Day 5 of Toronto After Dark 2011 offered up both ends of the spectrum. Unfortunately, Absentia was the bad end of it. What was pressed as the scariest film at TAD this year, wound up being the least scary, not for lack of trying though.
I’m used to being desensitized enough to not be frightened by a movie, but I was looking forward to watching the crowd jump and scream. I guess I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t scared though as only one shock really managed to get a reaction.
The story follows two sisters, Tricia (Courtney Bell) and Callie (Katie Parker) who start to realize that a tunnel by Tricia’s house holds a mysterious, and deadly, secret.
Tricia’s husband has been missing for seven years and she’s about to have him declared dead in absentia. This seems to be causing her to have visions of her husband. Callie is there to help Tricia with all the paperwork as well as dealing with her own drug addiction. Suddenly, Tricia’s husband shows up, alive but not well. He’s deathly afraid of something that is following him. Callie has a run in with a person she believes to be homeless in a tunnel by Tricia’s house. She soon learns that the man she saw has also been missing for years. They soon realize that there is something evil lurking in the tunnel, snatching up people, including Tricia’s husband.
Callie and Tricia have to try and figure out what is going on in the tunnel by Tricia's house.
First of all, Callie is the best looking drug addict I’ve ever seen. I assumed that she was just hooked on pot or something since she still looked so great. Seems she is addicted to something a little stronger than that though. Not exactly the best anti-drug campaign if you ask me. Her addiction plays a major role in the film but you don’t realize that until late in the movie.
Tricia, on the other hand, is the one who is haunted by some creepy visions of her husband. Think of the typical Asian ghost girl without all the hair and you’ll get the picture of her husband. Her husband may look creepy, but the scares just don’t seem to be handled the right way. They aren’t creepy enough to make your skin crawl and the attempts at jump scares aren’t booming enough to actually make you jump. It’s as if they sit somewhere in between the typical screeching scare that an American horror film delivers and the kind of slow moving, tense scare that has become my favorite part of so many Asian films. Without them going in any one direction though, the scares just get lost in the mix, never really hitting the mark.
It's a creepy looking ghost that just isn't used properly.
While the film isn’t scary like it should be, the story offers up so many possibilities that you can kind of pick what you think is really happening. Is it all in the mind of Cassie due to her drug addiction? Are people really being taken away by a mysterious entity or are they just taking off and leaving their loved ones behind? There are so many valid reasons for what has happened in the movie that you may never actually be sure of what is going on. It’s a great way to look at the story from different angles but it can’t raise it up enough to make for a great film. If you’re trying to be scary, you have to be able to pull it off at least a few times!
In the shadows – Will
