Lavender

I'm honestly surprised this movie has such a low rating. It's not the best I have ever seen, but it's pretty good. There is a plot twist that I didn't see coming and the main actress played her character really well.

I would recommend this if you like psychological movies that has the climax towards the end.

Lavender has a fairly interesting, though not entirely unique premise. While it tries to create an eerie atmosphere and engaging story, it just kind of misses the mark. Nothing is particularly terrible about it. The story resolves neatly and there are a few effective scary moments. It's just not very memorable. I personally didn't find the acting very impressive and just felt bored at moments. The reveal at the end was unexpected, but not all that satisfying.

If you're considering checking out the movie, it's worth a casual watch.

Lavender has the potential to be an interesting, intriguing ghost story, but it never quite hits the mark. Entirely too predictable, if you cannot guess who the villain is you're either not paying attention (who could blame you?) or you've been sheltered from the last 60+ years of thriller/horror stories. To suggest it is Hitchcockesqe is an insult to Alfred, for he would have certainly done more with the script. Overall, the movie is adequate at best but, it is far from the worst and worth watching if you haven't anything better to do. If you are taking off work for an actual sick day, this film is worth watching if for no other reason than it will lull you to sleep.

What a strange little movie we have in the under-the-radar Canadian supernatural drama "Lavender". It may be a low budget indy, but the story, acting and cinematography are all of high caliber.

Australian beauty Abbie Cornish is Jane, a woman with a horrific past that she can not remember. Cornish resonates as a wife and mother struggling to recall unthinkable events from a tragic childhood. Although she plays a gal from the American Midwest, her indigenous Aussie accent does seep through on occasion. But that doesn't detract from a solid performance as the anchor of a uniformly fine cast which includes veteran pros Dermot Mulroney and Justin Long.

And one other thing. Watching "Lavender" may well result in you never again looking at unexpected presents wrapped in pretty red ribbon as a welcome surprise.

Those who don't understand this genre have no business writing reviews for it. The story is beautifully crafted as a psychological revelation that presents itself to a young woman who has a traumatized childhood but does not remember it. Her mind helps heal itself by gifting her little pieces of repressed memories, one at a time. These pieces appear to us, and to her, in the form of tiny gift packages tied with a red ribbon. The people she lost, the same ones from her repressed memory present themselves to her as strangers and apparitions she chases to get to a complete recovery of her mind and memory. A literal translation of those memories would be ghosts but that depends on how you choose to see it. Right until the end it could very well just be a drama unfolding itself in her mind, right until her daughter seems to know things she has no business knowing about. That's when the ghosts become real. This movie has the perfect amount of spookiness and everything makes sense. By the end of the movie every bit falls together like a sweetly solved puzzle.