A couple of bickering young brothers left to fend for themselves in their new home start to suspect that they are not really alone in the house at all…
Grimmfest Says: The essential pitch here is “HOME ALONE – with ghosts”, but the film itself proves a far less comfortable, or child-friendly experience than this would suggest. Director and Co-Writer Emilio Portes is best known for comedies, and initially the film leans very much in that direction, shifting deftly between the increasingly foul-mouthed interplay of the two siblings, as they explore the house in search of distraction and entertainment, and the slyly satiric social comedy of their mother’s increasingly frustrating experiences at a party which she has only gone to in an attempts to collar her lawyer and sort out a few issues with the housing purchase contract. But as the grim history of the house is slowly revealed, the film shifts tone into something far darker, leading to a truly shocking, heartbreaking, and unexpectedly brutal conclusion. Beautifully crafted, with unobtrusive but pitch-perfect production design, a strong location, excellent cinematography, and with astonishingly assured performances from the two young leads, upon whose shoulders much of the narrative rests, it’s a witty and gripping fusion of the spooky and the semi-farcical, with an ending that will break you.