Anguish

Saw on a lost of recent horror and knew nothing about. Had to give it a try.

"Was it interesting?" The story was far from typical. While most of the time that can be good, in this case most of the plot details were ambiguous.

1.5 out of 3 "Was it memorable?" The acting was about as flat and boring as the environment for most of it.

1 out of 3 "Was it entertaining?" While a lot of bad horror has characters that you either want to die or don't care if they live, this movie had characters I never thought they were in any danger.

1 out of 3 Starting with 1 (so that ghost in my head will stop telling me to), 1 + 1.5 + 1 + 1 = 4.5 This is a 4 simply for not portraying any real threat, either to the characters or to me. This was too independent and artistic to be scary or enjoyable.

I have just finished watching this film on Sky Movies. I checked IMDb as I was actually watching the start titles and saw how poorly it was received, but I watched anyway to make up my own mind.

Conclusion...... this is NOT a horror film. This is a slow burning supernatural drama. There is a certain sadness to it.

And I really enjoyed it :-) Yes, it does have some minor flaws but they can be ignored quite easily. Give it a try and make up your own mind.....you may surprise yourself and enjoy it like I did.

"Horror" is a well selling label, which is the reason, why many ambitious movies are labeled as horror movies despite being nothing like that - this old curse also hits "Anguish" and makes it being seen mostly by an audience, who will not take this slow little indie movie as a pleasure but will rather be disappointed.

I don't want to hide that I am part of just this audience.

Looking for a small, chilling ghost / possession movie I stumbled about "Anguish" with little to no expectations and no idea about what the movie will be in detail.

Starting the movie, I was immediately annoyed by "Lucy", but well, things take a certain turn here...late, we are introduced to "Tess", who, in all honesty, is at least as annoying as Lucy, if not more. I see what the directors tried - they wanted to paint an introverted, troubled character, but I am not sure if this wouldn't have played out better if they didn't try to show an annoying teenager but a sensitive, unusually calm kid or something...but well.

The story basically is about a girl, that gets possessed by the spirit of another girl - without spoilers, if you read my review this far, you can probably figure out who gets possessed by whom.

If you expect a possession horror movie, some exorcism, creepy stuff, moving things and whatever there might be out there in the huge horror movie portfolio, than forget that. "Anguish" is 95 % very low paced drama about how the mothers cope with the situation - the girl(s) is/are surprisingly unsurprised (no pun intended) by the situation. I mean, hey, getting possessed by some dead girl is pretty refreshing if you live in a boring small town, eh?

So, that's it. Basically nothing more happens during the entire movie. Two annoying girls, two a very little bit less annoying mothers, and some drama about why things have to be this way, until the movie finals in a, well, it's not even a twist, I'd say it's the end you will expect from minute one, if you ever have seen any horror movie, despite the fact "Anguish" isn't such.

I can give some points for the fairly nice soundtrack, the okay acting of the female lead girl, the atmosphere and the one scene, that gets supernatural finally (even though this scene does not make any sense at all - they just wanted to have it in the movie for showing off some shift/tilt effects, I assume). The result of this scene finals in the mentioned "twist" and does not match with the scene. At all. I'd basically describe that as a continuity mistake.

So, can I recommend? For my personal taste, I can not, unfortunately. I appreciate the efforts of independent film makers, and I understand they tried to mix up rather suspense than horror with drama elements. And hey, I can be fan of this - Carrie, Babadook and others show that this walk on a red line can be done. Anguish fails to place itself amongst those examples and can thus not be recommended - at least not if you have to pay for it. If your preferred VoD portal has it offered for free, you can take a look.

No pun intended - also the cinematography ain't that bad either. I mean there is a reason why I went after the technical achievements of the movie. I think they did a great job with it - even more so if you consider this being a low budget movie.

Acting is ok too, the story is not too bad either. Though as others have stated already, the movie may have issues defining itself ... or trying to find a hole/niche where this fits ... where this makes sense to promote and find its audience. This is not straight horror - though something like ... let me not compare this with classics, who also are dramas ... family drama in this case. Really well done and you probably will root for them to overcome their issues ... this world and maybe another too? Watch and see ...

The acting was excellent especially the young lead actress. I would not categorize it as a horror movie. A good solid drama. If you are looking for an action packed movie, this is not it. I would still recommend it.