User reviews

Many weak points, like the riciculous opening scene, and the slow pace, but overall an entertaining movie. The pace helps to create a nice atmosphere. Good acting, especially by Elijah Wolf and Thekla Reuten. There's all sorts of philosphy in this movie, like Schrödinger's cat, free will, and hints about parallel universes. Very interesting if you've never heard of it. But it's obviously used to distract the viewer from what's really going on.

Go into this film without any preconceived ideas and do not read my spoiler below and you are in for a fun filled, freaky thrill ride.

What an excellent sci-fi-horro-thriller this one is and no mistake. The atmosphere created is par excellence and the lush highland photography and Scottish locations add so much to the mood of the film. I had thought this was going to be just another made for TV thriller but oh how wrong I was.

The acting is top notch from all concerned; Bill Paterson is excellent in anything he touches and Peter Mullan does his usual gruff Scotsman to perfection coupled with a great leading lady this film will exceed expectations and have you thinking which is a good thing. Being Scottish myself, maybe I am a bit biased but this film does make me proud (for once) to be in Scotland!

It toys around with alternate realities, is there a god, the meaning of life...And even Schrödinger's cat makes an appearance so this should satisfy those looking for something a bit more cerebral than the usual CGI, crash, bang, wallop and it does it in spades and will keep you guessing to the end if you just let the film wash over you. Its rare for me to give more than an average 5 or above average 6 out of 10 these days but this one goes the whole hog and gets a mighty 8/10 this time.

SPOILER: The denouement will remind you of another recent film on which the crux of the story is based and its the marvellous Matthew McConaughey film Serenity (2019) but this time the location is Scotland instead of the Bahamas and it carries it off with ease!

A psychiatrist (Reuten) leaves the US after a personal tragedy and starts again in Aberdeen where one of her patients, a young boy, says he can decide the future as shown in his many manic drawings.

This starts as a quite enjoyable thriller - is the boy shaping Reuten's future or merely foretelling it. About three quarters of the way through is shifts gears significantly resulting in a more detailed and lofty explanation of what has happened. This solution is well handled, but with all such twists and changes in plot, it really comes down to whether you are prepared to take that leap or not. On the whole, for me, I think, despite its pretentions, it was just about acceptable, I just felt the last quarter was a little bit hurried although frankly I'm still not 100% sure I've bought into it this. Interesting though.

It's a nicely constructed and well acted film but I found it rather confusing and implausible in the end.

Wouldn't watch it again but not a stinker by any means.

Go into this film without any preconceived ideas and do not read my spoiler below and you are in for a fun filled, freaky thrill ride.

What an excellent sci-fi-horro-thriller this one is and no mistake. The atmosphere created is par excellence and the lush highland photography and Scottish locations add so much to the mood of the film. I had thought this was going to be just another made for TV thriller but oh how wrong I was.

The acting is top notch from all concerned; Bill Paterson is excellent in anything he touches and Peter Mullan does his usual gruff Scotsman to perfection coupled with a great leading lady this film will exceed expectations and have you thinking which is a good thing. Being Scottish myself, maybe I am a bit biased but this film does make me proud (for once) to be in Scotland!

It toys around with alternate realities, is there a god, the meaning of life...And even Schrödinger's cat makes an appearance so this should satisfy those looking for something a bit more cerebral than the usual CGI, crash, bang, wallop and it does it in spades and will keep you guessing to the end if you just let the film wash over you. Its rare for me to give more than an average 5 or above average 6 out of 10 these days but this one goes the whole hog and gets a mighty 7/10 this time.

SPOILER: The denouement will remind you of another recent film on which the crux of the story is based and its the marvellous Matthew McConaughey film Serenity (2019) but this time the location is Scotland instead of the Bahamas and it carries it off with ease!

That's the perfect way to describe this movie, preposterous, and no because of the child "power", that is the premises of the movie and it could have been good, Not sure what they seen people who awarded it 10, I can only assume they took a shamble nonsensical storyline and made into a psychological supernatural drama. And the end, obviously I won't give anything away but I thought it was a complete cop out. The idea wasn't bad but it just developed into something preposterous and bonkers

Maybe I'm biased as I was born and brought up in Aberdeen where most of this is filmed. Well acted and an interesting story although possibly a tad predictable. Worth a watch considering it's a low budget thriller.

Like a record of psyciatric inuendos, where the plot and story is so complexed that it hypnotized the grumpy old man into somnolentia, its like a film emerging from a film of anotherfilm about a woman and her seriuous patient case, or was she the case herself, and the whole production goes from dark grey cold , wet and mysterious a time that even i could analyze the problem, then the visionaries become farther and darker in a dreamlike nightmare where dead ressurects and and the complexity of the story turned into a catnap for me, then when you think the flick is over it spins of again, now in a whitish world, and you may now get a glimpse of whos the real fanasizer in this story is...

my god, this dug deep into my stemcells, its not a fun ride, rather a mysterious riddle of a drawing board game its a irrational drama en masse', the filming and soundwork are good, the actors play well, but the plotspeed are slow, and playtime a bit to long for an adhd'ish perpredemented tinnitusious grumpy old man, that wont tell you to shade away from this , its just to complex for a tired mind, so be awake and ready when viewing this one.

A similar premise to The Medusa Touch (1978) this had enough twists and turns to keep me guessing. I enjoyed the fact that the cast is unknown to me, rather than rolling out the same old faces. Entertaining, well-acted and compelling.

This film starts off great, loses some steam in the middle when a great deal of time is spent panicking and freaking out.

