You Should Have Left (2020)
Watch enough haunted house movies and you’ll see the pitfalls every director should be able to avoid but fails to. When you realize You Should Have Left addresses the issues we’ve been complaining about for years, you get excited. Too bad the film can’t keep up that momentum.
Theo Conroy (Kevin Bacon) and his much younger wife, Susanna (Amanda Seyfried), decide to go on vacation in Wales with their daughter Ella (Avery Essex). The house they’ve chosen is beautiful and spacious. Too spacious, perhaps. It seems every time Theo takes a walk around, he discovers new doors, new corridors, new rooms that weren’t there before.
The film’s biggest issue comes right at the beginning and then disappears. One of the first scenes is a nightmare in which Ella encounters a stranger. Your instinct about that stranger is correct, which means you’ve figured out a big surprise at the end. If they had cast anyone else in that role, it wouldn’t have been a problem. It’s a shame but on the upside, it gets better - way better from there.
In many ways, You Should Have Left does the haunted house thing right. Firstly, there are few characters so we get to know and care about them. Theo is too old to be married to Susanna and he knows it. Her career and his past are putting a strain on their relationship, which is distracting them from the bizarre goings-on in the house. In many of these kinds of stories, the supernatural phenomena are so extreme no one in their right mind could ignore them. Here, it’s just right. Things are weird but it’s a new house, most of what Theo is seeing is probably in his dreams, he’s got a lot on his mind. It’s probably nothing.
There’s plenty of effectively creepy stuff happening. The house suddenly opening up new passages, the disorientation of all of these inexplicable, long corridors, that still portrait of the house within the house - I kept looking at it with uncertainty - they give you willies. As you're about to crack, it's another day. The focus is back on the drama between the couple and their daughter. It’s engaging; just enough to put your mind off the house for a little bit. If only that ending was better, more subtle, or uncertain. The value of this story is very much lesser than the sum of its parts.
Amanda Seyfried, Kevin Bacon, and Avery Essex are all great together. The drama between them is good, the house creepy, and the story addresses any potential issues of plausibility this film might’ve had in someone else's hands. Even so, it leaves you lukewarm, at best. I can recommend You Should Have Left to aspiring horror filmmakers who might learn from its mistakes but otherwise, you can do better while at home looking for something to scare you. (July 30, 2020)
