Directed by Osgood Perkins, this horror film is about two students having to stay on campus during their winter break while an impending storm draws near. There’s also another plot about a woman named Joan (Emma Roberts) who is trying to get to that school for some unknown reason that I won’t spoil for you.
The main selling points of this film are the atmosphere and the sound design in my opinion. There’s a lot of background noise and long silences that envelope your senses in a way that makes you always on guard. Even when essentially, nothing is happening, you always have a sense of something coming out of a dark hallway or opened doors. There’s a plethora of times where I was leaning back expecting sudden jump scares only to face with the lingering sounds of an empty school which often makes your heart pound. While I wouldn’t say I was particularly terrified at any moment, I never felt at ease during the entire runtime which is something that rarely happens to me in horror films.
However, this is an incredibly slow film. It takes it time to get where it wants us to go, and it has no empathy towards the attention span of this generation of consumers. I would say it’s perhaps too slow as it takes a while before the actual plot of the film to kick in. This can work if you interject it with good characters and an interesting story. So, even if the film is somewhat sluggish in pace, you’re able to digest it to see what happens next to the characters you have emotionally connected with. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case here. While the story itself has its moments of intrigue, most of the characters are anything but that. I would say that Kat (Kiernan Shipka) is the glaring exception, but I ponder if it’s because of the character herself or because Kiernan Shipka gave a fantastic performance. Everybody else in the cast did a fine job as well, but she was the highlight of the film.
The film is great from a technical standpoint. A lot of good-looking shots and excellent sound design that makes you fully engrossed in the terrifying ambience of any setting. Even on a conceptual level, I really like what they were attempting to go for as it’s something you don’t exactly see in most horror films. It’s not everyday you watch a horror film and you have no idea what’s going to happen next. However, it’s weighted down by a story that starts way too late with characters that I have no interest in watching. If it wasn’t for Kat, I would’ve lowered my rating of the film. It’s a shame because there’s things in the story itself that I found personally interesting, but it’s either never explored properly or was done in the most conventional way possible. Nonetheless, it’s still better than most horror films that have come out in the last 10 years, but that’s like boasting that you can beat your younger sibling in arm wrestling. It’s not like the competition is exactly fierce. 3/5
