I know this is based off something on YouTube and that's starting to make me leery of anything from there. I'm in the minority on that, it seems, but I'm also pretty sure I'm not the target audience for these. I find them all, well, bad.
Gee. I spoiled the review.
Anyway. I do like the premise and liminal spaces is just creepy. Having someone find a liminal space that doesn't conform to anything hidden through a soft spot in a wall is a good writing prompt. I guess the original concept started as a 4chan post and there's a bunch of short stories about it. Before I saw the movie I saw that it was based on a book, so I figured I'd get around to reading the book afterward. I'm not reading the book.
A divorced frustrated architect who drinks and runs a very low-quality failing furniture store finds a "soft spot" in the basement wall that leads to a liminal space. In the middle of the first room is a pile made up of a bunch of furniture similar to what he sells. He picks up a stacked chair and finds it's fused to the one below. Then he wanders around the place without any rhyme, reason, or clear method to find his way back.
I have to interject. If I found a soft spot in the wall I'd back up, nope out, and start my "going out of business" sale the next day.
The guy is in therapy for his drinking and divorce issues. The therapist is annoying and we get flashes of her past that aren't useful for anything, really. Neither is she. She's used as a plot advancement because he shows her the drawing he's made from his explorations.
He recruits his employees to go with him and film what's there. They go. Stuff happens. There's screaming and things moving in shadows.
The therapist shows up at the store, goes into the basement, and watches a bug go through the wall that has been taped with a doorway. She goes through and does her own wandering around aimlessly.
This is where it really goes off the plot rails. The guy captures the therapist and there's a really wacked out scene in a kitchen. There's three "people" there and I guess one of them is the ex-wife. A version of people since they're very much not alive and not right. This is where the body horror comes in.
The guy's internal demon (or something like that) is out and about, kills the guy, and goes after the therapist for some reason. She does her own running about before she's caught because gas canisters all around the room have gone off.
Now to back up and condense the other thing in the plot. There's cameras in the space and there's a very brief shot of someone watching the feed. They show up again watching TV and seeing the furniture store commercial (that was shot by the employees who are no more) the guy realizes the owner is the person he saw in the liminal space.
M'kay. We're caught up.
People in colorful hazmat suits show up to cart the therapist away. She's put into a room and eventually the watching guy shows up. He says they used to make MRI machines but now they're whatever this is. Then she's shown as her own liminal space and not human.
I really dislike that two of the three YouTube movies have used ambiguous endings and they don't have the chops to write them properly. They seem like a cheap way to end things without having to write an ending. A good one will leave you guessing what's happening (Inception) but a bad one makes you feel like you just wasted a couple of hours of your time and attention.
There's no reason to care for any of these characters. There's no explanation or way to try to sort out what this space is. They shove some people into the situation and let them wander around a set that was so large the crew got lost at times. There's those few set pieces and the rest is really just watching them walk/run/scurry/hobble/crawl through rooms that sometimes have weird stuff in them.
I think I know the premise that this space is a memory of a memory. Kind of like a copy of a copy thing. That's great. Now tell us why the heck we should care.
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