You Should Have Left (2020) - Movie Review

Unless he somehow found a way to resurrect Jimmy Saville to star in it, there’s basically no way that David Koepp’s latest turn in the director’s chair could possibly turn out worse than it did with his last film Mortdecai. And since Secret Window remains one of his best efforts to date, it makes sense that he would return to a similar psycho-horror vein for this, a haunted house yarn starring Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried. However, while that decision is advisable, it seems that he went a little too far in that direction, as this is basically Secret Window 2: The Housening.

Even ignoring the notes of Secret Window and The Shining and even some of Doctor Sleep’s colour palette that exist here, there’s also aspects of Dreams In The Witch-House with the non-Euclidean bigger-on-the-inside geometry for the main setting, time displacement that looks like it was pulled right out of Boogeyman, and a plot and occasional dip into grungy industrial set design that is eerily reminiscent of Silent Hill. The emphasis on that damn alarm clock kept giving me P.T. flashbacks on top of that.

It being derivative isn’t the problem, though; it’s more how plainly it goes through the motions of this story about a house that exists solely to punish the poor saps who end up inside it. Most of the psychological misdirects have to do with warping the layout of the house itself, so people easily get lost, which loses its effectiveness around the 3^rd time it’s done, let alone the seeming 20^th. The tension just isn’t there, as much as Geoff Zanelli’s glitchy and grinding soundtrack tries to prop it up, meaning that while it’s a relatively short sit, it doesn’t make the full use of the little time it has.

Then there’s the writing, which makes the ability to care all that much about what’s going on far harder than it should’ve been. Kevin Bacon really is trying his best here, and there’s certainly a few moments where the full potential of his character feels like it’s within reach, but he can’t escape just how dry his characterisation is. From end to end, he is in full arsehole mode, with all the lying and passive-aggression and just general irritability, which would’ve been fine for this kind of dark character study, if it made for a compelling arsehole. Which isn’t what we get; he’s presented as someone who needs to learn a lesson, with a tripped-out house more than willing to teach it, but not while making the audience give a damn if said lesson sticks or not.

I’ll admit that the note the film ends on gives it some level of engagement, but the trip getting there is far from worth it in my opinion. It’s a rather tired serving of psycho-horror, where all the tricks are either telegraphed well in advance or so played-out that you’d guess them beforehand anyway. Most of the emotional impact is sabotaged by the wonky writing, and for as solid as the actors are here, they aren’t able to build a stable foundation on this sand pit of a a screenplay.