I need to turn on every single light in my apartment right now. It’s almost midnight and my cat, Jones, is just staring at the hallway door like he can see something I can't. Thanks, *Darling*. Thanks for that. Just finished it on Shudder and I feel... unclean. Not in a gross way, but in a psychological, I-need-to-bleach-my-brain kind of way.
My heart is still doing this weird little fluttery thing. Like a trapped moth. There's this one scene... this one shot that is just burned onto the inside of my eyelids. The main character, she's just standing in her kitchen, right? It’s dead silent. And she's making tea, just this mundane, boring thing. But the camera is behind her, reflected in the polished steel of the fridge. And for a split second, you see another reflection in the reflection. A shadow. Just standing behind her in the reflection of the fridge. It's not really there. It's just... a glitch in the light. But I saw it. I physically recoiled on my couch. My knee hit the coffee table and I swear I saw stars for a second. I had to pause it. Just sat there in the dark, breathing heavily, wondering if I'd actually seen it or if my sleep-deprived brain was just playing tricks on me. That's the kind of movie this is. It gets inside your head and starts rearranging the furniture.
It reminded me of this one time when I was a kid, maybe 8 or 9, and I went to my friend's house. His family had this old, antique doll collection in a glass case in the hallway. The dolls all had these porcelain faces and glass eyes that seemed to follow you. I hated walking past that case. One day, I was the last one to leave, and the hallway was dark, and I swear to god, one of the dolls had its head turned. It was facing the front of the case when I went in, and when I walked out, it was looking right at me. I ran out of that house so fast I almost tripped over my own feet. I never went back. Wait, why am I even telling you this? It's so random. Anyway.
The lead actress... what's her name... the one who looks like a young Mia Farrow? Her performance is just... insane. She barely says anything for the entire first hour. It's all just these micro-expressions. The way her eyes track a fly across the room. The slight tremor in her hand when she picks up a knife. I was completely captivated. But now that I'm sitting here typing this... was it actually good acting? Or was it just a masterclass in looking vacant? I don't know. Maybe I'm just a sucker for a spooky girl in a retro apartment. I thought I loved her performance, but now that I'm thinking about it, was it actually kind of one-note? Ugh. I can't decide.
The whole thing is just so... quiet. And slow. It's a slow burn in the truest sense of the word. It’s just this woman, alone in this gorgeous, but isolating, New York apartment. And things start to get weird. Or do they? Is it all in her head? The movie never really tells you. It just leaves you there to drown in the ambiguity. I spent the last 30 minutes just whispering "what is happening?" to my empty living room. Jones was no help, he was too busy staring at the ghost in the hallway.
Watching it at home on Shudder was definitely the right call, though. I don't think I could've handled the slow pace in a theater. I would've been too aware of the people around me, crunching their popcorn. Here, I could pause it when I got too antsy. I could get up and pace around my coffee table during the really tense bits. The darkness of my own apartment, with just the glow of the TV, made it feel so much more claustrophobic. It felt like the walls of my living room were shrinking. At one point, a floorboard creaked in my apartment and I literally jumped out of my skin. It was just the building settling, but for a second... for a second I thought it was her.
I don't know what the ending meant. Honestly. I have no clue. Was it a ghost story? A story about grief? A story about a woman having a complete mental breakdown in a high-rent apartment? Maybe all three? It doesn't really matter, I guess. The feeling it leaves you with is the point. It's this deep, unsettling sense of dread that just clings to you. I feel like I need to go watch a cartoon or something, just to reset my brain.
Whatever. I'm probably going to be checking behind my shower curtain for the next week.
7/10. It’s more of an experience than a movie. decent
- ishaan