It was very very ambitious and I really appreciate everything it was trying to do but I think the execution really fell flat in the editing. I think if it was half an hour shorter, less reliant on jumpscares, and slightly less subtle, it could have been a really incredible short film.
Like it really absolutely captured my childhood night terrors perfectly and the feeling of being unable to sleep staring at nothing in the dark feeling afraid... But that's not enough to carry you for an hour and forty five minutes. I think even if it was half an hour shorter it still could have felt very slow paced and kept that feeling of just waiting for morning to come and your parents to wake up and everything to feel safe again. And also that frustrating thing of your parents just telling you to go back to sleep when you're scared. It captures the terror of being a child with no agency or understanding of the world.
But also it was so boring I kept getting distracted and missing all those subtle details people talk about. I had to have a lot of the "scary moments" pointed out to me in YouTube videos after the fact because they were so easy to miss and it just couldn't hold my focus enough for me to be looking for them. I think it's because there was just too much dead time and random shots of nothing to the point that I stopped expecting there to be anything so when something happened I'd miss it.
Also I know the bad audio editing was on purpose but gd damn do I wish the dialogue had subtitles consistently.
People keep talking about how the movie makes you fill in the blanks and scare yourself but honestly I could achieve the same thing by just sitting in the dark and using my imagination. It's not my job to come up with an interesting story that's the screenwriter's job. I don't mean they need to explain everything, they shouldn't, but there at least needs to be things actually there for more than 10% of the movie. I mean really it was like the longest 100 minutes ever.
The director got his start making five minute horror videos on YouTube and it shows. There's a lot of very strong five minutes, but he just doesn't know what to do with 21×5 minutes.
It just needed a second round of editing. Cut down on some of the empty shots so that the shots we do get mean something. Get rid of a few cheap jumpscares and replace them with more eerie imagery or plot details that draw just a few more outlines of creepy things to fill in. Make the dialogue slightly more clear, the visuals slightly more in focus to help guide our eyes to the things we're supposed to notice.aks it more clear when the kids are doing things versus those things happening on their own. A lot of "creepy moments" I must thought were kids moving things because they're always barely on screen how would I know anyway.
A frustrating and overly ambitious movie because it does have so much potential.