With what could have been a resurgence for home video releases, BlumHouse Productions (Invisible Man, The Purge) and writer/director David Koepp (Inferno, The Mummy) stumble out of the gate with this melodramatic thriller.
Based on a German novella of the same name “You Should Have Left” focuses on the wealthy and middle aged Theo Conroy (Kevin Bacon) and his troubled relationship with his much younger actress wife Susanna, played by Amanda Seyfried (Mumma Mia, Letters from Juliet). Along with their 8 year old daughter Ella (Avery Essex) the couple decide to rent a beautiful modern holiday home half way across the world in Wales, in an attempt at repairing their family. As you would expect from a BlumHouse production, something is a miss with the house and the family soon become entangled in its ever changing corridors and doors that appear out of thin air.
However, when the movie began with a double dream sequence (A dream within a dream) and a poorly timed jump scare that fails miserably at being anything scary, it’s safe to say that my hopes and expectations of what this movie might be fell dramatically. Kevin Bacon gives an earnest performance, with his career coming full circle as he spends the majority of the movie sporting a grey knitted jumper resembling that of good old Mrs. Vorhees from Bacons first starring role, “Friday The 13th”.
To his credit, Bacon happily carries this movie on his back with a toned down performance more than one might be accustomed to when it comes to the former ‘Footloose’ star. We see a mature side to Bacon who now assumes the role he once raged against in his youth, the parent, and with this we would assume that It would allow him to present a different side to a character that we as an audience may grow to like.
Except this isn’t the case here. For as compelling as Bacons performance is, it’s hard to sell a character who in essence is a nobody, solely defined by an event from their past. Conroy has no depth to his character, other than the fact that he has a lot of money and was found not guilty in the trial for his ex wife’s death. That’s it. There’s nothing relatable here for an audience member to latch onto and proves to be part of this movie’s undoing because there are some great moments in this movie.
Without moving into spoiler territory, there is one scene worth mentioning, that involves Conroy going through his wife’s phone in search for signs of infidelity whilst she bathes in the next room. The tension here is palpable and for the first time in this movie you feel something real. This moment is relatable, it feasts on our own insecurities and you actually begin to sympathise with Bacons Conroy. But just like the rest of this movie, it fails to maintain this tension and throws it away in the next scene when a overly loud meditation voice over breaks our immersion and pulls us out of the experience.
Koepp does try and pose an argument with this movie and takes aim at those who are judged before proven guilty, with Bacons Conroy being demonised by those around him for the suspicious death of his ex wife (the event from his past I was referring to).
He does an admirable job at building a case for and against these claims as he slowly unwinds the mystery surrounding Bacons involvement. We watch as Conroy’s daughter adorably picks at the seams of this mysterious thread, asking blatant questions that nobody seems to know the answer too, not even Conroy’s current wife for that matter and that question? “Did daddy kill his ex wife?” Isn’t answered until the very end of the movie, and even that reveal isn’t compelling enough to justify this movies existence.
When a movie is set in and around a very modernised haunted house, you would expect it to focus its efforts at giving its audience a fresh new perspective of this tired genre. It doesn’t. If anything it spends much of its 93 minute run time presenting the backlash to the claims made against Conroy, which take centre stage throughout the movie rather than the much more interesting hauntings going on at the house. In conjunction with this choice, the filmmakers also chose to take the movie in more a dramatic direction, causing the horror to take a back seat in place for dry dialogue led scenes making the plotting of this movie feel stagnant and forces it to move at a snails pace.
However, If there is one main standout of this inconsistent movie, it has to be the house. Resembling something you might see on an episode of MTV’s cribs, Blumhouse have truly out done themselves when they chose this one. The house is beautiful. With its sleek modern design, it rebels against the conventional norms of what we as an audience have come accustomed to with haunted house movies. From the emptiness of its rooms, to its brightly lit hallways, from a purely aesthetic perspective this house is pretty.
Yet, the movie fails to utilise its great location and with a narrative that fails to catch its stride until the last 20 minutes, “You Should Have Left” is a bland retelling of a great book. This is definitely one movie you should leave alone.
Submitted By: Danny Deller
Danny Deller is a longtime student of horror. Having studied the long it’s twisted history with cinema, from Love Craft to Witch Craft, there’s nothing Danny hasn’t seen or read.
