Metacritic reviews

If you’re willing to take the plunge, it’s a haunting experience. Whether you come up for air or retreat back into the woods, well, that’s another thing entirely.

While free-floating and airy in its construction, the film’s deceiving familiarity slowly erodes, morphing into an unsettling, formally astute brain-tickler observing the placid domesticity of an affluent Texas family in their natural habitat.

It’s easy to see Family Portrait as a film about familial dynamics (all of which are similarly complex) and a snapshot of an erratic day (all of which are, when the family gathers), but Kerr unearths something buried much deeper. Throbbing underneath the surface is longing.

If the edge of Kerr’s scalpel is blunted somewhat by the sheer number of other films that show the “dark underbelly of suburbia,” Family Portrait stands out for its profound mistrust, not just of images but of the sense of sight altogether.

Even at 74 minutes, “Family Portrait” sometimes feels like it would have made a stronger 20-minute short film. It’s stuck in that space where a filmmaker has too many ideas for a short but not quite enough meat on the bones for a feature. And yet, a mastery of tone here makes that criticism fade in memory—kind of like how we pick and choose what we remember from family gatherings.

This closely choreographed chaos, paired with a harsh soundscape that gives off an anxiety-inducing underwater effect, ushers us into an enigmatic story of a family on the brink of unraveling.

While it does succeed in creating a bizarre atmosphere that captures plenty of simmering tension, it's trapped between being a proof-of-concept short film and a feature-length effort.