Lavender

Oh. My. God. If I have ever seen a slow-paced movie, they seem like roller-coasters now. This title is only rivaled by that French joke of a horror movie called They Came Back (100 minutes of my life; gone).

Nothing happened for the first half hour besides the introduction of the characters and the main character living her life in between zoning out to annoying violin (or cello?) tunes for looong seconds. Literally two seconds of Dermot Mulroney and no Justin Long. Just as I was about to turn it off, though, my food arrived so I kept watching. Nothing kept happening for another 15 minutes, but right when I was closing the window for sure this time, a single interesting thing happened that involved Justin Long's character (and I love Justin Long) so I gave it yet another chance.

When there was more empty scenery and zoning out, I just skipped ahead to the revelation part, which wasn't too bad, and then it was finally over. I thanked God and ran here to try and stop others from wasting precious time.

Trauma certainly has its moments, a bold beginning, a rather dramatic ending, and a solid story development. At times in the middle I did find myself losing a little bit of interest, as it did delve into the realms of boring at times.

I'm surprised that this film has awful and amazing reviews, to me it's very middle of the road, there's nothing particularly shambolic here, it's nicely edited, well acted, but the main flaw it has, is it's overwhelming obviousness, you just know exactly how it's going to pan out, why, and who is at fault, there was no other possible outcome offered up.

It's watchable. 5/10

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.

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.

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.