*Synopsis*
A girl, Sprout, wakes up with a bad dream.
Roll Credits.
The film begins as the family is in the car,driving to their home out in the woods. They all sit down to dinner and pray to Hippocrates. It's one year today since one of the daughters, Magda, died. We get scenes of the father and two remaining daughters playing together as they commemorate the anniversary. The father, or maybe all of them, seem inordinately obsessed with Greek mythology; for example, the son's name is Perseus, Percy for short.
Finally, the night is over, and Sprout heads to bed. She has the nightmare again, and she sees her dead sister coming for her, but wakes up before anything bad happens. *Was* there someone in her room?
The young brother, Percy, seems to be traumatized. He doesn't talk, he wears plastic film or gloves continually, and he has really girlish long hair.
The park ranger and her son come for a visit. Sprout gets a glimpse of what appears to be a monster in the woods. She calls it a Gorgon.
The father seems to be an aging hippy, warning that the outside world is chaos. He prays to strange gods and expects answers from them. He says his patron god is Hippocrates, and that Sprout will find her own patron god when she's ready. She asks about Magda, and he explains that Magda was *confused* about the gods (so was I by this point).
Sprout continues to have night terrors every time she goes to sleep. She and Percy go "monster hunting" the next day and find a bunch of dead animals. Sprout falls down and has some kind of seizure. She claims the Gorgon froze her like Medusa. Her father warns her not to go back into those woods.
The father says he believes Sprout about the Gorgon, and then he goes outside to run through the woods naked in the dark.
Things start getting *really* weird from there...
*Commentary*
"There are no gods. Only Monsters"
The scenes of the thing creeping around outside Sprout's bed are genuinely well done. Who hasn't experienced night terrors at least once?
The coming-of-age part of the film obviously revolves around Sprout hitting puberty, as she starts getting interested in Max and dressing in a more adult style. Growing up is about setting aside childish things, and we definitely see that here. Parents are rarely what we think growing up, and, as we see here, sometimes they are not even close.
Still, does anyone in the modern age, even crazy people, really believe in the Greek gods and monsters? This belief is such an integral part of the movie, but it just seems like a bit much of a stretch to just accept this.
The acting is impressive all around. Lew Temple changes significantly from what we see initially by the conclusion of the movie, and it all seems a more-or-less "natural" progression. Nicole Moorea Sherman as Sprout is fascinating to watch as she finally starts to realize her world makes no sense. The actor who played Percy was fine in the role, but I couldn't help thinking I was watching the annoying little girl from "Hereditary" several times; there's a real resemblance.
Overall, I liked it. I'm probably not really the demographic for a teenage girl's coming-of-age story, but once the strangeness began, I was thoroughly hooked.
