Observance

I definitely didn't have many expectations for this and I had no idea what type of film it would be. I love its ambiguity. Many people will hate it for that same reason but I found that it was able to sufficiently explore its story and characterization (it does a great job of developing its main character) while still not revealing itself completely and by sustaining great atmosphere and mood (and well-done jump scares too) throughout its entirety. I think it's a simple, but scary film, one that will only appeal to a specific kind of horror fan but the type of horror we need more of. I would definitely recommend it, although be cautious because it's not for everyone.

I was REALLY into this film. I could totally feel the David Lynch vibe with the great atmospheric B&W shots, the excellent, moody soundscape, and the compelling and, to me anyway, very involving mystery of what the hell was going on.

BUT... although the movie makers had carefully paced the movie to create an increasing sense of tension and unease, very artfully immersing the audience in an effective ambient mood, and then... abruptly about 40 minutes into the story, for some inexplicable reason the director seems to throw all that hard-earned subtlety to the wind and we have like a 5-10 minute disgustingly gross scene of this guy in the bathroom heaving all this horrible stuff up, etc., etc...

Now, if I had wanted a GROSS fest, I would have chosen a film that highlighted that. I cannot understand WHY this abrupt and to me extremely disappointing change in tone was suddenly thrust upon us. I tried to weather the scene figuring it might be over in a minute or so. But, astonishingly the director just keeps us focused on this completely jarring grossness that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the lovely textured mood that had been created up to that point. To me, the whole bloody thrust (and appeal) of the film was the great sense of mystery and the SUBTLETY of the mood, clearly leading to some powerful reveal later on. What I was NOT frigg'n expecting was for that to be yanked out from under us and then to be forced to view this meaningless, VERY extended, mood-breaking grossness. I tried to put up with it as long as I could, but after about 5 friggin, constant minutes of our this mindless audience abuse, I had to shut it off.

A real shame too... The movie up to that point I felt was very well done and very cleverly crafted. Whatever the hell got into the director to completely ruin it by doing this is almost a greater mystery than he had taken all that time and effort to create in the first place...

I'll go ahead and say this was one of those horror films, like Alien, Absentia, AM 1200, Banshee Chapter, The Corridor, etc... that is very Lovecratian without overtly rehashing any of that author's stories.

Also, a LOT of folks are not going to have the patience for this movie... it's slow... most of the plot is suggested rather than overtly displayed... there's no real gore or nudity (though one scene nearly made me puke)... and the end is open to interpretation. For the people, like me, who do get into stuff like this... subtle horror that will stay with me for days afterward... Observance is a damn fine little film. I wasn't aware of its tiny budget until after I'd watched it... and for me it didn't show. I think horror often works best on this intimate scale anyway.

Most of the movies runtime is spent by observing....duuuh. However not the entertaining kind but rather the really boring one. Our protagonist is observing a young woman in a building across the street as he witnesses bizarre sightings that slowly seem to threaten him more and more.

"Slowly" is the right word because this movie was really slow paced and there's not much happening for most of the time. The only interesting scenes are dreams or visions by our protagonist and there are a few suspenseful scenes involving the woman in the building across the street. However most of its runtime is pretty boring and not worth watching. [3,8/10]

Filmed on the director's credit card over an 11 day period during the hottest heatwave on record in Sydney Australia, Observance is certainly a film that defies its beginnings and conception to showcase an impressively dread laden tale that displays a palpable sense of terror of malevolence from the first frame through to its last confronting and shocking finale.

Director Joseph Sims-Dennett crafts his second feature length film in a manner that is not dissimilar to films such as Rear Window (the spying and voyeurism), Ti West's The House of the Devil (pacing and incoming sense of evil) and even Ben Wheatley's Kill List (in the way it culminates into an uncompromising crescendo) and despite being largely confined to a rundown apartment building for a majority of its runtime, Observance never lets its tight confines strangle its atmospheric nature and intriguing plot that covers loss, mental health and a seriously bad fever.

On face value Sims-Dennett and co-writer Josh Zammit's story may seem slight, grieving man accepts job that involves watching pretty women for a mysterious client, but like a large portion of other successful psychological and slow burning horrors, Observance draws the audience in only to confront them with some terrifying scenarios that are delivered in low key ways to make them that much more effective.

The major drawback of Sims-Dennett's fine work however is the fact he hides the films heritage as an Australian film by having his cast led by the committed Lindsay Farris as tortured soul Parker speak in American accents, which so often is the case when local films try for this, distracts from some of the films tense moments, never more so highlighted by local industry vet and Mick Taylor himself John Jarrett's brief cameo around the midpoint of the film. It would've been great to see Sims-Dennett embrace the films origins (even at the cost of appealing to overseas audiences) but it still doesn't deter from the fact this is one of the most impressive low budget Australian offerings of the decade.

Observance acts as a finely tuned calling card for Sims-Dennett who could quickly become one of Australia's newest directing white knights and there's little doubt that Hollywood will come calling to a filmmaker that has both the determination and skill to pull off tricky subject matters and while Observance may waver slightly in certain elements and executions, its often downright masterful in the way it delivers its chills and Horror aficionados alongside Australian cinema fans would do well to seek it out.

3 ½ ominous jars out of 5