Raindance 2021 film review: Where’s Rose
Review Overview
Cast
8Atmosphere
8Effects
8David Farnor | On 03, Nov 2021
Director: Anneliese Judge
Cast: Ty Simpkins, Anneliese Judge, Skyler Elyse-Philpot
Certificate: TBC
Where to watch Where’s Rose online in the UK: Raindance 2021
This film is streaming at the 2021 Raindance Film Festival. For more information on what’s playing online at the festival and how it works, click here.
Where’s Rose? That’s the question that begins this superbly performed horror, which takes us into a household racked by fear and trauma. Rose (Skyler Elyse-Philpot) is a young girl who is coming to terms with big changes in life. Her brother, Eric (Ty Simpkins), is about to leave for university. With her sad about that prospect, it’s perhaps no surprise that she has found comfort in her imaginary friend, who lives in the woods. One day, she disappears – and, while the trauma and worry of her family is eased by her eventually returning, Eric can tell that something’s happened that has changed her.
Eric becomes convinced that the innocent, happy girl has gone from inside her body, replaced by some kind of dark force. It’s clear from the way her eyes have changed, the way she stares at him suspiciously before smiling with a sarcastic malevolence. She doesn’t even eat bacon anymore.
Directing from his own script, John Mathis builds up a mood of mounting dread with confidence – and a confident grasp of pacing and perspective. The more he lingers on Skyler Elyse-Philpot’s eerie performance, using flashes of body horror to capture the terror of someone familiar becoming completely unrecognisable, the more the film comes to lean Ty Simpkins, who brings nuance and quiet depths to the part of Eric. Simpkins, who impressed in Iron Man 3 and Jurassic World, steps into a lead role with aplomb; from moments of pulling his hair out to sequences of investigating in the forest, we get a growing insight into Eric’s headspace, which is filled with self-motivational lectures about getting what he deserves – the kind of entitled approach to life that can lead to more toxic masculine behaviour. Under increasing pressure and feeling like everyone in the neighbourhood is watching him, is he just imagining Rose has been possessed or is there something more to his sister’s narrow, cold stares?
Clocking in just over 80 minutes, the deliberately slow speed of the script means that things can feel a little unbalanced for the first half. But the intense final act, which gives Anneliese Judge a chance to make an impact as Rose’s babysitter, brings things together to form a genuinely unsettling tale of a monstrous force infiltrating a seemingly perfect suburban home.
Where’s Rose is available to rent on Curzon Home Cinema until 11.59pm on 4th November