The final release from Blumhouse and
Amazon has a retirement facility creeper than turns cartoonish and a bucolic shocker with a social undertow
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Being packed off to a retirement home feels more like a first day at high school in The Manor (★★★☆☆), one of the concluding pair of films from horror outfit Blumhouse’s hook-up with Amazon. This high-class facility is riven with cliques, and secrets hang in its residents’ pleading gazes – mysteries that
fire up former ballet dancer Judith Albright. She is played by a grey-tressed Barbara Hershey (last seen in a big role in 2010’s Black Swan) and must be the most glamorous 70-year-old stroke victim in screen history.
Dropping f-bombs and refusing the house supply of chill pills, Judith believes she is wise to sinister goings-on. When the lights are out, she catches glimpses of a twiggy demonic silhouette stooping over the bed of her roommate. The staff won’t believe her, and a trio of fun-loving residents – who define themselves in youthful opposition to the walking dead around them – warn her to not raise a fuss lest it give the institution the excuse they need to put her on dementia special measures.