Caveat (2020)

A man with partial memory loss is sent to look after a girl with mental health issues, in a house no one should ever live.

Franz Kafka would be proud… Right off the bat, all three characters appear as people you wouldn’t want to associate with. The awkwardness and coldness they emit make them people you want to stay as far away from as humanly possible. Who on Earth would offer a job like this, who on Earth would accept it, and who on Earth would live in a house like that?  Neither the people nor the place makes sense.

The darkness they both carry is Kafkaesque projections that Shudder and writer/director Damian Mc Carthy manage to bring to life. The characters and the film’s claustrophobic mise-en-scene “scream” Kafka’s name from the lighting to the walls to the utterances, actions, and reactions.

Caveat is a nano-budget, slow-burn psychological horror with a plot that defies reason or rational explanation. Well, trauma and guilt partially justify it, but the rest is up to the viewer to make up their own mind. Therefore, “enjoy” Ben Caplan (Moe), Johnny French (Isaac) and Leila Sykes (Olga) who embrace the abnormality, the paradox and the depravity of their characters and revive Kafka’s bleak, grotesque, alienated, existential (and more) vision of humanity.

P.S. Oh, and what about that freaking judgmental rabbit?!

P.P.S. Writer/director Matthew Holness evoked similar results with Possum (2018).

Thanks for reading!

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