There are jump-scares in this creepy creaky horror, but nothing in this film was slapped together by genre algorithm
Is
Australian director Natalie Erika James’ feature debut a haunted house movie? A psychological drama? A Babadookian “horror as metaphor” using ghoulish symbolism to explore mother and daughter relationships? The answer is all of these things and none of them, though – given the story revolves around a physically and mentally deteriorating elderly woman, Edna (Robyn Nevin) – it is about nothing if not matters of the mind.
And yet it is also very ... sticky. Not just sticky as in something that clings to you emotionally, but sticky in the way horror movies offer gross literal things you could reach out and touch were you to have the misfortune of belonging to the film’s narrative universe.