Director: Lee Cronin
Cast: Lily Sullivan, Alyssa Sutherland, Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols
Have I Seen it Before: Nope.
Did I Like It: Yes, I really did. However, there is likely to be a confession at the end of this review, so watch out.
This fifth film in the house that Sam Raimi built does something that most horror sequels don’t even try to do. It absolutely does not concern itself—not one bit so far as I could tell—with slavish devotion to the canon which proceeded it. This is not to say that the film avoids those trappings entirely, but even David Gordon Greene’s Halloween trilogy used what happened before to fuel its madness, here one could go in blind about Deads Evil or otherwise and have a the same visceral (take that word to mean any possible definition) reaction.
And that reaction is likely to be made in spades. Sutherland makes for a sympathetic victim before instantly becoming one of the most unnerving villains in recent horror memory. You’ve seen the bathtub sequence, if you’ve seen the trailers, and it delivers, but once you start seeing things through a peephole, you know there is a level of craft on display here that isn’t often seen in any film, regardless of genre.
And yet…
Look, I’m reasonably sure that its not the film’s fault, but I’m entirely certain that I fell asleep for the last few minutes. Given the nihilistic chaos on display here, that probably says more about me than it does the film itself. I’ve looked at synopses since, and I’m relatively sure I maybe missed about 2-3 minutes in the third act, but there’s definitely a gap in my memory. Maybe I was abducted by aliens briefly just as the film is deciding to justify its opening scenes.
But really, I think it’s more of a byproduct of the chairs at Cinergy Theaters. Reclining is fine. But these numbers have seat warmers to boot, and sink into the ground as you recline. The sunken place is real, folks. Jordan Peele tried to warn us.