Director: Abby Brenker, Ellyn Vander Wyden
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Plot:
Returning to her childhood home, a woman looking to reconnect with her husband becomes convinced her neighbor is involved in the disappearance at the lake years earlier and tries to figure out what’s going on eventually driving her into a state of obsession the more she looks into the incident.
Review:
This was a decent enough thriller that has some decent enough aspects to it. The main driving factor here is that there’s a solid starting point for the mystery to take place once she starts to stay there. With the whole thing slowly turns into a discovery of the mother’s disappearance once the necklace is uncovered as they stay at the house and the insistence on the investigation as they realize that she’s slowly turning into a different person the longer they’re there. From the sudden increase in strange visions involving a supposed spirit haunting her, the start of her sleepwalking heading out into the lake with no preventative measures to stop her, and the snap decisions that turn everyone around her against her, this one manages to build an effective storyline around the idea of the lakeside area exerting an influence over her. That goes along incredibly well with the sense of isolation in the area and the obviously shady intentions of the neighbor towards her as he worms his way into her life, giving this enough here to be quite enjoyable overall.
However, there’s still the fact that this one manages to go through these motions in as predictable and expected manner as possible. The whole thing is quite obvious about the intentions and storyline twists from the start and never really deviates from the idea of what’s going on even with the different means of getting there as once it becomes obvious what’s going on this one tends to drag itself out to a point where it just feels like plodding along to the inevitable. Even trying to impart some kind of different twist in the characters’ outcome doesn’t help this one escape the sense of familiarity present here as that’s highlighted quite clearly and allows this to take a different route to get where it’s expected. As well, this one also manages to end on such an abrupt note that it just concludes once everything’s been resolved which is a weird touch and also tends to lower this one somewhat.
Overview: ***/5
A really solid and enjoyable thriller even with some flaws, there’s enough here to enjoy that it comes off as likable as long as originality isn’t a major factor as that’s quite high on the list of detriments here. Those with an interest in this kind of genre fare or aren’t bothered by these kinds of factors will have a lot to like here while those turned off by these elements should heed caution.
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