Strange But True

Movie thrillers and mysteries usually revolve around a "McGuffin," an art of fiction set up to establish the plot and motivate the characters but which matters very little by the end of the movie. It's the trap the filmmaker sets to capture the audience to invest them in the story he/she wants to tell.

In this movie, the McGuffin is the mystery itself. The filmmaker doesn't ask us to believe that a ghost can impregnate a sad and grieving girl. Instead, it asks us to look at how loss can become grievance and become toxic, and what it takes to remember who and why we love.

Give it a chance.

This is one of those mystery tales that keeps you guessing as to why our young female is now pregnant from, she believes, her deceased boyfriend from five years ago. We are teased with several possibilities from the mysterious to the bizarre. Of course the answer as to what happened occurs in the final minutes so be patient as you guess who, or what happened.

This film tells the story of a woman who believes she carries the child of her dead boyfriend.

The plot is mysterious to start with, and then becomes very engaging and captivating. I really feel for all the characters, including the mother, father, brother, the girlfriend and the girlfriend's neighbors. Who would have thought the plot takes such a dramatic turn and becomes so touching. I really enjoyed this film.

I don't want to spoil anything so I won't go into detail, but this film was going along pretty well, with enough mystery, drama, character development, redemption, acceptance, relationship, family, love, etc, etc....very interesting concept and held my attention throughout trying to figure things out and what exactly happened. There were a few ways this could go and the film maker did a good job to showcase those avenues to keep things interesting and mysterious and leave plenty of room for a twist and surprise ending. Well the surprise was they basically ruined it all in the last 10 minutes using that old time tested and overused method of suspense, which frankly bugs the heck out of me, which is having characters make implausible decisions and do things that no normal, rational or even irrational person would do. The decisions and actions made by several characters in the ending scenes were just so implausible that I docked 1 star, being generous too. So this gets just a 6, watchable, but I believe it could have garnered 7, a fair movie, easily with just a little better writing when they wrapped things up.

This is newbie director Rowan Athale's second full length feature film (plus one short), and aside from a few technical errors and editing issues, he pretty much nailed it behind the camera and in directing his cast.

The film is an adaptation of the novel (I haven't read it) of the same name by John Searles, turned into a screenplay by novice writer Eric Garcia. The pacing started out decent, then slowed down midway, and felt dragged out towards the end, that the 96 min run-time felt longer. I wasn't a fan of the non-climatic stretch of cross-cutting time lines, and I felt the story would've been better told in the proper order.

Casting was excellent and all actors were convincing in their roles, especially Margaret Qualley, who was outstanding in her starring role.

The cinematography was on point, and the score perfect for this type of film.

For a low-budget B-grade film by unseasoned filmmakers, this was a surprisingly enjoyable noir-thriller about grief, belief and the things we keep hidden.

It's a recommended watch and a well deserved 8/10 from me.