Paul Goddin – Google

’Eli’, a new horror movie directed by Ciaran Foy, debuted on Netflix in the past week. I enjoy horror flicks, and ’Eli’ got my attention because it was trending. Plus, it has a strong trailer (which hints at a relationship between the central character and the word “lie”). I decided why not, and put it on in the background mainly. It took two or three sittings to finish it, but I became pretty invested in Eli, played by Charlie Shotwell, who has an autoimmune disorder that keeps him trapped in a ”bubble boy”-like hazmat suit. His mother and father take him to see an autoimmune specialist, played by Lilly Taylor, who promises a cure, but Eli suspects the “shifty” doctor’s motives, and soon his mother, played by Kelly Reilly of ‘True Detective’, starts to suspect the doctor is hiding something too. Try not to read any spoilers, and you may find the ending packs more of a punch (and leaves an overall better impression) than you might have otherwise. The first two-thirds of the film is pretty standard stuff, with all the usual horror tropes, but the twist ending caught me by surprise, and allows director Foy to show off with some pretty creative visuals (including one horrifying head pop that I haven’t seen depicted as creepily on film since the 1980s in David Cronenberg’s ’Scanners’), which made me want to see what he directs next. I loved the central mother-son relationship between Shotwell’s Eli and Reilly’s Rose, which gets a bit turned upside down by the end, yet still endures. This movie was very good, and I would have expected better reviews from critics and audiences, overall. But maybe this is one of those films that works better the less you know (even the “related movies” feature in Netflix gives a way too much). Netflix’s horror movie ‘Eli’ definitely slipped under my radar, and I give it 8/10 stars.