Lavender

In 1985 ... the mother is killed, one of the daughters survives. Not much later the police arrives. Who called them?

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.

I read on here that some think it is a horrendous movie and others think it's a very good movie. It's none of the above. Saying it's horrendous is ridiculous because it isn't that bad. Saying it's a very good movie is also ridiculous because there are way better movies in the same genre then this one. It's an average movie worth watching once and then forget about it. The cast isn't bad. All actors did their best playing their respective characters. It's just the story that could have been better. It's all a bit guessing what happened but it's just a bit too slow and too long before you get some answers. They try to make it creepy but it isn't really and that's why it's just an average movie for this genre.

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.

The movie begins by letting us know that the main character's family was killed when she was young, and that she was found in the house, crouched in the corner holding a pocket razor. Basically the movie then serves to unfold the mystery of what happened all those years ago.

The movie is incredibly slow. I found myself doing that "come on, wrap it up" gesture at the screen on more than one occasion where the camera was just pointed at Abbie Cornish's face, while she stood there looking sad or scared for WAY TOO LONG. I don't require a superhero movie to stay engaged, but the pace on this thing was like watching hair grow.

Like some other reviewers, I also questioned the "look" of Abbie Cornish's character. She certainly didn't look like a photographer. She looked like she was going to a barn dance, every day. I usually don't feel that annoyed by a character's wardrobe, but in this case that darn denim jacket got SO old it was distracting.

That aside, the plot unfolds in a pretty silly way. There isn't much consistency to the supernatural aspects (I am fine suspending disbelief for supernatural stuff -- but please establish some rules instead of having everyone do totally random things!).

By far the SILLIEST thing about this movie, though, is when we get to find out "what really happened." It was 1985 when this multiple murder took place, and the police couldn't put together what happened?? Once you see everything play out on the screen, it's obvious that even a random person off the street examining the bodies could give a fairly good guess. The specific types of injuries (or lack thereof) would make everything pretty obvious.

In short, it isn't a mysterious crime at all, so the police would ABSOLUTELY have figured it out and narrowed in on the killer quite easily. I hate having to suspend THAT much disbelief, so I felt cheated at the end, rather than rewarded for my patience sitting through all of those long, slow scenes.

It's not the worst movie I've ever seen, but there are a LOT of other good things I'd recommend putting ahead of this on your watchlist.