Saturday, April 18, 2015

Horror Film Review

Find Me (2014):  Harmless haunted house flick that reveals how spectacularly awry a game of hide and seek can go.  I say harmless because it's neither a cinematic masterpiece nor is it a complete waste of celluloid.  It just sort of...is.

Emily (Kathryn Lyn) and husband Tim (Cameron Bender) move back to her hometown of Silt, CO where they purchase a suspiciously inexpensive house and immediately begin experiencing all manner of weirdness.  I was impressed by the choice to have the characters accept without question a ghost is responsible.  Seems that Tim enjoys the ghost hunting TV shows.  Crystals, sage burning, seance session...all fail.  This spirit isn't exactly malevolent, rather it's more insistent.  Keeps writing "Find Me" on mirrors and walls.  Tim says the ghost looks like Emily.  That's a clue.  Eventually they discover old Polaroids of a number of young girls in a crawl space, one of which is Emily.  Apparently.  Turns out Emily had a twin sister who disappeared when they were six, her mutilated body later found in a nearby creek.  Well, they thought it was her.  Here's what happened:  Emily's sister begged her to play hide and seek.  Emily told her to go hide with no intention of seeking.  A creepy guy in the neighborhood abducted her and held her captive until he died many years later.  The house Emily and Tim bought?  Yep.  His.  The dead girl in the creek?  Not Emily's twin but one of many girls creepy guy killed.  So the ghost is a very pissed off twin sister who blames Emily for her kidnapping and years of captivity.  In the end, Emily finds the hidden room and her sister's corpse.  Then the ghost exacts its revenge in a manner that, if I'm honest, makes precious little sense.

The easy-going nature of this film is strangely lulling.  There's no ridiculous drama between Tim and Emily, which is refreshing and practically unheard of.  The suspense is subversive; it sneaks up on you, gives you a poke, then runs away.  Old school horror.  The danger, of course, is that if you lull your audience in the first two acts, the denouement must grab them by the throat and shake them silly.  Sadly, that didn't happen.

The Skinny

Acting:  Surprising.  I expected sub-par performances from Lyn and Bender.  What I got was remarkably realistic portrayals.  They acted like how normal folks would act in that situation.
Story:  Tried and true ghost revenge tale.  Nothing unique here.
Direction:  Like being nudged along a slow moving river in an unstable canoe.
Production Values:  No budget data but it probably cost as much as a new Ford Focus.  My only complaint is the lighting.  There wasn't enough of it.
Gore/FX:  A few pints blood splashed around a bathroom; no gore.  No CGI.  Old school.
Scares:  There are a few, yes.  And they're well-earned, none of that cat-jumping-out-of-nowhere crap.
Ending:  Not exactly a shocker.
Verdict:  Should you watch Find Me?  Many worse films out there (see previous movie review), to be sure.  This one is worth your time...if not your money.

Rating:  3 out of 5

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