At first this film looks like one of the many poorly made so-called Horror films thrown at us through Amazon Prime. But since I usually give even the obviously bad productions a shot, I thought I would do the same for this one, and surprise! Essentially, a 40s-something man has left his wife because she is mentally ill. He has gotten custody of his prepubescent boy and mid-teenaged girl, and he has moved his new girlfriend in. The kids don't like her, and she has no feelings for them either. (There are shades of "The Juniper Tree" here, but only shades.) The camera work is really worth seeing--cartoonish and sparse. And there are classic lead-ups like going down into the dark cellar off the kitchen--and then nothing happens as expected. And then there's the weird therapeutic mask the new woman wears--utterly uncanny. This one is hard to compare to any other Horror film I have seen, but if I had to group it together with other films, I might mention Pyewacket and The Blackcoat's Daughter and maybe Hereditary--although those three are far more terrifying. This is a Ghost Story, by the way.
Review of Father of Flies
