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Friday, July 28, 2017

Thoughts on Still/Born

Last week, I saw a pretty blah horror movie at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, called Still/Born, directed by Brandon Christensen. It is a 2017 Canadian horror film where a woman named Mary (Christie Burke) gives birth to twins, but one is stillborn. She suffers from postpartum depression while taking care of her son while her concerned husband Jack is away being a lawyer. She starts seeing weird visions of a demon that is trying to steal her baby, and begins losing her mind as the demon messes with her life in her empty giant house, and she looks crazy to everyone else.

This film had the potential to be a horror film where the demon is a metaphor for her postpartum depression, and that she battles the demon to save herself and her baby. Instead, it became a pretty formulaic film of predictable jump scares, the woman losing her shit all the time and freaking out her loved ones, the actress turning on the serious crazy eyes and overacting when she is trying to convince people about the demon, and the demon looking like a Samara ripoff from The Ring with a laughable "devil" voice. I thought that the Film Society would have better taste than to include this predictable crap in with their Scary Movies festival. It was pretty mediocre to watch, and a missed opportunity to make a good horror film about postpartum depression.

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