After the death of her mother in a fire, a girl returns home from the psychiatric ward to her father's house, where she rubs his pushy girlfriend up the wrong way while piecing together the events of that fateful night ...
As Maurice Moss would say, egg and my face are in perfect alignment. I only realised when reading the IMDb reviews afterward that this is a remake of a film I'd already seen. Plus at 65 mins I'd written off the story as a spooked up Nancy Drew caper, albeit produced with plenty of style and quality.
The last 10 minutes were a shock to me, and this is coming from a fan of Mulholland Dr. I was looking for clues, assuming the baddie couldn't be the obvious one, but got tired thinking about the year 1996 and fastened my seatbelt to settle in for a routine landing. Now I'm going to have to rewatch to see how skillfully the clues were laid. And rewatch the original too.
Almost everything is quality - performances, direction, editing, cinematography - except the music is just OK, a bit cliche. And I have doubts about the writing. While the dialogue between the sisters is often impressive, the father's character is frustratingly dull, and even the twist ending can't change him. Plus I'm not convinced the main character is psychologically true. I'll see when I get round to it again.
Overall: unexpectedly mixed experience.
