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Caveat, 2020

Isaac (Jonathan French) is recovering from a serious accident, which comes along with some significant memory loss. An old friend, Barret (Ben Caplan)--or at least a man claiming to be an old friend--hires Isaac to act as a caretaker for his mentally ill niece, Olga (Leila Sykes), who has been living alone on an island since the death of her father and disappearance of her mother. But things are clearly not right in the house . . .

This is a movie that has a lot of wait, what?!?! elements, and the first fifteen minutes are especially strained by some incredibly improbable elements. When they arrive at the house, Barret announces that, oh yeah, Olga is afraid of being assaulted, so Isaac will have to wear what is essentially a metal vest on a chain that keeps him from reaching Olga's room. Isaac's reaction (and, the reaction that anyone would have) is that he refuses to wear it. Right. But the movie really needs him to put it on. So . . . he eventually just agrees? The movie vaguely tries to hand-wave the whole set up (why would any person agree to be chained up in a remote house, without access to a phone, with a mentally ill person who thinks you are a rapist/murderer?), but it's not very convincing.

Fortunately, there is a decent amount of spooky imagery and atmospheric development at hand. The film makes effective use of long takes and hallways that seem to stretch a long way from the camera. When Isaac discovers a secret passageway with a small hole that leads to Olga's room, it introduces the disturbing visual of a hand reaching through a wall. The film goes to the same handful of tricks many times, but for me it worked for the most part. The film alternates slow-burn style moments with a few jump scares.

Storywise, the movie tries to do way too much. The premise established in the first ten minutes is already outlandish, and as the film tries to layer in more connection and complications, it all gets a bit convoluted. The handful of glimpses of Olga's life with her parents are effectively disturbing, but it doesn't all tie in together all that well.

I always have mixed feelings about writers who just create their own version of mental illness and basically have the mentally ill person do whatever they want them to do for plot purposes. Olga is given a handful of movie-trope behaviors (random nosebleeds, catatonic states, paranoia), and the movie unevenly lurches between her acting almost entirely lucid and then the next moment behaving violently or erratically. The best moments of the film are when Isaac and Olga have real, honest conversations with each other, but those moments are few and far between.

If you're a horror fan, this one is worth a peek.