Day 8: Absentia

Feels like a made for Lifetime tv movie disguised as a horror movie.

You ever watch a movie that tries to blend two elements and it just doesn't work out?  This is that kind of movie and it makes it frustrating to review.  I mean, just look at the picture on that box art there.  Doesn't that just scream "scary and suspenseful?"  Yeah, I was fooled too.  Did Fangoria magazine watch the same movie I did?  The problem is that this movie really doesn't know what it is, and comes across as lackluster because of it.  On to the review:

The movie starts off with a lady taking down rotted "missing" posters and replacing them with new ones.  They are pictures of a man, Daniel Riley (Played by Morgan Peter Brown), and we soon find out that he has been missing for 7 years, and as such is about to get a death certificate with cause of death being "in absentia"...oh, so that's where the title comes from.  And of course the woman putting up the fliers is his wife Tricia (played by Courtney Bell), who is having problems coming to terms with the fact that the search for her husband is over.  Enter her sister Callie (Katie Parker), who has come down to help with this difficult time.  And there are the creepy (well they are supposed to be, I just kind of laughed) visages of her husband, that are now suddenly haunting Tricia, and I also forgot to mention that she is pregnant.  By who, we find out later, but it's really of no consequence to the film.  Really, it's not.  That's the Lifetime portion of it, i've been talking about.

Anyway, Callie likes to run every day...and loves the shortcut that is through the tunnel, just in view of Tricia's home...and she used to do drugs (what else could be in the green case she shoves under the bed when she gets there).  But the tunnel is kind of strange...she meets a homeless guy (she thinks) in the tunnel and he leaves her a trinket of sorts...then she goes home and finds some on her porch...so she tries to return them and give the homeless guy some food...but he's gone.  And then another random guy just walks up with a bag and tells her "not to leave the treasure there"...yeah.  So Tricia goes to the psych to try to figure out why she is seeing her "supposedly" dead husband everywhere, and Callie starts hearing "skittering" noises in the bathroom while brushing her teeth...then pulls the cover back on her bed to find "all of the treasure" mysteriously there.  She is sure she locked the door though.  And then one day Daniel, inexplicably returns.  A shell of a man he once was, and seemingly terrified of "something"...especially those noises in the wall.  And then it really gets silly.

Ok, my problems with this movie are numerous.  For starters, the horror is virtually non-existent here.  Not even jump scares...or any kind of suspense.  You are just watching these two women cope with something awful.  But here's the thing, they actually give pretty convincing performances and play well off of each other.  If this was a Lifetime tv movie drama, I would say it was pretty well acted and had a compelling story about dealing with loss.  But this is labeled as a horror movie, and as such, the horror elements feel half-baked and unnecessary, almost an afterthought.  So in short, the drama is actually good, but the horror is so bad you just want it to be gone..."Stop tampering with my Lifetime drama, you stupid horror movie".  Most of the other performances are good as well, so I don't really have a beef with that.

But the music...the awful music.  You know you have heard this music before.  It's the hold one chord down, let it ring, then a second chord and let it ring and then throw in a 3rd at the end and let it all drone.  I think I have heard this music in every indie movie I have ever watched.  It's like, "in case you forgot we are an indie film, we decided to throw in this droning, boring, music to make ya remember!"  Very tedious and dull, and actually saps any suspense from the film, and made me want to fall asleep on more than one occasion.  

So how do I rate this?  On the one hand, the acting is one step above soap opera and the drama is quite heartfelt.  On the other, the horror is just kind of there like an annoying fly you want to swat because the rest of it is so compelling.  But, it just does not work, so I can't be generous.  But the acting is miles better than Midnight Movie: the killer cut was so, i'm giving it at least 1 point more for that.  I'm sure you can catch this on Lifetime someday...

4.5 out of 10