When the American version came out a few months ago, I
looked up to see what the movie was about.
It was then that I discovered that it was a remake of a Uruguayan movie
that came out a couple years prior. So I
thought I would check it out
The plot: Laura and her father (Wilson) go to fix up an old
house owned by Nestor (in the American version, I believe the Nestor character
is Laura’s uncle, but I don’t think there was any such connection between the
two here). The house is out in the
middle of the woods, and, since no one has lived there in a while, it is broken
down and the lawn is overgrown. Laura
and Wilson are supposed to fix up the house to get it ready to sell. They get in a little late, so they decide to
sleep in the house and get started the following day.
Before too long, Laura begins to hear noises, and it’s clear
there is someone else in the house. She
sends Wilson
upstairs to check out a noise. She hears
a thump, and he ends up at the bottom of the steps: his head bloodied, his
hands tied, and his body lifeless. So
Laura finds herself needing to fend for herself in the house. Throughout the movie, she begins to discover
an even bigger mystery about the house.
This movie was shot in entirely one take; or, at the very
least, shot in such a way to resemble one take.
As far as getting me interested in the movie, it worked really well. I was on edge from the minute the movie
opened. Since there weren’t any tight
shots, I was always looking to see if there was any movement going on in the
background. It made for an incredibly
stressful movie watching experience. For
the first half or so, anyway.
There were some pretty obnoxious parts in this movie. There were a number of times where I screamed
at the TV, “Look behind you!” With the
knowledge that there was someone else in the house (someone who had already
beaten her father to death), she spent a ton of time investigating rooms in the
house. There were a couple of scenes
where she went into a room and spent two minutes looking at objects in the
room, with her back to the door the entire time. It got a little old after a while, but there
were still enough tense moments throughout the movie that kept me interested
the entire time.
[SPOILER] As it turns
out, it was Laura the entire time.
Basically, Nestor got her pregnant (while her father watched), and he
killed the baby. So the killings inside
the house were her revenge. But the
camera basically followed Laura the entire movie. We didn’t see the murders at all. When her father was killed upstairs, the
camera was on Laura downstairs. So did
she have an accomplice? Was the camera
only showing us what she thought was true in her original personality, not
showing what her other – more sinister – personality was doing? If the entire movie is based around using the
one-shot approach, it has to make sense.
And there were many times where this movie failed to make sense. Since I didn’t know who the killer was while
I was watching the movie, it didn’t seem strange to me. But, when I was thinking about it after I
finished watching, I started wondering about these things. [END SPOILER]
Overall, I liked it.
I didn’t love it, mainly because of the glaring inconsistencies and the
ridiculous room-searching of Laura. But
it was still a well-done movie. It kept
me interested for the majority of the movie, and the one-shot style definitely
drove that. It could have been
better. As it stands, it’s still pretty
good.
I hope to watch the American version at some point in the
not-too-distant future, and then I’ll be able to compare the two.
Rating: 4/5
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