Chris Washington a young African-American man is visiting his Caucasian girlfriends family in what turns out to be a very strange estate.
When you go to watch a film like this one which has a huge mix of horror and thriller moments you spend most of the time trying to work out the twist and who is behind everything and well why.
To begin with everything seems normal as Chris heads to meet Rose’s parents to which he is concerned as she’s never had a black boyfriend before so how are they going to take that. She hadn’t mentioned anything about it so he is a little bit concerned. Not as concerned as when they actually arrive though and he finds it very strange how the only black people in town seem to be working for the white people. Seems like a huge backwards step.
After he is hypnotised by Rose’s mother things begin to get even stranger as he gets more paranoid, a times we even wonder as a viewer if he is just looking into everything too much. Until it turns in a different direction. I will admit that I really could not work out what the twist was going to be, maybe I need to watch more films like this!
We are offered some comic relief at times especially in the phone calls from Chris to his best friend Rod. Some of those phone calls really do come at a great time to take away the tension that had been building up. But the family are strange, very strange even though Rose seems perfectly normal! I guess people aren’t always as they seem to be, which could certainly be one of the things we should take away from this film.
I guess it was a pretty brave choice to also create a racial divide between the characters something that could so easily going horribly wrong. But the tone of it certainly works for the film and when you find out just why that is the case it makes it feel even more wrong. The film moves along at a good pace and you cannot really complain about that at all, the tension building normal start to then totally crazy moments.
Thought provoking in terms for the race issue that some people will still feel that they are better than the other, it certainly does open up many possible conversations and things to focus on. Especially when it comes to interracial relationships, which in all honesty is not something I had ever really thought about in great detail. Nothing makes a difference to me if love is involved. But is love really involved in this story?
I am very interested to know if people managed to work out the different twists and how they took things from the film. I certainly think it is one you want to talk about but then need to find someone who has actually seen it. You cannot really mention too many things about it if someone hasn’t seen it. Writing a spoiler free review was also quite tricky!
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