22 February 2022

Review: Caveat

Blu-ray, DVD & Digital: Caveat (2020)

Isaac (Jonathan French) is suffering from amnesia and has problems recalling his recent past. So when his friend Moe Barret (Ben Caplan) appears and offers him a well paid job to look after his adult niece Olga (Leila Sykes) for a few days at a remote house, Isaac agrees and is taken to a near derelict house which sits alone on an island…which Isaac is none too pleased about from the beginning as he can’t swim.

The titular caveat that Isaac is unaware of is that the house has a gruesome past which has left Olga physchomogically scarred, and to be able to care for her without making her upset he must wear a leather harness and chain which restricts his movements to only certain areas of the house.

When left alone with Olga, Isaac slowly begins to discover the hidden truths the house holds, all while fragments of his memory begin to return.

Jonathan French is great as Isaac, his innocence in his lack of understanding about both his situation and his past endearing him to me and adding an extra level of tension whenever anything slightly untoward began to happen to him.

The house itself is a character, the dilapidated rooms with peeling wallpaper and cracked damp walls exuding a sense of foreboding no matter where Isaac went, all accompanied by the constant scape of the heavy chain dragging behind him.

Writer/director Damian Mc Carthy (making his feature debut) does a good job creating an unsettling atmosphere and moments of genuine tension, feeding you tiny bits of exposition as the narrative unfolds, each little bit of information giving you more of an insight into the characters motivations.

There are the usual moments when you wonder why a character did (or didn’t) do something that you’d have thought was the logical thing to do, but in life do we ourselves always do the logical thing?

Its slow pace and minimal blood and gore that a lot of horror fans crave for may deter some viewers from watching, but those that do that will miss out on one of the creepiest things I’ve seen in a movie in a long time: a drumming rabbit…I’ll say no more!

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