THE STORY – After being summoned back to her childhood home to care for her bedridden father, Joan must confront the unearthed demons of her family’s past and contend with the home’s dark, malevolent energy that is both unseen and, much to her horror, seen.
THE CAST – Sasha Frolova, Xander Berkeley, Toby Poser, Mia Vallet, Kimball Farley & Frankie Seratch
THE TEAM – Henry Chaisson (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 102 minutes
There is something inherently unsettling about random sounds we cannot make sense of, especially those heard in the dead of night. Writer-director Ian Tuason explored this sensation to compelling sonic effect in his directorial debut feature, “Undertone,” released earlier this year. Tuason’s film followed a thread of creepy, distorted audio recordings to reveal skeletons in a family closet. The sounds were enough to immerse us in a sense of malevolent energy without always needing an accompanying visual scare. On paper, Henry Chaisson’s directorial debut feature, “Recluse,” works within a similar framework.
Chaisson’s story follows a movie audio engineer who hears paranormal sounds and traces them back to her father’s estate, full of family secrets. The opening scenes suggest a sonically-driven mystery, only to fall apart under inconsistent direction and a muddled screenplay. It’s a story seemingly rooted in unearthing nightmarish forces through sonic language, but Chaisson’s film takes a heavy show-and-tell approach that leaves very little to the imagination. Combined with loosely drawn characterizations and painfully wooden dialogue, “Recluse” fails to muster up genuine tension.
Working as a sound recordist in the film industry, Joan (Sasha Frolova) has an ear for unearthing everything from whispered dialogue to ambient audio. It is this precise fascination that compels Joan to investigate a ghostly voicemail from her ailing father (Xander Berkeley), a controversial artist now bedridden from a devastating fire at his studio. Joan travels to the family’s deteriorating mansion for a moment of reconnection and healing, but her presence disrupts a malevolent force lurking in the shadows. She meets her father’s staff, including housekeeper Lydia (Toby Poser) and nurse Emily (Mia Vallet), both of whom give off an intriguingly off-kilter energy. Meanwhile, being back home forces Joan to confront the cold-case disappearance of her mother and wrestle with long-buried family secrets in the process.
Did Joan’s father have something to do with her mother’s disappearance? Is there more to the mansion staff than meets the eye? Are the nightmarish sounds a figment of Joan’s imagination? The film introduces several narrative ideas that feel like rough drafts, ultimately making for a muddled, unfocused experience. The characters’ individual motivations and meaningful relationships to one another are unclear to the point of being nonsensical and jarring. There’s a scene late in the film involving an eerie mask reveal that feels suddenly tacked on, lacking insight into how it fits cohesively into the story. It’s a clear example of how the film unfolds through a series of threats that feel unmoored from any version of reality. Instead, each plot development comes across as derivative of several horror films we’ve seen before.
“Recluse” works best when the camera focuses intently on Joan’s solitude as she records and picks up on mysterious sounds. In one standout scene, Joan is positioned outside the door to her father’s recovery room, capturing audio from a muffled conversation between him and his nurse, Emily. However, moments like this are few and far between. The buildup of tension is so often inexplicably cut short, undermining the potential to explore Joan’s fascination with auditory experiences. Her role as a movie audio engineer suggests potentially compelling material to mine, but we don’t get a sense of the character’s interior world or her personality. When Joan reacts to increasingly cursed hauntings around the house, there’s a considerable lack of emotional weight to back the serious, poker-faced tone. Despite Sasha Frolova’s committed performance, the stilted dialogue and limiting characterization keep her character at arm’s length, leaving behind a frustrating emptiness, especially given her centrality to the story. Joan’s perspective is frequently cast aside in favor of tedious supporting characters who tread several genre tropes.
The film plays out as a contradiction of approaches, never quite deciding on whether to adopt the “less is more” storytelling technique, or lean fully into the literal malevolent energy. For every mysterious, shadowy figure, spooky hallway, or ominous, artsy statue, there’s the recurring presence of Joan’s bandaged father, made to appear threatening through generic jump scares and tensely composed music. The scares ultimately feel forced and repetitive. There are some attempts at crafting slow-burning tension through the sound work, but these moments drag on to the point where the momentum quickly dissipates. The mansion, full of paintings and sculptures, lends itself to occasionally vivid, atmospheric shots, such as a “wood man” art piece on the estate grounds. The art piece, created by one of the mansion’s staff, speaks to a recurring point Chaisson raises about aspiring artists: how “creation and suffering are inextricably linked.” It’s a point that simply sits on the surface without compelling exploration.
“Recluse” ultimately falls short in scratching the surface of an intriguing premise. While Chaisson shows visual promise in establishing the atmospheric tone, the plot development lacks precision, and the horror elements lack genuine tension. Had the characters been given more internal dialogue to mine through, perhaps the ominous recordings haunting them would have landed more effectively. But their journeys become a chore to follow, and the deeper their fates intertwine, the less coherent the storytelling. Between the vaguely defined characters and randomly interspersed sound effects, “Recluse” ends on an instantly forgettable note.
