Peter (Woody Norman) is living a sheltered life with his parents (Lizzy Caplan and Anthony Starr), who are still living in the shadow of a child's disappearence years before. Bullied at school and plagued by nightmares, he starts leaping at shadows... What is a boy to do?
A slippery, tricksy, unpredictable movie, and something of a pleasant surprise in today's market. It wove itself insidiously between genres, using shadows and light to create an atmosphere of unease and dread (check out the "Nosferatu"-esque shadows on the stairs, and the very 70s stares and stark shots of certain characters. The director Samuel Bodin has a good eye for this sort of thing); whilst playing form a child's eye view leaves it so much murkier, and unpleasant. Lizzy Caplan (welcome in movies, and against type here) and Anthony Starr do well as a suburban couple with something going on behind that veneer of pleasantness. This is the first thing I've seen Anthony Starr in, and he's pretty good. Still not watching "The Boys" though.
Anyway, the film's unpredictability is done via its use of your expectations of horror: you KNOW something is wrong here, you KNOW something is going to burst out of the woodwork, it's just a case of WHAT is going to do so. And when that 3rd act rolls around? It's great.
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