A missed opportunity

Maybe you’ll go into this movie without any bias and actually like it. Me: I was destined to hate it from the get-go.

First, we have Patricia Heaton’s political views. She’s a little less of the crazy repub than before, but it’s hard to watch her on screen these days. (Not sorry to be one of those people who have a hard time separating the art from the artist.)

Then we have the big Red Herring. I probably should have known better than to rely on what the movie states is true, but when the definition of “beldham” popped on the screen, I only absorbed what it gave me. The witch.

Had it stayed on screen long enough for me to read it—or better yet, been a good movie—I might have paid closer attention. But instead, I let it lead me.

On its face, it’s about post-partum mental health. A single mom moves into her mother’s house with her 6-month-old child. She keeps having mental lapses, and the movie seems to follow suit: it’s hard to gauge how much time passes. It’s fast-paced and chaotic, yet nothing seems to happen.

She thinks the house is doing something to her, but it’s hard to gather what. She keep hearing a voice say “what about me?” She finds a baby grave in the garden. She does inappropriate things around others. She’s sane one minute and not the next. It’s hard to follow, honestly. I was confused for most of it.

And that’s part of the reason why I didn’t see the ending coming. Normally, I’d say that’s a great thing for a horror movie, but not in this case. I felt like I was given the ending to a different movie, and that I’d gone through all that shit for a hollow payout.

The structure of the movie is great in theory: an unreliable narrator who, as it turns out, has dementia. She’s stuck in a time loop of sorts, the time when her baby died at 6 months. The voice is Patricia Heaton as a young child wanting attention, and the grave in the back is her daughter’s. But it leans heavily into the post-partum psychosis, leading you further away from the conclusion. Then there’s the supernatural element, which is nothing at all. A figment of a fragmented mind.

Once it’s revealed that Mom is actually Grandma, we are taken back through some of the scenes with her current self. I think at that point, my jaw was open, and I may have uttered “you fuckers” out loud. It’s a good twist, but the acting and filmmaking weren’t up to the same quality. It’s a B-movie, and not even a good one. Katie Parker is a good actress, but Patricia Heaton felt low-budget.

I had to watch nudity (it’s a low-hanging horror trope) and a raven being pulled out of Parker’s mouth (was that just her choking as an old lady?)…for what purpose? It wasn’t even real. At least do it for a reason. I guess it was to throw the audience off, but it seemed less intentional and more like a bunch of tropes were slapped together to make a twist ending.

I think in another universe, this would have been a great movie.