SPOILER WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
Synopsis: A psychologist is introduced to a patient with multiple personalities by her father who is also a psychologist. Even though it's her dad's job to fix the guy, she gets all up in that and tries to figure the guy out. Unfortunately, she discovers that his various personalities are those of murder victims. And people around her start dying too. Soul-sucking ensues.
Scariness Type: This movie doesn't try too hard to scare you. It's more that it's about scary and weird things that would be quite awful if they happened to you. It was listed as a "crime thriller" on Netflix, though I would call it a horror movie. A few too many ghostly murders for your standard crime genre.
Rating: 3.5/5 Inkblots.
Body Count: 12
Fun Fact: People hang assorted objects all over the place with string and wire. It's a standard decorating strategy, used by many different people. At least in this movie.
Best Moment: The crazy guy did a good job of being a different person in each of his personalities. The final personality in the climax was an especially difficult and potentially hilarious scene, and he did a good job of not making it seem ridiculous.
Worst Moment: See below. Really, I can't pull anything else out when that moment is blinding me with lack-of-science.
A Suspension Bridge Too Far: There's a security video which contains footage of a ghostly shadow hanging over somebody. When a guy who does audio engineering is examining the footage, he suddenly has an epiphany - "why, this looks like an audio waveform!" (the shadow itself). So he uses that very common piece of software we all have (I'm sure it comes with Windows, alongside Minesweeper), which extrapolates a 3D image of a waveform from video footage, rotates it and converts it into a normal audio waveform (while simultaneously
completely changing it, I have no idea why), which he then plays, to discover it is the sound of somebody's voice. So... this visual phenomena was a 3D model of a sound in real space. In the right format. This is no suspension bridge, it's a suspension airship, and it's on fire. Oh the humanity.
Horror Tropes: Like all horror movies, this one wraps up at the end, but then has a sequel set-up moment where the danger isn't really gone. We always see that, but it really bugged me here, because in many movies, you get something like they bury the killer, walk away, and then a hand pops out of the grave. That's fine, gives us a little time before the next movie. In this movie, it was so immediate a threat (the evil ghost had jumped into the body of her daughter, who she was holding at the time) that the story really isn't done. It's not an ending at all, it's more like the midpoint of the final confrontation. And by the way, that is such a dumb trope. The story's done, you resolved it. Let it be done. If you want the killer to come back, then have his hand pop up at the beginning of the next movie!
My Take: Well, first of all, these are the most unethical psychologists I've ever seen. I'm not like an expert on the rules, but they were definitely not following any of them. But anyway, this was pretty enjoyable, and I liked where it was going, all up until the end. The way it wrapped up, and what all the rules of the magical stuff involved were, just didn't work. First of all, I don't think there were any logical rules - maybe I just wasn't quite following it, but it was kind of like "this guy had had his mouth stuffed with dirt, so uh... I guess he can touch other people and make them die from dirt coming out of their mouths!" It doesn't fit the lore that you actually learn during the movie, it's just kind of something related to it. So this is one of those movies where it seems like it's leading somewhere good, but it just sort of peters out and crumbles apart when exposed to the light of logic.
The Lesson: Don't eat dirt - you already know it tastes bad, but it can also keep your soul from getting back into your body! I mean, assuming it's not currently in your body. Your soul, that is. Dirt should not be in your body - see the beginning of this paragraph for details.
