O Convento

I'm always attracted to these Christian horror movies and I love the feeling they gave me. This film was one of the decent ones in that category. Eerie, atmospheric locations, cool concept, impressive direction, dialogues and a stellar cast with stellar performance. But the ending was confusing, rushed and had no satisfying conclusion.

I'm always attracted to these Christian horror movies and I love the feeling they gave me. This film was one of the decent ones in that category. Eerie, atmospheric locations, cool concept, impressive direction, dialogues and a stellar cast with stellar performance. But the ending was confusing, rushed and had no satisfying conclusion.

This is marketed as a horror movie, but I think it's more of a lean, tightly written mystery with horrific elements. The clues are so densely packed I couldn't leave to get a soda refill, for fear of missing some key point in the story.

Jena Malone is great as always, though her accent is a bit shaky in places. Janet Suzman is a standout as Mother Superior, as is Ian Pirie, who is genuinely frightening as Jena's dad.

Scenes jump back and forth in time and from dreams to reality in a disorienting fashion, but the final resolution ties up all...and I do mean ALL the loose ends in a way I found very satisfying.

Other reviews have commented that too much of the mystery is given away early. I disagree. I could see the general direction it was going but was still surprised at the reveal.

Smarter than the typical jump-scare movie that gets released every week, it will keep your interest and make you think. Just don't expect it to make you jump out of your seat.

Recommended.

Its a bit difficult for me to rate this because of the Christian elements which I clearly don't get, as a non-Christian and not knowing the history of European christianity.

The movie is a bit slow, the lead character Grace is just wandering the abbey for 50 mins of the movie. She has come here after she is informed about her brother's suicide.

We get to know of her traumatic childhood of a half-crazed father abusing her and rest of the family, in the end stabbing her mother.

Then we have these shots of medieval age where some knights are the visiting this abbey.

The last 30 mins ,where some action happens, left with me lot of questions. Maybe someone who knows Christian theology may have understood what the hell is happening.

The odd part is that the movie doesn't take a stand on who is the bad person here, the church or Grace which makes me give them some points.

No spoilers mentioned.

This film was a nice surprise. The camera work and cinematography was excellent. I appreciated the beautiful scenery of Scotland and the gorgeous atmospheric church.

The acting was above reproach.

The screenplay/story wasn't anything really new but the setting made it feel fresh.

There were flashbacks of 2 different time-frames, along side the Main time line that I wish would of tied into the story a lot tighter. That's a lot of history to glue together so keeping it as simple as they did was probably the best route to take. But I did notice how it diluted the story as a whole.

Overall...I enjoyed this film and would recommend it.

The movie has been terribly misrepresented and misquoted as a horror while, in reality, it tends to lean more towards the genre of murder/mystery thrillers rather than a gloomy, atmospheric fear flick, contrary to what the trailers may have earlier suggested.

The creators should have been more sincere in their promotional strategies because if you are not honest about your work, the audience has a harder time deciding what to expect and what not to and that could backfire and In this case, I believe it is about to turn sour as well.

The film itself isn't half bad, and neither are the concepts it attempts to explore, but I'm worried that subverting viewers' expectations won't go down well with most of them, it didn't with me that's for certain.