Absentia 2011 (Review)

If you came to this party looking for the next Saw or Nightmare on Elm Street you may as well turn right back around and walk out the door. This movie weighs more in the horror that you don't see and spends a lot of time building characters versus mindlessly killing them off in a gruesome manner. I am usually reluctant to see movies like this as my ADD ass prefers the kill a minute gore fests you hear me rant about on here from time to time, but this story interested me because I have somewhat of an unnatural fear of the tunnels like the one this movie revolves around. Yes, you can see everything and there is light at the end but are we really seeing "everything"? Absentia will challenge that notion and a few others along the way. So we open with two sisters, Tricia and Callie. Neither really looked alike nor did they have similar mannerisms. They could have just as well played these two off as really close friends and left the family bit out. Tricia's husband disappeared 7 years ago and Callie has come to help get things in line for declaring Daniel, Tricia's hubby as "dead in absentia". Callie continually shows an increased interest in the tunnel across the street as she goes on her morning runs and what not. She soon finds a man who looks in need of some serious medical attention laying in the tunnel. She tells him she has nothing for him assuming he is homeless or a junkie (as she was at one point in her life) and moves on promising to come back with something. Why we did not call the police or an ambulance is beyond me. So to do the "Christian thing" as she calls it. A Tupperware container is delivered with food and left in the empty tunnel. She then comes home to find a necklace and other metal trinkets on her front porch similar to what Walter (the man she found earlier in the tunnel) had in his hand. So she takes these things back to the tunnel entrance to dump them off. As she is doing this a boy comes along with a bag and tells her not to do that, meaning do not leave things. At the same time he drops his sack at the entrance and walks away. This happens a few more times and the police are involved because trinkets are now in the house. Meanwhile, Tricia is trying to pack up and move once this paperwork is all done for her missing husband. She is with child also and at no point do we find out whose it is. A detective seems to come around and there is a love interest there but he is never eluded to as the father. Tricia is having more and more nightmares featuring her missing husband and what looks like his distaste for the child she is carrying and the fact she is about to declare him dead. So a death certificate is finally produced and Tricia can actually move on. She has a date with the detective and as they are exiting her apartment, there stands her recently pronounced dead husband Daniel, looking like he was beaten for years straight and not given anything to eat or drink. Daniel is admitted for his condition and has no idea where he has been for the last 7 years or who/if anyone captured him. He just speaks of the "underneath" and that is about it. A full blown investigation is underway into what has happened to Daniel and why, but before anything can be discovered he has disappeared again and Callie has relapsed back into her addiction. When Callie tries to tell them what happened they do not believe her of course as she is "using" and Tricia discovers her needle kit to prove it. Callie starts doing research and it is discovered that many animals and other locals have went missing in the area of this tunnel with no explanation. The movie goes on for about another 20 minutes and even ends without really telling you what this mysterious thing is that lives beneath the tunnel. I am not going to go into the ending because I do not want to spoil this for anyone looking forward to this title. The acting was a little better than what I expected with Callie and Tricia both doing an excellent job of breathing some life into their characters. Some of the other smaller parts in the film either acted very stiff intentionally or just plain could not pull it off. The police officer/ love interest comes to mind along with all the other officers in this movie. You could tell this movie was shot on a smaller budget and in this case it worked for what it was. Sticking to a formula of "less is more" would be a good way to describe this film. They did not need expensive actors, mounds of CGI or special effects because the fear was more in the mind and less on the screen. There are some scares in there but really nothing that has not been done a million times before. I had some issues with the audio on this title. I am not sure if it was the screener or my equipment. I attempted watching this using my home theater pc and my desktop, both units had real low and somewhat muddy audio. The movie could have benefited from additional music to set tense scenes, like when the husband appears after being gone 7 years. If there was music it was either way to low or drowned out by the dialog and what not. Overall I found this title interesting and would recommend it to someone who is looking for a slower horror flick not built on tons of blood and guts. The idea was a little different and you could tell they did not want to go the route of gore to keep you entertained, but makes you wonder about an alternate world of torture and nightmare or something like that. Pros Decent acting from the female leads Absentia just sounds cool The tunnel is creepy (but all are to me) Cons The audio Story (lack of history or explanation) Acting (outside of the leads) Ending 2/5

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