Review of Cracked

Cracked (I) (2022)
5/10
Paint-by-numbers Asian horror
3 July 2022
Cracked is a Thai haunted house movie. Here, it's less a haunted house than some haunted paintings, but it's the same thing. There's not any more to be said about the plot than that.

In the beginning, we get some slow (but not unengaging) creep. There are some jump scares, there's some "oh whew that scary scene was just a nightmare," that kind of stuff, just to fill the time.

But the story barely gets developed until the third act, and then it's developed poorly, trying to have its cake and eat it too.

Characterization is likewise blank-slate bland. The most likable thing about the protagonist is that she's a single mother who loves her daughter. No personality beyond that. The child acting is poor, even filtered through subtitles.

Good production values, but Cracked feels too engineered, too sanitized-- it feels like a Chinese horror movie. That's not a compliment.

It's not so bad as to be unwatchable, but it's definitely not memorable.
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