Shelley

Louise (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and Kasper (Peter Christoffersen) want to become parents but Louise is unable to have children. She seals a pact with her Romanian maid, Elena (Cosmina Stratan), to bear Louise's child, but things don't turn out as they planned.

What sort of feeling or anticipation do we get when we approach "Shelley"? At first, the name evokes thoughts of Frankenstein's monster, but we quickly see this might not be the best parallel. The plot is much closer to a modern retelling of "Rosemary's Baby". Not that we needed one, but the concept of "natal horror" can always make room for one more.

The dynamics of this film are noticeably different from "Rosemary". In that film, the threat was always external. Mia Farrow was terrified of her neighbors, her doctor, and sometimes even her husband as she continually felt boxed in. With "Shelley", it's almost as though things have been reversed. The threat now comes from within (the child itself) and we see events not just from the mother's perspective, but also from the outsiders (the "other" parents).

The idea is good, and they must be applauded for casting an actual Romanian in the role of a Romanian maid. This is sort of counter-acted by having Danish people speaking English, however. I presume this was done to boost the chances of international screenings and sales, but it seems inauthentic. This is probably a nitpick, but in this regard I have to be a purist.

The bigger question remains: Why does the couple live in the woods without electricity? The answer, of course, is this offers a great setting for a horror film. But it is not adequately explained by the characters. You might think an employee would ask why there's no power, but it never seems to occur to anyone. Are they Luddites? Is this a religious thing? Maybe a little mystery is good, but it seems silly to avoid the issue altogether.

Early reviews seem to be very divergent and often mixed. Rotten Tomatoes has the film at an impressive 100%, while IMDb gives the movie only 5.7/10, which is nothing to be proud of. It's too early to rely on either metric, so let's look at more concrete examples. Noel Murray walks that middle line, saying the film "becomes frustratingly vague in the middle" but ends up giving it a passing grade anyway. Neil Genzlinger feels similar, saying the film takes "a minimalist approach that is both intriguing and somewhat unsatisfying… Maybe expecting a horror film to have a point is expecting too much." He clearly wants to like the film but cannot fully commit to it. Alissa Simon is even less impressed, agreeing that the film is "unsatisfying", and also volunteering "underdeveloped" and "ludicrous".

For my money, the film is a decent horror film in its own right and will probably be popular when it hits Netflix or wherever it ends up. But it is neither one of the best on the festival circuit nor one of the best horror films of 2016. In the glut of movies coming out year after year, this is still better than average, but the average seems to be on a decline… so it doesn't take too much to get a C when we're grading on a curve.

"Shelley" debuted in February 2016 in Berlin, and has been making the festival rounds. Most recently it screened at the Fantasia International Film Festival in July. No rest for the wicked, however. Director Ali Abbasi is said to be already at work on "The Holy Spider," a film about Saeed Hanaei, an infamous Iranian serial killer. (Other sources have him directing "Border", which may be the same film under a different title.)

A barren wife engages a maid in her remote home, before propositioning the girl with money to become a surrogate mother. The plan works ... until the baby kicks in.

Direction and editing are very good, setting the scene at a fair pace in a claustrophobic world with only three characters. Particularly good early on is the relationship between the women, which gives a genuine feel of them getting to know each other and enjoying their company. Lovely acting, and I got a good chuckle when the maid stuck her tongue out.

The sense of unease is created with subtle music, and the photography makes use of well lit landscapes and close ups. But why are we uneasy? I kept guessing where the threat was coming from, but sadly it comes from nowhere, so I began losing patience about halfway through. There were a couple of interesting efforts to deliver the evil eye from the baby, but it's another case for Inspector Babadook - horror methods used to give a frisson to personal difficulties that might be psychological, might be spiritual.

Problems with the story. The maid's background is interesting - educated but poor immigrant ground up by the West's wealth machine, but that doesn't inform her character, even though she's the plaything of unaccountably wealthy hippies. No attention paid to the fact she was effectively lured in with lies - when the proposition was made I was thinking, Uh oh. Apparently I was wrong. So where did we come from, and where did we end up? I dunno. Even the shaman departed in a state of confusion.

This is a Danish production, but mostly in English in the first part, so no need for subtitles until about 40 mins. And the first time I've seen fisting in a drama - shouldn't he have had it torn off at the wrist?

Overall, unfathomable because it lacks depth.

Talk about slow paced! This movie just went on and on and on with no real progression. It was an hour and a half movie that could have easily been squeezed into 30 minutes with the needless scenes and repetitiveness taken out. The premise was good but due to a lack of a good script, editing and direction the film just meandered on with no real climax, pay off or closure. As it abruptly ended you thought "Is that it?". You could have forgiven the director if there was a great finale after the incredibly slow build up but it just whimpered out after 90 minutes of hoping that something great was going to happen. Greatly disappointing. You could see the director has seen the Omen from the numerous plagiarized snippets he randomly inserted (all the cheap ones that don't involve CGI)but it was just a very,very poor imitation to a movie that did this infinitely better. This was no horror and barely a thriller.Unfortunately the director thought broody scenes of landscapes made up for actual content.Sorry but this movie was a complete dud.

A subtle horror film not without its moments of suspense and utter creepiness. We follow Elena (accountant turned housekeeper, for some reason) who gets close to her employers (a couple who live in an isolated house without modern amenities, for some reason). She wants to save money quickly to go back to her son and so agrees to be surrogate mother for their baby.

The film was too slow for some, so if you need quick doses of jumpscares and shock tactics, this isn't one for you. However, I found the departure from mainstream action horror and script to be very refreshing. I was not bored at any point in the movie, because it does an excellent job of building character and relationships in the first half hour. If anything, I was impatient to see where it was all leading, because the story has some unpredictable turn of events.

Not a lot was answered by the open ending, so you need to pay attention to little details throughout the film, and theories will inevitably run amok with plenty of evidence for more than one horror scenarios. Also, it is always a good sign when you can sympathize will ALL of the characters (which are few to be sure, but very well played).

It is the most convincing horror movie to come out in a while, and I recommend it to anyone who can get roped into a horror story without a sense of urgency.

This is the kind of slow-burn horror film that really, truly gets under your skin. the type of horror film that America doesn't make (although the last two years that has been changing, with flicks like The Babadook, It Follows, and The Witch). This won't be for every horror fan, especially those that want more craziness or loud jump scares. Instead, what the film does is establish its characters very well and from then on it lurks and creeps you out until you become more and more terrified by what's happening on screen. It's exactly the type of film that really lingers on the mind and I really hope more people seek it out.