A few odd things to know about me - I love forensic and medical examiner stories, and I love stories featuring Jewish characters and/or Jewish faith and culture. I find both topics fascinating in a hundred different ways that would in and of itself be their own blog posts. So when I stumbled upon a new movie called The Offering, that looked like a mashup of The Autopsy of Jane Doe, and The Vigil, I rented it immediately.
An estranged son and his new wife return to his father’s Hasidic funeral home in Brooklyn, NY to deal with family trauma and financial woes. While helping out with a recently deceased member of their community, a trapped demon is accidentally set loose. This demon begins to torment members of the family in subtle and creepy ways that of course no one talks about so they all independently think they're going crazy.
Despite the overuse of jumpscares and deafening music crescendos, the first half of the movie is pretty solid. The funeral home is a spectacular piece of real estate with its old, vintage decor and long hallways with strange rooms that seem to hold ancient secrets. There’s an engaging side story about how the demon came to be trapped in the (recently deceased) old Hisidic man, who had accidentally conjured it in an effort to bring his wife back from the dead. There’s some moving family drama between the son and his father and father’s longtime friend. And there’s a great dinner scene. But then, from there, things go sideways.
Instead of continuing down the subtly creepy route, ala The Vigil or The Autopsy of Jane Doe, The Offering decides that a crappy CGI monster and over-the-top action scenes are the way to go, throwing clutter and chaos into an otherwise chill experience. This movie could have been great, instead it settled firmly into the worn footsteps of mediocre horror that misses the mark because they went with more is more. And with a name like The Offering, it’ll be a forgettable one at that.
No comments:
Post a Comment