Spoiler free statement: Expend your time on this at your own risk. Once you get to the ending, you'll possibly be wondering how anything made any sense, even within the confines of the movie's own world in a bottle. You're not missing anything. There is not enough meaningfulness in this film, as presented, to extract solid conclusions about what you watched. It spoon feeds you clichés and so-called surprises and refuses to justify character attitudes, motivations, actions, or reactions. These aren't complex and subtle things. There's nothing to uncover except one plot point you will probably see coming from the moment the protagonist suddenly discovers the history of the building (her declaration of having finally uncovered the details comes without the film ever having given us the sense that she was actually looking).
Finally, the movie tries to surprise you at the end, only to make the preceding content entirely irrelevant. This is not good story telling. It's paint-by-numbers movie industry product assembly with the illusion of depth. Actual depth requires structure and the ability to take the ending and reframe all that went before it in a new and meaningful way.
It's a shame movies like this have actors in them. As in, people who's livelihood depends on the success of the films they work on. Such films as this one probably don't do their careers any favors with the next job, especially with how actors tend to get blamed by audiences for the poor job done by the writers and directors who's material the actors are performing to specification. Then again, it wasn't really given a large release. Sometimes that's for lack of access and sometimes that's for lack of quality. I'm suspecting the latter here.
One specific complaint: many of the reviews talk about a spectacular filming location. All I saw was a set of disparate locations stitched together by editing that makes it clear to me that each room is a different filming locale (or fails to show that any of these rooms is even related to the rest; often, moving from one physical location to another involves an edit, rather than passing the viewer through the environment from one space to the next). I don't buy that this was one location. If it really was, then wow, the editing and directing failed spectacularly to show it. It is left entirely to the willing suspension of disbelief of the audience to imagine these rooms relate to each other. This is common in lower budget productions where you often assemble fictitious locations via editing. I don't call 1.5 MILLION dollars to be "low budget", but I guess that's how it is these days and I'm being naive to expect more for that much money.
It amazes me that people don't notice this, but then I also find myself rather alone in hating so much foley in TV and film. In fact, the foley bothered me more than the disparate locations on display. At least the locations and lighting result in an interesting atmosphere. But, that's really all there is: Atmosphere and cliché.
Finally, the movie tries to surprise you at the end, only to make the preceding content entirely irrelevant. This is not good story telling. It's paint-by-numbers movie industry product assembly with the illusion of depth. Actual depth requires structure and the ability to take the ending and reframe all that went before it in a new and meaningful way.
It's a shame movies like this have actors in them. As in, people who's livelihood depends on the success of the films they work on. Such films as this one probably don't do their careers any favors with the next job, especially with how actors tend to get blamed by audiences for the poor job done by the writers and directors who's material the actors are performing to specification. Then again, it wasn't really given a large release. Sometimes that's for lack of access and sometimes that's for lack of quality. I'm suspecting the latter here.
One specific complaint: many of the reviews talk about a spectacular filming location. All I saw was a set of disparate locations stitched together by editing that makes it clear to me that each room is a different filming locale (or fails to show that any of these rooms is even related to the rest; often, moving from one physical location to another involves an edit, rather than passing the viewer through the environment from one space to the next). I don't buy that this was one location. If it really was, then wow, the editing and directing failed spectacularly to show it. It is left entirely to the willing suspension of disbelief of the audience to imagine these rooms relate to each other. This is common in lower budget productions where you often assemble fictitious locations via editing. I don't call 1.5 MILLION dollars to be "low budget", but I guess that's how it is these days and I'm being naive to expect more for that much money.
It amazes me that people don't notice this, but then I also find myself rather alone in hating so much foley in TV and film. In fact, the foley bothered me more than the disparate locations on display. At least the locations and lighting result in an interesting atmosphere. But, that's really all there is: Atmosphere and cliché.