PRAISE: Writer and Director Zach Cregger takes one of the most haunting and sad things that can happen to a parent or family a child or children completely vanishing off the face of the Earth and builds on that to craft a haunting story. Where did they go? Who or if anyone was involved? These questions were played with throughout the film, which made it involving and then some. A great job is done with multiple character stories including great as usual Julia Garner portraying Justine Gandy, the teacher who's seventeen students just ran off into the night at 2:17 A.M. Garner channels a bit of her character from the series Ozark Ruth, which i didn't mind at all. Then there's Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), the devastated father of one of the missing children. A cop named Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), a junkie named Anthony (Austin Abrams), school principal named Andrew (Benedict Wong) and last but not least Alex (Cary Christopher) who's the only one in his class who didn't run off into darkness. Amy Madigan completely immersed herself into her role as Aunt Gladys. I completely understood what the characters were going through and why they took certain actions. How fear and love can play on the aforementioned actions even limiting what a person can do, this was done so well in the movie. Praise to everyone behind the makeup work. It just made some frightening scenes more intense. In fact I didn't know whether to laugh or be scared at what was happening on screen several times. There are a handful of jump scares. When the music played in certain scenes with absolutely no other sound as dark images danced across the screen it was incredible to take in. Even as the movie entered it's last thirty minutes I was still uncertain about why things were happening. What was the backstory of a particular standout character. Still there's this fairy tale like vibe in the movie which i enjoyed. Cregger doesn't hold back on certain things involving younger characters which I admired.
PROBLEMS: Some story threads were a bit to ambiguous for me. Sure it made me become more involved and maybe Cregger wanted audiences to come up with their own theories but i wanted more of an explanation especially after a character enters the movie. The pacing could have been better. One moment was predictable.
Scale of 1 to 10 a 7½
