Movie: Caveat (2020)
Thu, Feb. 26th, 2026 19:03![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thatzetaI first heard of the movie from a horror movie Youtuber that frequently shows up in my suggestions and based on what I had heard halfway through, I stopped the video and decided to give the movie a watch first.
It was an good movie, definitely, though I was interrupted a few times during the watch, which may or may not have contributed to the amount of questions I still have after it finished. Perhaps the answers were in some scenes I missed. But even if they were, it doesn't hurt the movie that I still have questions after the fact, nor that it closes on an open end. Not everything needs to be explained or answered to make it a fulfilling story.
Generally, I really appreciated the tension the movie built throughout and how rarely it resolved it with a scare. In fact, there were plenty of tense moments that just kept building and building, but then kind of just... fizzled out without a resolution? Of course there were a handful of jumpscares, but they were placed rather predictably, once even in the form of a character having a mental image type flashback, which is more than fine by me! That's actually how I imagine flashbacks of a horrible image when I read them in written text.
A criticism I do have is how dark the movie is, especially in the later third. I already watched it on the brightest of my multi-monitor setup and in some of the scenes I could barely see anything beyond the light cone coming from flashlights. It's probably meant to build tension, much like brightness settings in horror games, but I actually prefer those in a higher setting as well because I want to appreciate the effort put into creating the background and surroundings. I want to see the entire scene, the entire room, everything. (And I have enough nightmares where I can't see to have to deal with it during my waking hours as well, lol)
What I can take away from the movie for my own writing: the slow build-up of the story, the unraveling through flashbacks and dialogue, and how the protagonist's amnesia was handled.
On a side note: The protagonist Isaac has the James Sunderland disorder of reaching and peeking into every damn hole he can find, lol.
Now back to that original Youtube video!
It was an good movie, definitely, though I was interrupted a few times during the watch, which may or may not have contributed to the amount of questions I still have after it finished. Perhaps the answers were in some scenes I missed. But even if they were, it doesn't hurt the movie that I still have questions after the fact, nor that it closes on an open end. Not everything needs to be explained or answered to make it a fulfilling story.
Generally, I really appreciated the tension the movie built throughout and how rarely it resolved it with a scare. In fact, there were plenty of tense moments that just kept building and building, but then kind of just... fizzled out without a resolution? Of course there were a handful of jumpscares, but they were placed rather predictably, once even in the form of a character having a mental image type flashback, which is more than fine by me! That's actually how I imagine flashbacks of a horrible image when I read them in written text.
A criticism I do have is how dark the movie is, especially in the later third. I already watched it on the brightest of my multi-monitor setup and in some of the scenes I could barely see anything beyond the light cone coming from flashlights. It's probably meant to build tension, much like brightness settings in horror games, but I actually prefer those in a higher setting as well because I want to appreciate the effort put into creating the background and surroundings. I want to see the entire scene, the entire room, everything. (And I have enough nightmares where I can't see to have to deal with it during my waking hours as well, lol)
What I can take away from the movie for my own writing: the slow build-up of the story, the unraveling through flashbacks and dialogue, and how the protagonist's amnesia was handled.
On a side note: The protagonist Isaac has the James Sunderland disorder of reaching and peeking into every damn hole he can find, lol.
Now back to that original Youtube video!
