A pretty pleasant surprise—a thoroughly derivative captivity/pursuit movie of the "trapped in an insane psycho's house" variety, about a young woman who is tricked into meeting someone via a dating app who is not who the profile says, but which slowly picks up about a third of the way through and then, surprisingly, just gets better and better.
This is entirely derivative in terms of its themes, indebted deeply to movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but slowly they began to introduce elements that had me thinking, "Well, this is actually alright for what it is, I bet younger horror fans will think it's great... although I'm just not sure it's necessary when we have The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." And then, slowly, they just kind added enough novel elements, and truthfully the whole thing is well-made enough all the way through, that I actually wound up enjoying it quite a bit.
It's the kind of movie directors like Eli Roth or Ti West probably think they're making, and truthfully it's very close to those thoroughly derivative sorts of genre exercises, full of familiar beats and tropes, but nonetheless, this one stays slightly on the inventive side of the line between stupid and clever, while those others are a stone's throw away but on the more derivative, uncreative side of the line. Despite being unimpressed for the first third of it, and the fact that it's definitely a flawed gem and not just a gem, I wound up actively enjoying it, and can imagine possibly watching it again in the future at some point.
And, surprise, surprise: the director, Danishka Esterhazy, is Canadian. Yep. That would explain it.
Apparently she also directed the horror remake of The Banana Splits, which I heard was better than you'd expect. I guess I have to find that one now.
