Review of Absentia (2011) by Greg V — 26 Jul 2012

I liked this movie quite a lot in fact. Surprisingly it focuses more on the characters and how they deal with loss rather than a straight up horror film, but there's some good horror here too. One of the better things the movie could have done is focus on the characters because if it I focused more on the horror it would've been pretty silly what with the EVIL TUNNEL.

And yea the movie does have a low budget, only $70,000, but it really doesn't feel like it and really a budget should not determine how good a movie is or not. I mean it helps, but if you can use minimal budget and get the most out of it then that has to be commended, and this film gets the most out of it.

The writing is good and there are some pretty clever moments in how they use Tricia being haunted by Daniel since she decided to declare him dead in absentia and how that plays out in the story. And the acting is strong too, not mind blowing but the actresses do a good job at seeing how an event like this would affect them, and everyone around them.

That's the cool thing about the movie, it takes a look at how humans handle events like this by trying to come up with ANY excuse so it would make the truth less painful, this is a common theme in the movie.

One thing I didn't get was the evil tunnel, what did it do? Why did it do these things? What exactly can you offer for a trade and how exactly is a trade done? It has a lot of unanswered questions that should've been answered, at least in my opinion.

But these unanswered questions are never a detriment as the movie is till good and I'd definitely recommend it, despite the rating, I thought this was a really good movie.