Dir - Michael Tully
Overall: MEH
The first horror venture for independent filmmaker Michael Tully, Don't Leave Home is heavy on subdued atmosphere though this is somewhat at the expense of a properly fleshed-out narrative. While hooded supernatural figures, nightmares within nightmares, a lead protagonist who keeps the weird things that she keeps seeing to herself, and some comically creepy behavior from old people fulfill the standard horror movie prerequisites, the story itself is quite unique as it involves a former priest with a sort of undisclosed supernatural curse/gift that somehow through the years has led him into the hands of a clandestine group of weirdos that auction off his paintings. This only scratches the surface of course, but Tully and co-screenwriter Francis Uzoma seem to hit a wall in the third act that lets the remainder of the film meander in its ethereal mood, only to wrap-up in a vague manner that may frustrate more viewers than not. The whole thing is a bit too nebulous to have any sort of emotional point, despite a solid performance from Lalor Roddy whose guilt seems to have long been taxing on his psyche for quite awhile by the time that we meet him.
Dir - Dominique Rocher
Overall: GOOD
In order for a zombie film to have any sort of singular relevance nowadays, (post the boom where every country was delivering their own derivative take in the genre, one after the other), it must offer up something more than a ragtag group of survivors arguing amongst each other while they struggle to put a bullet in the head of their loved ones. Thankfully in this regard, director Dominique Rocher's adaptation of Pit Agarman's novel La nuit a dévoré le monde, (The Night Eats the World), does an adequate job of justifying its existence, taking almost all of the action, gore, and societal critique out of such movies with a totally intimate look at but one person's pragmatic method of being the only one presumably left who does not want to bite other humans to death. Anders Danielsen Lie spends nearly the entire movie on his lonesome, yet such solitude takes a psychological strain that allows him to justify keeping an infected person almost as a pet, thinking out loud to him from behind a locked elevator shaft. The story empathizes the monotony of survival as Lie begins his endeavor rather level-headed, (gathering up supplies and fortifying his city apartment complex), only succumbing to the isolation after an undisclosed amount of time. There are few surprises to be found here, but spending the entire movie as a mere fly on the wall to the emotional devastation of total seclusion is a refreshing take and one that would be repeated to an extent in the 2020 South Korean film Alive.
Dir - Klas Persson/Karin Engman
Overall: MEH
The debut from Swedish writer/director team Klas Persson and Karin Engman Draug goes for a grimy and literally dark aesthetic to its pagan tale of supernatural vengeance. Sadly though, it is a frustrating view for this very reason. Save for a couple of lackluster digital effects sequences and some beautiful drone footage of the desolate Hälsingland forests, the camera work is almost exclusively hand-held which coupled with the copious amounts of weathered dirt and blood on the crop of warrior characters, makes for an intimate and stark presentation. All of this sounds great on paper, yet the editing is annoyingly spastic and the color pallet brings out the barely decipherable tones of rock, mud, water, timber, and foliage which makes the whole thing more of an ugly mess where the viewer regularly cannot get their proper footing as to what they are even looking at. While Persson's musical score is evocative, it also plays through far too much of the movie, clashing with the more naturalistic atmosphere that the visuals are trying to convey. Further problems arise as far as the hacky horror elements are concerned, with screechy jump scares, slow zooms, inconsistently persistent ghosts, and a scene where a gross old lady trips balls and screams cryptic nonsense at the camera. It certainly does not treat the miserable period setting with any glamor, but the simplistic story alone cannot carry what is essentially a B-movie drenched in grit.
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