Thursday, August 29, 2013

Absentia

Absentia Poster
Seven years after her husband, Daniel, went missing, Tricia is about to have him declared dead. But as she copes with her grief and the reappearance of her annoying sister, Tricia begins to suspect a sinister force is behind Daniel's disappearance.
This movie manages to overcome the obstacles that cause most horror movies the biggest problems. The acting is not terrible, the picture and sound quality are decent and they manage to pull together realistic enough scenery for each setting.  Where this movie really fell down for me was in the editing.  It seems like they didn't get the shots that they needed so they went ahead with what they had.  For example there is one scene where Tricia is talking on the phone to the detective in charge of her husbands disappearance and they keep cutting back and forth between the two of them.  The problem is that they never show him talking because he isn't holding a phone.  They show the detective at his desk smiling and nodding, presumably listening to Tricia, but he is not holding a phone. In fact you can see it sitting on his desk.  When it comes time for his dialog they cut back to Tricia and use a voice over.  There are several shots where things just don't seem to fit together and you get the feeling that they had to use some trickery in editing to get it to work out at all.

Spoilers after the break.

The description isn't at all accurate.  Tricia is about to declare her husband dead but is coping with guilt not grief.  She is not "coping" with "her annoying sister" because Tricia doesn't actually seem to find her all that annoying.  In fact, Callie shows up at the beginning of the movie to live with Tricia and Tricia is happy to see her!  Also, Tricia never suspects that there was anything weird about her husband's disappearance.  Callie is the one who starts to put together that people all across the country are disappearing near bridges and Tricia keeps shooting her down.  Right up until the end of the movie Tricia thinks Callie is making it up or is hallucinating from drug use.

The poster is also pretty deceptive.  The woman in the poster is not Callie, not Tricia and the hands pulling her into the void never happened.  Why?  Because the thing that kidnapped people under bridges and held them in some dark and mysterious underworld is supposed to look like a large silverfish.  Yup, that's right, a silverfish.

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