As much as Chris Skotchdopole’s debut indie, , has been described as a house invasion horror, it is actually a marriage story about a relationship that needs to be rescued from a clear and certain disaster that it is careening towards. A conversation during the wedding photo shoot of Leah (Ella Rae Peck) and Shane (Rigo Garay) sets the ball rolling, with Leah either not allowing him a say on issues or disagreeing with him on everything—from how they first met to his book that is being brought out by her publishing house. If these disagreements were not ominous enough, a baffling blackout later, Shane finds himself and Leah (now his wife), heading off to her boss’s remote mansion for their honeymoon.
There is no recollection in his mind of the wedding night. The couple is stopped at the very start of their journey by the irritating waiter John (John Speredakos) offering profuse apologies for a disaster involving their wedding cake. At the same time, he has the most uncharitable and uncalled-for things to say about their vintage car from the 70s.
Meanwhile, Shane and Leah’s quarrels continue at their getaway, over the opening of wedding presents and solving crossword puzzles and then reach the tipping point with Shane wanting to back out of his book deal, after five long years of hard work. He has second thoughts about going public with his father’s alcoholism, his own troubled relationship with him, and their immigrant woes. As Leah loses her cool and Shane gets some disturbing messages from a mysterious lady called Rose, the marriage seems on the verge of an imminent breakdown.
It gets worse with the unanticipated arrival of a car in the driveway and a knock on the door by the irritating waiter John, claiming to have found the couple’s honeymoon spot through Uncle Leo’s Facebook page. It is here that the conventions of house invasion horror kick in, with John overstaying his visit along with his bartender wife—yes, the enigmatic Ms Rose (Lorraine Farris)—ostensibly to deliver the missing cake, but in fact to blackmail the couple into financing and becoming business partners on their weird business proposition—John’s invention, a device freakier than himself, called . From the domineering Leah to a feckless and whiny Shane, an annoying John to a cryptic Rose—none of the characters inspire any sense of connection, the reason why you neither care nor fear for anyone.
In fact, the so-called element of horror turns out to be exasperating rather than scary for most of the film’s 103-minute duration. relies heavily on sound effects, evident in the opening sequence itself, with an assortment of noises—sigh, alarm and notification sound on the mobile, opening of the door, turning of book pages, cheers and roars—milling together to create a sense of aural chaos but unable to send a chill down the spine. However, the one inventive element in the film is the way Skotchdopole develops the screenplay as a two-hander between the two couples, with the seeds of trouble in one gradually sustained and incited progressively by the other, intrusive, extortionist, odd pair.
As their bickering gets louder and irresolvable, tension begins to mount, and things start taking a welcome turn for the much-needed eerie and menacing only as the film wobbles towards the finale. The vanquishing of evil that has insinuated itself in their lives, is now the path towards deliverance for the Leah-Shane relationship. , premiered at Fantastic Fest, had a limited release in theatres and is now set to start its streaming innings.
Promising more than it is able to deliver, it’s a case of a genre indie that stops short of becoming a kitschy B Grade classic..
