A childless wife welcomes an abandoned mute girl into her home, but in the effort to get the girl to speak everyone misses her chilling message.
Ouch. Poor writing and directing really detract from this thriller. An early establishing scene in the hospital has the unlikely result of hospital staff letting a stranger handle an emergency, with the motivation for the characters out of joint. The care of the girl is given to two completely untested characters. A later scene with a tweezers is the kind of thing that simply does not happen. The child is overwhelmed with questions from people who are supposed to draw her out with reassurances. An online research scene left me confused over whether the crucial word had been figured out. And the police procedural material is inept.
So many of these mis-steps that I suspected we were in an unannounced alternative world, but in the end it was all played for real. I guess the writer has little experience, and the director didn't know how to bring it round.
However, the story does hit its stride at 60 mins, with a visual reveal that opens up the possibilities, and then a dialogue reveal that fills out the wife's motivation. Then there's a nice retreading of events from a different angle, and we end with a competent thriller, although of the kind that's been done before. And yet they still managed a sloppy climax.
The performances and pace are fine. The music starts with an interesting effect - like a hairbrush being dragged across the bridge of a cello - then goes with eerie strings and synth, which never stop: the mark of a story that can't make it visually. Another irk is that at one point I was reading English subtitles of a conversation in Spanish half-translated from French.
By the way - 'tis not a horror.
Ouch. Poor writing and directing really detract from this thriller. An early establishing scene in the hospital has the unlikely result of hospital staff letting a stranger handle an emergency, with the motivation for the characters out of joint. The care of the girl is given to two completely untested characters. A later scene with a tweezers is the kind of thing that simply does not happen. The child is overwhelmed with questions from people who are supposed to draw her out with reassurances. An online research scene left me confused over whether the crucial word had been figured out. And the police procedural material is inept.
So many of these mis-steps that I suspected we were in an unannounced alternative world, but in the end it was all played for real. I guess the writer has little experience, and the director didn't know how to bring it round.
However, the story does hit its stride at 60 mins, with a visual reveal that opens up the possibilities, and then a dialogue reveal that fills out the wife's motivation. Then there's a nice retreading of events from a different angle, and we end with a competent thriller, although of the kind that's been done before. And yet they still managed a sloppy climax.
The performances and pace are fine. The music starts with an interesting effect - like a hairbrush being dragged across the bridge of a cello - then goes with eerie strings and synth, which never stop: the mark of a story that can't make it visually. Another irk is that at one point I was reading English subtitles of a conversation in Spanish half-translated from French.
By the way - 'tis not a horror.