phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2021

Caveat



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2020
Runtime: 1h 28min
Country: UK
Language: English
Genre Tags: Horror, Thriller
Plot Summary: A lone drifter suffering from partial memory loss accepts a job to look after a psychologically troubled woman in an abandoned house on an isolated island.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: An understated slow burn. Excellent set up, though the third act sagged a bit for me. Brisker pacing would've made the ending pay off even better.


Outside Reviews:

Sheila O'Malley
3 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

Caveat is a masterpiece of understatement for a title, and a witty opener to Damian Mc Carthy's directorial debut, an impressive and often terrifying film, taking place almost solely in one location, with two people trapped in a moldy dimly-lit house. Crumbling paintings whisper in the night, and a toy rabbit with human-sized glass eyes acts as a canary in a coalmine, beating on a drum furiously, as a warning, a harbinger of approaching doom. Isaac stares wildly around the room any time the rabbit goes to town on his drum, but there's nothing there, just empty rooms, and doors left ajar.


Guy Lodge
Caveat' Review: Incomplete but Intriguing Irish Horror Offers Shoestring Scares and a Drumming Bunny

If all this snaky evasion and elaboration does eventually eat away at the film's anxious tension - as audiences are unlikely to agree on what, or who, they're actually scared of - the scuzzy niftiness of its construction continues to impress. Mc Carthy, who shot the film in 2017 and gradually funded its post-production, makes a virtue of his budgetary restrictions, using claustrophobic underlighting and confined interiors to fray the viewer's nerves even as the story expands into abstract realms.