3/5
Written by Luke Barnes
Summary
After suffering a fall Judith, Barbra Hershey, checks into an assisted living facility. However, once there she notices that the residents are dying at an unusually high rate.
I have stayed well clear of the Welcome To Blumhouse films, as they are mostly pretty poor, however I decided to dip my toe into them with this film and it was okay.
There are some interesting ideas here and it is nice to see a horror film fronted by older people rather than the usual collection of teenage cliches. However, nothing in this film feels fresh. A lot of the reveals and twists feel like they have been done to death and are incredibly obvious, there is no mystery to the film as you can guess what is going to happen fairly easily from the beginning.
The only thing that did surprise me was the ending. I thought for sure Judith would have destroyed the evil tree monster in the film’s final scenes, but no she instead decided to become evil. This feels like a cheap subversion in that it makes little sense for the character to do this as we have been led to believe that she is a good person who would not succumb to such behaviour. Though I do applaud the film for doing it as it actually shocked me.
Overall, a very by the numbers horror film but the final shock was enough to push it above average.
Pros.
Having the guts to go for that ending
It is very watchable
Hershey does a good job
Cons.
It is predictable
It is not at all scary
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