Aster Johnson

It's rare a movie truly captures me in the first shot. We see a person laying in bed, their head backlit and their face completely in the shadows. It's just barely recognizable for what it is, just a few slivers of light in a dark void. It's the perfect tone setter for what this movie is. It's immediately unnerving and subtly haunting in a way that's hard to pin down, and that feeling of unease stays with you like an aura. When people ask for horror recommendations, this is one of my go-to's. Is it a masterpiece? Certainly not, but it's a damn effective unsettling experience. You feel the low budget, but I wouldn't say it detracts from the film very much. The characters all feel real, even the ones that aren't wholly fleshed out. It's almost slice-of-life, just people going about their lives as something sinister boils in the background. It's low key, with long stretches where very few scares happen, and there's nothing wrong with that. The fear isn't of what the movie shows you, but what may happen next. It cuts before anything truly terrible happens, but the tension you feel lingers. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that the horror this movie presents is very real, if somewhat ambiguous, and you feel that even in the moments where very little of consequence is happening. This is a movie about mental illness, but the horror isn't the mentally ill person and the dangers they may pose- it's the illness itself. It's a portrayal of mental illness that feels both honest and empathetic, and that's really rare- especially in horror. You fear for our main character just as much as you fear for the people around him whom he is at risk of hurting. Also, it features a very real and wholesome relationship between two adult men, and that's always nice to see. Absolutely recommend this one for anyone who likes subtle, psychological horror.

The closest thing I can compare this movie to is a dream full of melancholy and things lost and longed for, then waking up to an empty bed. Needless to say, maybe skip this one if you've had a bad week. It's probably one of the most depressing movies I've ever seen, and I know that sounds hyperbolic but I struggle to describe it any other way. It's not depressing in the way something like The Butterfly Effect is, it's personal and introspective and visceral. This movie takes place during an intense snowstorm, and cold grayscale of winter is baked into every moment, even in the scenes that take place indoors. It's a very human movie, to the point that it's pretty hard to watch. But what worked about this movie for me is that it feels unrelentingly honest. It's bleak, it's depressing, it's opaque at times, but it's raw and honest in what it has to say. It's a character study almost, and one that has a true, personal understanding of its subject. Honestly, if the film wasn't so saturated with rich, sublime misery, it would probably feel like a pretentious fake-deep slog. If you're open to surrealism and opaque storytelling, and what I've described doesn't scare you, it's worth a watch.