STAR RATING: ***** Brilliant **** Very Good *** Okay ** Poor * Awful
Nancy (Essie Davis) and David Bradley (Andrew Lincoln) are ornithologists, who espouse ancient beliefs of how birds transport souls between this world and the next. They are also mourning a tragic personal loss, which Nancy is showing signs of not having addressed. They take a trip to their deserted house by the lake, to try and get away and rekindle their relationship, but before long, Nancy is experiencing strange visions of a woman and child in the house, that threaten to plunge her over the edge.
And so we come to the final instalment in the Cabinet of Curiosities series, a succession of ups and downs that have bounced between mediocre, average and really quite good. It would be nice if the series went out on a high, and writer/director Jennifer Kent is, at the very least, aiming for something distinctive and original with this offering. There are echoes of Stephen King's The Dark Half (1993), with its themes of birds and their role as the transporter of souls between worlds, and even the posters for the two respective works are strikingly similar.
While the previous episodes have served, fundamentally, as a showcase for Del Toro's signature outlandish special effects, this relies on a sense of atmosphere and eerie silence, with the isolation of the lakeside location serving as the backdrop for the story to play out. Sadly, it can rely a bit too much on this, and there are long, dull stretches that become a little too prominent in such a short story. At heart, it's a story about loss and trauma, and facing up to grief, and it's fortunate that the two sole central performances are strong enough to convey a couple struggling with these issues effectively, making it work on this front at least.
The end result is an interesting, curious offering, that works on more levels than it fails, and while it goes through the motions and plays with some familiar horror tropes, it does so in a way that is at least affecting and intriguing enough to work. ***
Nancy (Essie Davis) and David Bradley (Andrew Lincoln) are ornithologists, who espouse ancient beliefs of how birds transport souls between this world and the next. They are also mourning a tragic personal loss, which Nancy is showing signs of not having addressed. They take a trip to their deserted house by the lake, to try and get away and rekindle their relationship, but before long, Nancy is experiencing strange visions of a woman and child in the house, that threaten to plunge her over the edge.
And so we come to the final instalment in the Cabinet of Curiosities series, a succession of ups and downs that have bounced between mediocre, average and really quite good. It would be nice if the series went out on a high, and writer/director Jennifer Kent is, at the very least, aiming for something distinctive and original with this offering. There are echoes of Stephen King's The Dark Half (1993), with its themes of birds and their role as the transporter of souls between worlds, and even the posters for the two respective works are strikingly similar.
While the previous episodes have served, fundamentally, as a showcase for Del Toro's signature outlandish special effects, this relies on a sense of atmosphere and eerie silence, with the isolation of the lakeside location serving as the backdrop for the story to play out. Sadly, it can rely a bit too much on this, and there are long, dull stretches that become a little too prominent in such a short story. At heart, it's a story about loss and trauma, and facing up to grief, and it's fortunate that the two sole central performances are strong enough to convey a couple struggling with these issues effectively, making it work on this front at least.
The end result is an interesting, curious offering, that works on more levels than it fails, and while it goes through the motions and plays with some familiar horror tropes, it does so in a way that is at least affecting and intriguing enough to work. ***