Absentia

Occasionally, I get lucky and stumble across a movie that I actually like.  It is at those moments that I question my sanity.  But that’s a topic for another day.  Plus, you won’t get regaled you with the crap I’ve seen (like the abysmal, disjointed, predictable, poorly written, bland, and uninteresting Side Effects with Jude Law – so bad that it may never get reviewed by me because…well…I don’t think there’s a way to verbally convey how bad it is).

Absentia is a really nice little movie.  It fits, to a T, the first line of the Wikipedia definition of suspense:

Suspense is a feeling of pleasurable fascination and excitement mixed with apprehension, tension, and anxiety developed from an unpredictable, mysterious, and rousing source of entertainment.

The movie was funded via Kickstarter (I did not fund this movie and have no ties, financial or otherwise, to it), and the cast members are newer and somewhat unknown.

It starts off slowly, but I found myself engaged pretty quickly.  Courtney Bell stars as Tricia. Katie Parker co-stars as her sister Callie.  Tricia’s husband Daniel has been missing for seven years, and she’s in the process of having him declared dead when Callie comes back into her life.  Callie had also been absent for a long period – different rehab places in different states, maybe some other wandering during that time.

Callie is a recovering addict who seems to be clean.  She’s found a little religion (a very minor theme which also plays off of Tricia’s Buddhism prayers) and healthy living; one day, while out running she encounters a man in a pedestrian tunnel.  Someone that appears to be your rather stock “homeless” guy, even though she’s a bit freaked out by him.  And things slowly start getting weirder and weirder.  Piles of small things (buttons, watches, etc.) show up first on their doorstep and, later in Callie’s bed.

Then, Daniel reappears.  Which kind of throws a monkeywrench in Tricia’s relationship with the detective she’s been seeing.   Eventually, Callie discovers that people have been disappearing in that area for a long time.

The best thing about this movie is the technique.  Most of the reactions of the people involved seem like “now, that’s how most people would react in that situation”.  No overblown emotional shit; no stoic “nothing can phase me” shit; no flying karate kicks to the Adam’s apple shit – the actors made the characters believable.  There is one excellent “gotcha!” scene.  I’m sitting on the edge of the sofa with a nice bowl of ice cream.  You know it’s coming.  Yep.  Yeah.  Yes.  Come on alreaBAM!  My spoon goes flying across the room.  Just perfect timing.  Several times, I was sitting on the edge of the sofa actually caring about what might happen to the characters.  Because they did a great job with building suspense both in the movie (things happen slowly, up to a point) and with the soundtrack. While there are a couple of loud moments, mostly the soundtrack is minimal and is there to add to the sense of suspense.  When was the last time you saw a movie and found yourself suddenly at the edge of your seat?

Another nice touch was showing possible logical explanations, from a logical police officer POV, for everything that happened.  Although it may not necessarily be what really happened.  A “well of course there’s nothing supernatural going on because it can all be logically explained (unless there is something supernatural going on)” thing.  The movie serves up a little something to think about without being “this movie has a message”.

All of the actors were really good.  I found myself liking their characters and wanting to see the actors in other work.

Definitely a nice pick for Halloween time.

Absentia poster