The Rake

Don't be fooled by the beginning. The movie makes no sense. nothing adds up. just random characters and an unknown monster with no direct aim or objective!

What have i just watched? No story, makes absolutely no sense!

Quite spooky in parts - give it a go. There are a lot worse films out there !

+1 Star for the Opening Hook. I liked it! No where to go but up, right????

-1 Star for over 2/3 of the way through the movie and still really not much of a clue as to what is going on. This could be because I'm dumb or because the movie is just not very well done. Either way that's minus a star.

-1 Star for The Ending. Really the movie ended and I failed to get an overall point.

But the 'story' or lack thereof held me to the end! Lots of gore and creepy moments made it watchable for me! But nothing to give it more than a subpar rating here.

I feel like there are occasional horror films that might make better prose stories than films. "The Rake" is one of them. Character relationships seem important, and the performances are actually pretty decent, but those relationships aren't well developed or really make much sense in the film itself. The deeper psychological issues the film wants to work with don't quite land because the film can't really get beyond the surface. What occurs is a fair to midland character drama with seemingly random additions (again, a novel would allow background to be explored) and a difficult pace. A fairly lackluster ending doesn't do it any good, either: a last showdown between protagonist and monster just gets shunted, which really seems like the filmmakers ran out of money. It's not bad, just...unfinished.