What a beautiful thing, this one here. I read about this a few places here and there and everyone seemed to really like it which doesn’t usually transfer over to things I necessarily like but I’ll just come out and say that I loved this. I would also like to say that just looking at google images of this movie do nothing for it and I think the poster people might have dropped the ball on their marketing because I thought this was going to be some sort of lame monster movie when I saw the thing above. And yes – that is something from the movie but it is absolutely not what this is all about. It reminds me of when Mike Flanagan made Absentia (which is one of my favorite things of his) and they made the poster I’ll put at the bottom of this post – garbage. Well – the thing in the poster which is indeed in the movie is absolutely not garbage but something wicked and awesome they just totally dropped the ball on this one in my opinion. I thought this movie was so well done and put together and thought out and yes a little creepy and I know it’s always subjective on whether or not someone else will like it but this really really worked for me.

I really loved the way that they showed something and left it alone and came back to it later with some slight changes or a fully expanded camera shot. It reminded me of the tricks they played with the visuals at the end of Lake Mungo. Now let’s take a quick break here – I know I’ve been a vocal supporter of Lake Mungo for a number of years now and I think other people like it too but I’ve also read how people don’t get the hype or whatever. And let’s be honest, 7/8 of Mungo is ok and all right and jolly good old cock and all of that but come on those last ten minutes (or less maybe) were “hey fuck yeah you Australian bastards you got me blimey mate dingos and shrimps love you mean it bonzers that’s not a knife that’s a knife you joeys and sheilas good one!” At least to me anyway so my comparison to Mungo is the cool use of sleight of hand at least I wasn’t expecting. I loved it.

In this a couple are refurbishing some sort of home to live in that I could never imagine. I don’t know if it’s a castle or manor out in the hills or what but it looks like it’s made of stone and wood and doesn’t look like it would have good heating or air or even electric but it’s real pretty and all of that and one night the wife is alive and hears a knock at the door that has one of those slide-y peephole things and there’s a guy there with a blind eye / glass eye and he says someone’s in the place and he’s scared for her life. Naturally we all know this guy is a murdering sone of a bitch and soon the wife is murdered and dead and the husband who runs the insane asylum is moving in with his new squeeze. One of his last things he needs to do before he just moves on completely is to honor his dead wife’s sister’s wish to bring her the eye that guy had in his head the night she died.

The sister, you see, is blind but filled with the ability to see visions in regards to strange things, like the glass eyeball, or any number of ephemera she keeps in her shop full of oddities. I fully believe that her shop is awesome and I wish I could work there or own the thing. But with this eyeball she holds in her hand we are head to believe that she can see what the murdering son of a butch saw the night he was there at the renovation house the night her sister was murdered dead as shit. And now she’s come to the beautiful manor house place to help bring an end to any foul play or not and then I think all the fun starts.

And what about the haunted bell? You probably can’t see it in this picture because I barely can and I know what I’m looking for but what a – well i’ll keep my mouth shut in case someone wants to see this.

Here’s a rendition of it that Steve and I made but it doesn’t do it any real justice I guess but I feel like it’s better than the movie poster:

I also really can’t find any good pics to stick in these posts like I like to to help remember things with so I took this one off of my tv – this one brief shot was one of my favorites in the whole thing. All of the minutes leading up to it were intense in a very good way:

I also don’t think there’s much I can go into with inadvertently spoiling things so I guess I’ll just leave this alone for today so you can go in without knowing anything. I mean aside from what I said already. I loved it.

But back to Absentia – what is this shit? Who made that? Me before Steve Loggins?

FILED UNDER: I CANT SAY ENOUGH GOOD THINGS ABOUT THIS MOVIE ABSOLUTELY ONE OF MY FAVORITES OF 2024