Sadly, the ending "twist" I found disappointing. Not quite the cop-out of waking up to realize it's all a dream, but I felt a similar letdown.

Elijah Wolf is a fascinating child actor and his expressive range is creepily precocious.

Lead actor Thekla Reuten is a strong performer, but the script has her repeating the same actions too often. There is one clip of her cahracter that is repeated twice. If that same kind of replay repeititon had been used -- perhaps from various angles -- it might have supported what eventually happens.

Had I watched the third act first, I wouldn't have watched the beginning or middle to get there.

What a film! You can't change your destiny? Or can we change our predestination in our lives through certain choices? Do we live in a matrix? Are there alternate universes? Many questions! A slow film that makes you think about life, death, happiness, sadness, fear and guilt. A parable and metaphor. Also watch his previous film 'Two Eyes Staring', Black water.

This is a disappointing film, which is a shame because the cast is strong. At the beginning it looks like an interesting plot, but as the film progresses it becomes dull, repetitive and rather silly, and just doesn't hold the attention. We considered turning it off at one point but stuck with it until the end. Lots of unexplained details and woolly events. Anyone unfamiliar with Schrödinger's Cat will struggle even more with this - the concept should have been explained at the beginning but in the great scheme of things would make little difference to this reaching movie.

Slow movie. Gothic thriller that didn't work for me. Ending is interesting but too long getting there. Extra point as I work in Aberdeen and had a great time guessing the locations (got most of them right). Segments stitched together all over the place eg you don't go up Deeside to get to Portsoy from Aberdeen but hey, that's movie magic. "Wet and gloomy" is near the mark though, ha ha.

You'll think you've seen it all before, a fairly middling, yet, engaging 'whats going on here' type film that keeps you guessing all the way through, flip flop changing what you think is really going on ... and then lays it all out before you. Satisfying, and in the final scenes, leaves you without any doubts.

Well paced and presented. Simple and enjoyable, a decent way to spend almost two hours watching a film. Not wasted.

I knew this movie would have everything I hate about "mystery/thriller" films. The obligatory psychiatrist who gets sucked into her patient's reality, the obligatory creepy-ass kid, and the obligatory unreliable narrator storyline, but I was an idiot and decided to watch it based on the shill reviews. What a steaming load. I could have spent this time doing something more rewarding, like scrubbing bathroom grout with a toothbrush.

The cinematography is nice, but you've seen this film a million times since the '70s. This version doesn't do anything any better, although you can entertain yourself trying to decide if the creepy-ass kid is a boy or a girl.

Perfect for me on the "Creep-meter" with no jump scares, great acting, and solid mystery. If you're looking for "Horror," this isn't for you. It's a psychological horror film, technically. I know it didn't get like rave reviews or anything, but this movie kept me engaged and creeped out throughout the entire film. There are other tones to it outside of the mystery, but adding that might cause a spoiler. I don't need gore or jump scares for a creepy, scary movie, and this for me was the perfect recipe! Overall speaking, it's a REALLY GOOD MOVIE! Don't believe the bad reviews, I watch a lot of movies and while I'm not the toughest critic, I have pretty high standards. Check it out for yourself.

Started well but soon went downhill. In the opening scenes (with the odd font of the opening titles), we learn of the therapist coming to Scotland and meeting her colleagues and patients.

We soon learn that the new therapist is going the same way as her predecessor, in a weird and quite silly way. Way too quickly. The film, Scotland and the therapy offices are too dark. Wonderful Scotland's depicted as wet, miserable, and cold.

Story isn't new (watch the far superior Case 39), and has been done to death. We were so pleased to actually find a film that sounded watchable. Unfortunately the story got sillier and sillier with some odd changes (I can't call them twists). Things happened, then they didn't, was this real, what was going on.

It deals with a boy and a physicatrist.

The plot moves slowly, but if you are patient enough then it hits you.

This film is very well made, and most important: it has a few openings for interpretation. We can say that it is a case of post-traumatic psychosis, but we can say that it is a kind of "autistic struggle & adaptation" syndrome in a case of child abandonment. Is a film that raises several questions, including about free will and choice, about the limits and defense mechanisms of a traumatized mind, but also about the limits of the scientific / analytical approach in working with children. The dynamics of the film are unpredictable, with unexpected twists. The interesting part is that you don't know for sure in whose mind it all happened. The viewer can choose what he thinks is most plausible, but the all variants work anyway and are interconnected. It made me think of a "post-hitckock" approach for psychoanalysis enthusiasts.

I urge anyone to watch this. Its a little slow to begin with but once the pace quickens its full of surprises. Very imaginative and very well acted.

The general premise of this film presents us with a variation on the evil child where instead of being the antichrist or possessed, the viewer is posed with the question, "Is he god?"

It takes a loooong time to get there, but this movie leverages the philosophical implications of that concept in an interesting way. We finally get some weighty theological debates around the 90-minute mark just before the film nose-dives straight through what should've been it's climax and into a half-hour plot twist that undermines all the hard work the film did up to that point.

Without giving anything away, this plot twist is just a simple variation on one of the most hated, most parodied, most insulting plot twists in TV and film. A twist that, in spite of how much nearly everyone hates it, continues to pop up in serious (non-parody) projects with baffling frequency.

It ends up feeling like the filmmakers wanted to explore theology from a critical vantage and either backpedaled out of fear or were otherwise order to by some meddling producer. Either way, the film loses its bite, its meaning, its power, and its quality.