An average movie

Honestly, even though I always had a weak spot for William Friedkin’s work, it had been a while since I saw one of his movies so I was really eager to check this flick which had been barely seen when it was released. Eventually, it was a flawed but still quite fascinating merciless descent into madness. Beforehand, I had no idea what the movie was about so for the first 30 minutes, even though it was rather unsettling, I was really wondering where it was getting at and I wasn’t really convinced by what was displayed. Indeeed, why did R.C. bring this guy to Agnes’s house? Ok, maybe she thought she was lonely and that she needed some company but why did she choose this guy who seemed to be rather odd and not really the best one-night-stand material? Same thing concerning Agnes. Even though Peter looked and sounded rather creepy, she still let him stay in her house for way too long and it became rather unbelievable at some point. Still, if you put this aside, the rest of the movie was quite impressive. Indeed, basically, nothing actually really happened but this man and this woman were convinced that something was going on and Michael Shannon (whose reputation is growing exponentially every year) and Ashley Judd (whose career seems unfortunately to shrink slowly like most of the actress above 40 years old) were just phenomenal. Indeed, they both gave some fearless and pitch-perfect performances and some of the best depiction of madness I have ever witnessed. To conclude, even though the whole thing didn’t really convince me, the acting was just really strong and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.