I don't really get the low reviews that this movie seems to be getting, it's a nice, disturbing little independent sci-fi/horror gem that trusts the audience to read between the lines and supply their own explanations and visuals for things that happen off-screen.
Sure, viewers who need to have things spoon-fed to them will find this frustrating, and I can imagine this movie's test screenings must have been a riot, but there are surely more viewers out there than this who don't mind letting their imaginations fill in the blanks? Or maybe not.
The story itself is fairly straightforward and doesn't do anything particularly complicated or avant-garde: a generally likeable family of journalists in a charming rural English home find more than they bargained for when unusual military activity on a nearby moor attract their attention, and in turn brings them to the attention of a pair of mysterious visitors, "Mr. And Mrs. Blair", who have obviously taken their names from a shop down the road, and struggle with normal day-to-day concepts and human interaction, and become increasingly more menacing as their interview runs on and devolves into a violent hostage situation.
These visitors, though dressed in white, are pretty clearly drawn from a UFO "men in black" template, and what they want is something they think the family has accidentally "caught" on camera while visiting the moor, though much of the conflict between the characters runs on a sort of language gap between the visitors and their victims, and the plot twists from there. The basic idea is pretty easy to follow, with the gist of the visitors' presumed role and motive in the movie explained pretty directly to one of the children by making a comparison to a school bully: "bad people did something wrong, and are afraid of getting caught."
Where some viewers are going to struggle is that where most movies will spell everything out by showing off the offending photograph or showing a flashback scene of what happened when the trouble was "caught", this movie chooses instead to just leave it to imagination, and really the precise nature of what was "caught" isn't really important - it's simply the "McGuffin' that brings the unsettling visitors into contact with our unfortunate family, and sets the movie's nightmare logic hostage situation in motion.
Over all, the movie for me got a lot of mileage out of its low budget: a fairly small set (maybe three or four rooms and an outdoor location or two, a fairly small cast, no CGI effects and a practical effects budget that is limited to some nicely-done but fairly no-frills makeup effects.
The movie's strongest point for me was the acting and storytelling, which supported the movie's suspense and horror really well - "Mrs. Blair" in particular manages to conjure more scares from a few unearthly sounds, strange poses, terrifying expressions, and weird outbursts of violence than most bigger-budget movies of this sort achieve with a huge special effects budget and actual monster effects; "Caught" resembles a typical exorcism movie in that respect, and gives many better exorcism films a good run for their money on the results. The lighting and camera angles also help enhance the off-kilter, nightmarish effect of the story - the results are pretty impressive, considering that the entire movie takes place in broad daylight in mostly well-lit interiors and an occasional exterior scene.
If I could point at a weak spot, it would be the ambient and incidental music: when the music works, it builds effective tension, and one scene in which an unearthly opera is played in-universe on a cassette player through a disturbing scene was especially notable for hitting its target, at least for me. However, the soundtrack was otherwise a bit too loud and obvious, failing to let the movie's unearthly and horrible situations speak for themselves... some of the best horror soundtracks run on on much more restrained and subtle and eerie stuff!
If fans of low-budget sci-fi horror are willing to forgive the movie those flaws - an overbearing soundtrack and a couple mysteries whose solutions are left to our imagination, and perhaps a slow-burn pacing that leads to an inevitable tut abrupt ending - then this movie could be an underappreciated gem of weird horror. The movie might otherwise lose gore-hounds, high-octane jump-scare addicts, and viewers who need every mystery tied up for them in a nice, obvious bow bypassing viewer imagination to be enjoyable.
Sure, viewers who need to have things spoon-fed to them will find this frustrating, and I can imagine this movie's test screenings must have been a riot, but there are surely more viewers out there than this who don't mind letting their imaginations fill in the blanks? Or maybe not.
The story itself is fairly straightforward and doesn't do anything particularly complicated or avant-garde: a generally likeable family of journalists in a charming rural English home find more than they bargained for when unusual military activity on a nearby moor attract their attention, and in turn brings them to the attention of a pair of mysterious visitors, "Mr. And Mrs. Blair", who have obviously taken their names from a shop down the road, and struggle with normal day-to-day concepts and human interaction, and become increasingly more menacing as their interview runs on and devolves into a violent hostage situation.
These visitors, though dressed in white, are pretty clearly drawn from a UFO "men in black" template, and what they want is something they think the family has accidentally "caught" on camera while visiting the moor, though much of the conflict between the characters runs on a sort of language gap between the visitors and their victims, and the plot twists from there. The basic idea is pretty easy to follow, with the gist of the visitors' presumed role and motive in the movie explained pretty directly to one of the children by making a comparison to a school bully: "bad people did something wrong, and are afraid of getting caught."
Where some viewers are going to struggle is that where most movies will spell everything out by showing off the offending photograph or showing a flashback scene of what happened when the trouble was "caught", this movie chooses instead to just leave it to imagination, and really the precise nature of what was "caught" isn't really important - it's simply the "McGuffin' that brings the unsettling visitors into contact with our unfortunate family, and sets the movie's nightmare logic hostage situation in motion.
Over all, the movie for me got a lot of mileage out of its low budget: a fairly small set (maybe three or four rooms and an outdoor location or two, a fairly small cast, no CGI effects and a practical effects budget that is limited to some nicely-done but fairly no-frills makeup effects.
The movie's strongest point for me was the acting and storytelling, which supported the movie's suspense and horror really well - "Mrs. Blair" in particular manages to conjure more scares from a few unearthly sounds, strange poses, terrifying expressions, and weird outbursts of violence than most bigger-budget movies of this sort achieve with a huge special effects budget and actual monster effects; "Caught" resembles a typical exorcism movie in that respect, and gives many better exorcism films a good run for their money on the results. The lighting and camera angles also help enhance the off-kilter, nightmarish effect of the story - the results are pretty impressive, considering that the entire movie takes place in broad daylight in mostly well-lit interiors and an occasional exterior scene.
If I could point at a weak spot, it would be the ambient and incidental music: when the music works, it builds effective tension, and one scene in which an unearthly opera is played in-universe on a cassette player through a disturbing scene was especially notable for hitting its target, at least for me. However, the soundtrack was otherwise a bit too loud and obvious, failing to let the movie's unearthly and horrible situations speak for themselves... some of the best horror soundtracks run on on much more restrained and subtle and eerie stuff!
If fans of low-budget sci-fi horror are willing to forgive the movie those flaws - an overbearing soundtrack and a couple mysteries whose solutions are left to our imagination, and perhaps a slow-burn pacing that leads to an inevitable tut abrupt ending - then this movie could be an underappreciated gem of weird horror. The movie might otherwise lose gore-hounds, high-octane jump-scare addicts, and viewers who need every mystery tied up for them in a nice, obvious bow bypassing viewer imagination to be enjoyable.