Another movie starring Richard Jenkins – I love this guy as he always plays a strange character in a bizarre movie or TV series (Six Feet Under is a prime example). He plays Eric Blake, the patriarch of a religious family from Scranton, PA on a Thanksgiving visit to his daughter Brigid’s new apartment in downtown Manhattan. Brigid was played by Beanie (seriously?) Feldstein and Steven Yeun played her boyfriend Richard. Aimee was the other daughter, an attorney played by Amy Schumer in a surprising non-comedy role, with which she did an admirable job. Jayne Houdyshell played Eric’s wife Deirdre and June Squibb played the grandmother “Momo” suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s.
I think the primary objective of the filmmaker Stephen Karam was to freak out the high viewer. The presentation was very disturbing – the dilapidated apartment was creepy, the cinematography was similarly bizarre – with closeups, far-aways – in one scene it looked like they all had shrunk to doll size. Apparently, this crock of shit was based on a one-act play, also written by Stephen Karam. Clearly, there wasn’t enough material here for a full-length movie, so it was extended with ridiculous cinematographic techniques, silly conversations and lots of staring out windows. Odd noises, lights going out, things moving outside the windows and strange shadows seemed to portend a terrifying conclusion. But it never came. As it turned out, the only “horror” was that this family was truly fucked up – whoop-de-friggen’ doo! Sadly, it was a huge buildup to an absolute dud of an ending. I also think this movie was a massive fail because Richard Jenkins’ character was too ordinary. But the real horror was the realization when the screen went dark at 1 hour and 44 minutes and the credits started rolling that you just lost nearly two hours of your life that you’ll never get back. The perfect bow on this steaming pile of shit would have been a loud fart noise when the final scene went black.
2 fake ghosts out of 13.