Filmed in "real time" (one continuous take), the story is about Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen), who is helping her father clean up their country house. It's been a while since anyone has stayed at the house and they think they might have teens breaking into it, so they have boarded up all the windows and most of the doors. Sarah's uncle is also helping them fix up the house. Her father and uncle get into an argument and her uncle leaves to go into town and blow off some steam. While it's just the two of them Sarah thinks she hears noises but he brushes it off as nothing after checking the house. He continues to work and she thinks nothing of it until she hears an even greater noise. Turns out that her father fell down the stairs and has suffered some sort of head wound. She tries to find a way out but all of the windows and doors are locked or barricaded. She remembers seeing a cellar door and goes to the basement to try and find it. She goes down into the basement and escapes through the door after a figure shines a light on her.
While running to get help, she runs into her uncle, who is on his way back to the house. He insists that they go and check up on her father before getting help. Much to her dismay, they head back to the house but are unable to find her father's body. It doesn't help that the lights go out all of a sudden and they are left in total darkness with only a Polaroid camera to use for light. During these brief flashes of light she sees a little girl and a man in the room with them. She once again hides under a table (because no one would think to look there) and the lights come back on. She sees her uncle being dragged out of the room while a man takes pictures of a girl on top of the table.
I don't want to give away the good stuff, so I will just stop there. Although the movie is suppose to come across as one continuous take, you can tell they had some sneak cuts in there. And I don't blame them. It's stupid to film a movie in one continuous take. If I wanted to see that I would go to a play. But that is the joy of going to watch movies. You get different perspectives and angles and chances to get the best performance out of your actors. But when you demand to do things in one take, the quality suffers. Thankfully they didn't attempt that, but they did do long extended takes of at least twelve minutes and although it's cool from an experimental film standpoint, it doesn't benefit the movie from a storytellers standpoint. The acting wasn't too impressive (especially the beginning). Since they were trying to make it look like one continuous shot, in order to cut the film they must have done it in close ups when the camera was shaky which was annoying because it makes it hard to tell what you are looking at. I kept being like "is something/someone there?", which is frustrating and takes you out of the movie. Overall it was a good attempt at trying something difficult, but I feel it would have been better if they just focused on the story and not the technique.
Rating: **
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