- Directed by Jaume Collet-Sera
- Written by Sam Stefanak
- Stars Danielle Deadwyler, Okwui Okpokwasili, Peyton Jackson
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s-Ko4J3mWs
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
The cast is excellent and it all looks good. They manage to ramp up the tension out of what is sometimes not much, sometimes quite a bit. We do gradually get to piece together what’s really going on, more or less. It does have a wrap-up, but we found it pretty disappointing in the end.
Spoilery Synopsis
A woman watches a video of her husband talking about naming their farm. Ramona watches it over and over, clearly depressed. Her son, Taylor, comes in and breaks up the depression; the power is out, and he wants her to call someone. As she finally gets out of bed, we see she’s got a broken leg. She says good morning to her imaginative daughter, Annie, and heads downstairs.
Ramona’s husband, David, the man on the video, has obviously recently died, and the family has lots of unpaid bills. The food in the fridge is going to go bad pretty soon, and she can’t call the power company because her phone is dead. We soon get a flashback to the traffic accident that caused all the trouble, but then that’s interrupted when Taylor reports that there’s a strange woman in black out in the yard.
When Ramona decides to go outside and see what the woman wants, the kids act terrified of the stranger. It takes forever for Ramona to get to her on crutches, but she makes the attempt. “How did I get here?” the woman asks. She’s weird and seems to know more than she should about her and David. “You called and I came, Ramona.” Ramona gets scared and goes to the garage, where she plugs her dead phone into the car lighter plug. The car is dead, too.
Ramona comes back inside and locks all the doors. She makes up a story for Tay and Annie. A little while later, the old woman is now sitting closer to the house. We see that the old woman’s shadow affects things in a bad way.
The family dog had been barking non-stop, but Ramona notices it’s gotten awfully quiet outside. She goes outside to see about that and finds nothing– the dog is missing. Taylor wants to drive to a neighbor’s house; Ramona can’t drive in her condition, and Taylor’s not old enough. He wants to walk to a neighbor’s house– it can’t be more than a couple of miles.
The old woman gets closer, and Annie steps on something that cuts her foot. While Ramona deals with that, Taylor goes outside to look for the dog. He notices that all the chickens are dead. He goes out to the garage and fears that the woman is stalking him outside the door. He figures out that the car is dead and the dog is gone.
Taylor comes inside and accuses Ramona of knowing who the woman outside actually is. Taylor gets his father’s gun out of the safe and threatens the old woman. The woman stands up and walks toward him, taking off her veil. “Your mother’s been lying to you– about everything.” She explains that Ramona lied about the accident that killed David.
Taylor confronts Ramona about what really happened that night. They went out to dinner and she told him that she wasn’t happy with her life. She wanted to leave David and the kids, but he made a perfectly reasonable argument. She drove them home in the rain. Ramona notices a woman in black on the road in her rear-view mirror. She’s watching the woman when they hit the other car head-on.
Meanwhile, we see Annie inside the house, but the shadows are moving things around to scare her. The shadows menace her, but she doesn’t see them right away. Soon, everything in the house starts moving and flying, and they all see it. They quickly see that if they hide where it’s dark, there are no shadows, so they all go up to the attic.
Whatever it is outside, it bangs on the walls and doors, wanting in. Then they start seeing the woman inside the attic. The shadow eventually disappears, and takes Annie with her. They hear Annie downstairs, so Ramona and Taylor go down after her. Ramona goes through a tunnel into a reality where David is there, replaying the scene from her phone. She notices all the words she can read are backwards; it’s some kind of mirror-world.
Now, Ramona is the woman in black sitting outside the farmhouse, and we see the first encounter with the woman from her point of view as she talks to herself, a few hours ago. She then replays the scene in the attic with her in the part of the monster.
Ramona, now with the gun, talks to the woman, who says she only wants to help, the way she asked her to. The woman talks to Ramona about her long-planned suicide; Ramona wants to die. “I’m the corners of your mind. The scary parts. Today’s the day.” The woman talks to Ramona about going through with it to set her children free.
Ramona sends the kids to walk to the neighbor’s farm. She goes back inside and checks out the gun, as she only has one bullet. The woman shows her what to do.
Ramona goes back outside to the kids, who have returned. “Will she come back?” “If she does, we’ll be ready.” Suddenly, the lights go on and the dog shows up. Was any of this real? It’s a happy ending!
We cut to a painting with her signature– it’s backwards.
Brian’s Commentary
The ending was vague, but I guess by actually killing herself she went to the mirror universe and had a happy ending. Hooray for… suicide?
I have no idea why everyone was so scared for the first hour. An old woman was sitting on their lawn, and they were talking about calling the police and getting out the gun. Sure, it was an unusual situation, but why the overblown fear of an old woman who has done or said absolutely nothing?
There were only three characters, and two were children, so we weren’t expecting much of a body count, but we didn’t expect the monster to just be another case of depression. Especially since the kids saw the woman outside as well.
It looks good; the acting is good; it’s well paced, but the actual plot and resolution were pretty awful.
Kevin’s Commentary
I thought the cast was great, including the kids. And I was impressed with how they ramped up the tension when there wasn’t really a lot going on when you thought about it. The explanation of what’s going on wasn’t that impressive though. The script was on the disappointing side, I thought. So mixed feelings.