Evil is whatever hurts you the most.
Matt & Karen have taken it upon themselves to pay a visit to Matt’s reclusive brother, Steve; Matt & Steve have been estranged for reasons that we’ll discover as the film progresses. Anyway, it’s Christmas, so it’s time to try to heal that relationship. But when they show up, they discover Steve’s got a locked door in his basement; and, behind that door, Steve says, he is holding prisoner Satan himself. Yeah. And you thought YOUR Christmas dinner was awkward just because that one uncle is a Trump supporter.
This is the debut film from writer-director Josh Lobo and it’s a shoestring film in just about every way. It only has the three central actors and almost the entire movie takes place in the confines of the rickety old family home of Matt & Steve. And, even at only a bit over an hour-and-twenty minutes, the movie feels a bit padded with one scene being played twice as a kind of “flash-forward” and a couple of montages I wish they hadn’t bothered with. But Lobo’s got two really great lead performances here. Scott Poythress is a wonder as the haggard, deeply disturbed Steve and Susan Burke brings a quiet exasperation and then a deeply felt fear to the role of Karen. I’ll not get into the role played by Chris Sullivan, but despite the extremely minimal material he’s given to work with (and that’s not an insult to the script; it uses the character exactly right), he gives a downright chilling performance. And I have to applaud Lobo for the look of the film, which is always bathed in some sort of ominous and harsh lighting or darkness or blown-out Christmas lights. At one crucial moment, one character’s face is entirely covered in pitch black shadow; at another, the entire scene is bathed in a really harsh and infernal red light. Other scenes feature harsh kitchen flourescents flickering violently. It isn’t a pretty film and in fact some of it is almost hard to watch because of the lighting choices, but it feels intentional and really self-assured for a debut director. It is, overall, a movie that feels quite harsh in a lot of ways. It’s very slow burn, so if you’re looking for a gonzo horror movie, this isn’t it; it’s more about watching the stress destroy Steve and then, through him, the rest of his family. But it did sow the seeds to kind of set up something really interesting at the end and then it just dropped that thread and didn’t fulfill it at the end, so I was disappointed with the way the movie just kind of coasts to a stop rather than ending with a bang or at least something that felt climactic. Slow burn as it was, I was hoping for something a little more . . . impactful, I guess, at the end. Still, it’s definitely a really unique and singular little thriller/horror/drama; if you’re looking for a pitch-black lump of coal to leaven your merry-making at Christmastime, this will do you just fine. 3 stars.
tl;dr – high-concept premise and a couple of really great performances elevate this shoestring indie horror/thriller; debut director Lobo offers a flawed, but striking calling card. 3 stars.