Estranged

I've never seen a movie get me to the point where I was just staring at my television screen numb for over an hour after the credits rolled.

I've watched a lot of horror and a lot of thrillers - to the point that if you go through my reviews, it's kinda my genre. I'm always up for something new or something that can catch my interest and hold it the entire time. This film definitely kept it...but I'm wondering if that's a good thing.

It starts our generic enough - woman in an accident with amnesia, goes to see her family and something's not quite right. It's a fairly familiar premise. Where this film differs is any sense of hope you have for the main character is just completely gone by the time the ending is coming up. So much so that even after the final scene, you just sit there feeling like it wasn't enough. People should have been punished more to get that sense of catharsis for our lead. Instead, it leaves you feeling blank and numb for having watched it.

I'm giving this film 7/10 because it is something that many thrillers attempt, but fail at. Most films of this caliber just want to shock to shock. Where the characters are all deplorable, including the main ones, there's violence and torture just to make you squirm. This movie doesn't do that. You want our lead to succeed. You like her. You like her partner. You want there to be retribution. But after what our lead is put through, it doesn't feel like any payback would ever be enough.

If you want to feel depressed and hopeless for a few hours after seeing a movie, watch this.

If art imitates life, then there are some really sick people in the world. This film was about a young woman who suffers a accident, winds up back at her childhood home where some real dark colorful characters pretending to be her family all reside. Although the story unravels from inside the home, at no time did I feel like you needed more locations to make the story work. In fact, the happenings unfolding to this young woman couldn't happen anywhere else, because of the graphic nature in which things are done to her. Overall, I've seen this story before in other films that deal with family issues. I think on a whole, all families have dark secrets And if ever found out, lives would be completely destroyed, and the jails would full of family members. A lot this film was cliché and predictable. I endured it to the end, and for me, the ending was the best part. It just took a little to long to get to it.

This movie brings to mind the hey day of early seventies low budget British shockers from the likes of Amicus, Tigon, and Hammer. The days when all you needed to make a film was a spirited cast, a largely unknown bolstered by a single "name" performer recognisable to Americans (in this instance James Cosmo), and free access to a down at heel stately home.

It's hard to classify this movie in terms of genre, neither truly a thriller nor a horror. – it's more of a "creeper" than anything else. The sense of unease is ramped up throughout the convoluted twists and turns of the plot before plunging into true horror in the final third.

I think this has presented a problem for the marketing department and I feel that they may be making a mistake in the way that they are presenting it. Many people will feel mislead and disappointed that this isn't the horror movie that the posters suggest, which is a shame since it's more than that, it's a taught, well acted chiller that deserves to be more widely seen.

I've seen movies like this and this is on the more confusing side. I feel like the plot is so uneven and the characters, especially the main one, January, are really dull. I don't know, I guess I missed something while watching but don't think I'm going to watch this again.

ESTRANGED is a low budget British horror film that screams derivative at every step. The film's protagonist is a young woman named January who is crippled in an accident abroad, an accident which leaves her wheelchair bound and without a memory. She returns to her ancestral home in the UK, but soon becomes convinced that her family members are out to get her. Is she going mad, or is there really a sinister plot at work?

It's not hard to guess the outcome of this film because the same subject matter has been done to death elsewhere. Although the plot is slightly different, ESTRANGED seems to me to be a huge copy of the excellent French thriller FRONTIERS, especially in the format, the climax, the look and actions of the main girl, etc. Except where FRONTIERS excelled, ESTRANGED simply bores.

It's one of those films that's saddled with a dullish protagonist who you don't even like, let alone care about. Actress Amy Manson can do nothing for her character. The rest of the cast don't get much of a look in, particularly poor James Cosmo, who is such a fine, gruff actor but who is sorely wasted here. I did like Craig Conway, cast against type as the butler, as he's always good fun. Sure, there are a few strong and/or edgy moments contained in this, but the whole greyed-out look makes it a depressing watch and CGI gore effects are always a disappointment for me too unless they're done very realistically, which they aren't here.