If that surface level stuff is all you think it takes to make a movie intelligent and masterfully crafted, sorry, but you're not as clever as you're trying to make yourselves sound.

There are many things that directors like Aster and Eggers do that make their movies rise far above ones like this, but let me just pick one, and arguably the most important one, THE PERFORMANCES OF THE CHARACTERS. You have to be absolutely kidding me if you're going to sit there trying to tell me that the actors in Amulet were anywhere close to well-directed, maximum effort performances from people like Willem Dafoe and Toni Collette. They aren't just on different floors, they're not even in the same building.

I've seen much, much worse than Amulet, and I wouldn't even go as far as to call it a bad film, but I can't think of a single moment where Tomas or Magda made me think "wow, what a great performance". Hell, I can't even think of one that made me care about either of them. They're dreary characters in a dreary setting acting out dreary motions to fill up time until the entire effects budget is blown in the last 10 minutes, and yes, the director is obviously TRYING to convey something poignant with this unconventional story, but they just aren't selling it.

"Weird + good cinematography" does not automatically equal a great film.

"Having an artistic vision + good intentions" does not automatically equal a great film.

It's a great effort, but it's not a great film. Wait five years to see if anyone's still talking about it, or even remembers that it existed, if you're still unsure about that.

The movie tries a little too hard to be smart and artsy, and it ends up plodding along at a slow pace at some points. This isn't your standard horror fare, which is a nice change of pace. The cinematography painted the world as a dark, bleak place. But I ended up not caring for any of the characters, and the director somehow made the horrific elements boring as very little happens even after the horror is revealed. The ending, for me, was confusing although a repeat viewing (which is unlikely to happen) may clarify things.

This isn't for your standard moviegoer, but for those who like the more artsy films, this may be for you. Just go in knowing this is quite the slow-burn.

Not quite what you might perceive, as this story doth deceive, not a demon vigilante but a trickster who's men anti.

Crawling along at a snail's pace, voids not even the greatest leaps of faith could overcome, but there is an audience for this kind of batty nonsense I'm sure, though they probably have an axe to grind.

While there are only one or two actual scares in this film, it does a great job of building an increasing atmosphere of dread. There are also some pretty grotesque scenes.

Storywise, this concerns a PTSD-afflicted soldier who had been part of some overseas conflict (apparently Eastern European) and is now in London living with other refugees. After their accommodation gets burned down, a nun finds him free housing with a young woman (also apparently Eastern European) on the condition that he helps repair her dilapidated house. However, from the outset not all seems right. The young girl's mother (unseen) is apparently dying, in pain, in the upstairs room. But why all the secrecy about her? And what is the strange runic symbol that he finds in the ceiling. What is the meaning of the night-time flashbacks that he has to his time as a soldier?

Although I'm not sure that the story entirely holds up in terms of logic, it nonetheless kept me spellbound for the duration.

I must say, some of the comments left here by others are baffling to me. Reading not too far between the lines of some of them, it seems that some people don't seem to appreciate a horror story told from the perspective of a female writer and director, or that the lead characters are not English. Well, so much the worse for those viewers. As for being slow - if this hour-and-a-half of effective horror is a strain on your patience, then I wouldn't bother going to see pretty much anything else that is out right now, many of which stretch their stories over two-and-a-half to three hours (Memoria, anyone?).

This movie had all the elements to hold attention and fulfill its mission. And to some extent it holds, so much that I went to the end. I don't even know why. Perhaps out of curiosity or because I had some hope of improvement. But unfortunately for some reason it never takes off. It's not entirely bad, but it's never good. It's too slow. No scares. Only a few disgusting scenes, some unnecessary. It bets a lot on the cast, but this one is lazy, with the exception of the dedicated Alec Secareanu. So, this way the film doesn't progress. The script itself is unsustainable. Superficially there is an interesting idea, but poorly executed. Watch at your own risk, but only super fans of the genre will give it high rates.