It was only a matter of time before Rob Savage, director of the inventive and terrifying lockdown Zoom horror Host and the anarchic livestream splatterfest Dashcam, was tapped to direct a studio picture. And as this adaptation of a Stephen King short story shows, he certainly knows his way around the genre.
A recently bereaved family – a widowed father (Chris Messina) and his two daughters (Sophie Thatcher, Vivien Lyra Blair) – find that their grief leaves them vulnerable to something malign, a voracious evil entity with arachnid legs and several sets of teeth that dwells in the shadows. And there are plenty of hiding places in the family home, with its murky stained-glass windows and walls that seem to soak up the light like blotting paper.
It’s an effectively spooky horror film but a generic one. Savage’s approach is efficient but workmanlike: he makes liberal use of jump scares and thunderous crashes on the score. It is, in short, the kind of film we have seen many times before, and that’s a pity. Savage could be a disruptive, distinctive voice in horror. He just needs a studio brave enough to let him run wild.
