9. Absentia
Absentia was one of a number of films that came out this year that was crowd funded by the whole kick-starter phenomenon which has really made its presence felt lately (see also The Tunnel). This is the sort of film that a young Guillermo Del Toro might have made once upon a time instead of Cronos as his debut film.
Mike Flanagan’s film takes the fairy tale trope of something living under a bridge and flips it to a modern setting so that it’s an underpass tunnel in a suburban locale. A pregnant ladies husband vanishes and it’s clear that something is not right about the tunnel. The pregnant lady and her sister begin to have weird experiences in their neighbourhood and weird homeless people spout nonsense around the streets.
Things get creepy, phantom people in distress start to make their presence known and something creeps in the darkness around their house that comes seemingly from the darkness in the shadows of the underpass. The film is cheap with a capital C but rises above its limitations with an atmosphere of growing dread and unease, when it comes time to introduce a creature, the beast is wisely kept in almost darkness so that we only see a dodgy CG limb or two.
Absentia is worth a look and the first in a wave of crowd funded films likely flooding the marketplace shortly.
