You Should Have Left | Film Review

 

I remember hearing about this film ages ago and being vaguely interested, but not enough to find out when it was coming out. However, it recently came out on the Sky Premiere channels and I thought that I'd see if I liked it.

Married couple Theo (Kevin Bacon) and Susanna (Amanda Seyfried), and their daughter Ella (Avery Essex) go on holiday to Wales, but soon find that their vacation home harbours dark secrets. 

I don't know if that's the best way to describe it, but because the film isn't completely straightforward, that's what I'm going with.

I absolutely loved this film. It's the kind of film where I can completely understand if others don't like it, or don't get it, but I thought it was great.  

From the start, there is something really likeable about this family. The actors worked really well together, and the family is really endearing, even when you see some of their problems. You could watch them in any genre and they'd be believable. I became invested, and cared about these characters, really quickly.

There were times, particularly at the beginning of the film, when it was definitely more drama than horror. But because I cared so much about the characters right away, I didn't really mind that it took a bit of time to get to the horror. Actually, I feel like the drama-angle of the story was interesting alone, but the injection of horror kicked it up a notch.

There is a heavy presence of dreams throughout the film. I recently watched something that contained a lot of dreams ('Behind Her Eyes' on Netflix, if you're interested) and found it really confusing and hard to keep track of. But the dreams in this film were done really well.

I loved that the concept of the film was actually scary. It wasn't about jump scares or the shock-factor, but the entirety of the film, and the way that things are drawn out, was genuinely scary.

The film is complex and unique, and it never lost my interest. I was completely engaged from beginning to end.

The acting was great, which of course you'd expect from Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried. However, Avery Essex, who played their daughter Ella, was amazing. I have no idea how old she is, but being so young, she did a phenomenal job.

After a while, the ending becomes a bit predictable. It wasn't great, but it made sense, and didn't take anything away from how good the rest of the film was.

Overall, I thought this was a really interesting, intriguing horror that was developed well and built on genuine scares. Watch this if you're in need of a good horror movie.

7.5/10