You Should Have Left

It's never good when the scariest part of a film happens right at the beginning. A young girl can't sleep so she goes for a wander in her house. The usual suspects of modern horror all pop up, loud sudden noises, shadows, your common or garden jump scare stuff but because it's a child we're seeing, things feel that bit more amped up. She gets back into bed and then realises there's something scary in the room with her. Something oddly familiar and unsettling and unsurprisingly she's struck dumb with fear. Then she's grabbed by the throat and hoisted into the air and sadly nothing else compares after that.

If you've seen The Shining the initial set up of You Should Have Left might seen familiar. A husband, wife and child alone in a weird place in the middle of nowhere. Things are off, their abode is confusingly laid out and easy to get lost in, being full of nooks and crannies and soon enough the husband is on the verge of snapping. With this set up and Kevin Bacon & Amanda Seyfried you might be expecting something special and as you can see from the first paragraph you aren't going to get it.

Theo (Kevin Bacon, one of the few good things about the film) and Susanna (Amanda Seyfried, totally wasted) need to get away from it all. He's a jealous man and her job as an actress isn't helping matters. A tragedy in Theo's past has him plagued with remorse and a holiday with his family, his journal and some meditation seems just the ticket. They decamp to a rented house in the middle of the Welsh countryside with their daughter Ella (Avery Essex) and things are looking up. Until suddenly they aren't.

Guilt. It's a bastard of an emotion. One that can pop up and paralyse you whenever and wherever. Theo's plagued with it and it's the driving force behind this film. It's a story that starts well enough, painting the couple and their relationship in broad strokes while moving along snappily. Then you get a hint of Theo's history and suddenly the film gets predictable. Psychological thriller straight ahead! But then it goes askew, things pop up and disappear courtesy of a kinda sorta sketched out left turn that feels exceedingly halfhearted. It feels like writer/director Koepp wanted to avoid the usual 'IT WAS ALL IN HIS HEAD' ending but didn't have the guts to fully commit and as such it's 90 minutes that will leave you feeling pretty deflated come the ending.

You Should Have Left is available to stream now. It will fill 90 minutes but that's about it.