Watch Absence For Free

Undescribable Perfection

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

This film immediately opens, with no introduction or opening credits or anything. it starts us off with the insane incident of a pregnant woman in the hospital whose unborn baby disappears. It's just gone. There's a brief text plate bringing up that fetal theft is a real thing, but nothing in the film indicates this was a genuine case of that, which would typically involve violence, but it's rather clear that the woman here, Liz, was not attacked by anyone. The fetus just disappeared. The main core of the film itself covers Liz and her husband Rick going out on a vacation with her brother Evan, with Evan recording everything in part to document their attempts to work through their grief, and in part to defend themselves as people in the town they live in start to think that the group did something, or had an incredibly late term abortion and are lying about it. The majority of the film is straightforward and conventional, with the added benefit that each of the actors does a spectacular job with their characters, making them compelling on their own, with a genuine sense of chemistry in their interactions with each other. The implications of what happened to Liz are just that, implications. Throughout the whole of the filmed events, we get a tiny few instances of weird, psychotic events, which the trio have no memory of afterwards. It is played with an immense subtlety that is just perfect for grounding this story and making it less about sci-fi horror and more about the reality of going on living life, through the eyes of Evan, with a sister whose unborn baby just disappeared out of her womb. The added instances of weirdness only help add a layer of mystery and horror behind an already traumatizing story. The end comes about somewhat abruptly, and indulges itself after restraining itself for so long. It didn't quite have the same impact as the rest of the film to me, but it was at least was minimalist, and did not end up detracting from the rest of the film at all.

Doctors are baffled when an expectant mother wakes to find her nearly-to-term pregnancy apparently disappear overnight. Police investigate the situation as a missing child, and only her husband and brother trust her version of events.The movie starts out with some of the most wild shaky cam ever put on film, and then turns into an amateur documentary complete with the wonderful "found footage" style of camera-work. Each time this technique is used it gets more and more irritating, and by 2013 the creators of these films should know better than to use it unless they have a darn good reason.Perhaps this film is called "Absence" because it has an almost complete absence of horror elements. Most of the movie is just footage of flirting, drinking, hanging out. Maybe ten minutes really involves anything scary or supernatural. One could argue this effectively builds the characters, but it does this at the expense of any narrative a viewer would give a hoot about.

Liz was seven months pregnant. She wakes up one morning not pregnant. Doctors had no explanation for this other than 'you killed it.' The police interrogate them, check their plumbing for signs of disposal of the fetus, have them watched, but found no sufficient evidence early on.Evan documents Liz's recovery during a trip taken after the 'abduction.' They stay at Rick's aunt's house, where he used to visit as a boy. Evan is incredibly obnoxious, and his camera work is poor. Rick and Evan are always about that close to a fist fight. Evan even goes out of his way to tick off strangers.One evening while irritating Rick and Liz, Evan's attention wanders to a light in the sky with accompanying hum. Shortly thereafter, Liz gets another nosebleed. Rick and Evan talk about the progress of the investigation while Liz rests. Rick talks about how he built a crib for the baby, filled it with toys and the like. He's deeply discouraged that anyone would think that the baby was unwanted.Evan meets Meg, and the four of them spend time together. When Meg and Evan go driving, they see an odd light in the distance; the car loses some functions. Rick returns some of Evan's nonsense by referring to this as Sasquatch and the like.The childhood story about Liz letting the younger Evan take the blame for burning the house was possibly a clue. Their parents died about five years later when Evan was 12, and Liz helped raising him. During the subsequent night, the odd light appears in the room where Liz and Rick were sleeping. Evan tries to get in but could not.The next morning, Meg comes by. The funny light episode seems to be completely lost.Then Liz has a moving lump in her right arm. The symptom subsides, so they decide to go to urgent care in the morning. Later that night, the odd light comes again. Liz is gone in the morning. Evan evidently has the camera on, but neither frames nor focuses it nor even points it.Rick and Evan go to the nearby town. Evan talks to Meg, who has little interest in helping find Liz. Of course, Evan's needy, demanding approach did not help things along. They look in the woods near the lake where they had recently spent time with Liz. Still nothing.They find her after a short car ride. She's not in good shape, and coughs up some blood. They try going back to Rick's aunt's house, but Liz coughs up more blood and they take her to urgent care.They don't get there. It's completely clear that this is yet another 'found film' fake out, not a directed, edited, and scripted movie.------Scores------Cinematography: 2/10 Shaky camera, focus problems, bad framing. There are stretches where the camera is just pointed at car upholstery.Sound: 7/10 Better than the visuals.Acting: 3/10 Ryan Smale is just terrible. Erin Way, Eric Matheny, and Stephanie Schmolz were better.Screenplay: 2/10 Lots of filler in this one. Watching Evan drink beer or voiding his bladder or doing bad impressions? Who cares? Is there ever a resolution, or are we just supposed to rely on movie clichés to fill in the voids?

**Contains Spoilers**It's a well known adage that the scariest part of a movie is what you DON'T show. While this can be true, a lot of filmmakers lately (particularly ones with low budgets) take this to mean that fuzzy footage and static is just as scary as an actual scary image. If you're the type who gets chills when TV snow appears on your home movies, you'll love this movie. Everyone else: give it a miss. I'll agree that the scariest part of the story is what you don't know, but for there to be a scariest PART of a story, there must first BE a story. What we have here is lazy storytelling. It starts good, with the missing baby. Then there's 45 minutes of completely band vacation footage that doesn't progress the storyline at all. Then there's about 10 minutes of interesting events which, following a good plot construct, should lead to a climax. But there is no climax. Or conflict for that matter. There's just leading up, followed by an end. And when I say end, I don't mean a story ending or a resolution. The credits just start rolling. If you absolutely NEED to know what happens, here's a rundown of events: "Doctors are baffled when a young expectant mother wakes to find her nearly to term pregnancy has disappeared overnight." First of all, know that her pregnancy has absolutely zilch to do with the movie. The movie opens in the hospital, showing the young mother crying and a nurse speaking angrily to some cops. The grief from this event is what prompts the young couple (and the woman's brother) to take a nice relaxing trip to a summer cabin. I say relaxing almost sarcastically here, because from the absolute start, the brother is making stupid comments, mostly directed at the husband. I guess he thinks that the way to make his sister feel better is to constantly nag her husband about everything from his car to his shoes. The nagging is constant, it's not clever or witty, and at one point he even goes so far to tell her that her husband will leave her to become an alcoholic. All of this "jokingly." Over the course of the next hour, the three meet a local girl, and there is a montage of vacation scenes. They play scrabble, go swimming, drive through town, and have a cookout. This occurs on different days. The only creepiness is shown at night when:The camera turns itself on at night revealing lights/screaming that no one seems to remember in the morning. The vacationers notice a bright light off in the woods that they idly remark on before completely disregarding. The wife gets nosebleeds. Two of them. One's pretty bad. That's it. In the last 10 minutes, you get all the action. Once again, the brother awakens at night to hear screaming and lights from his sister's room. He runs into the hallway and bangs on their door before falling unconscious (somehow turning the camera off.) The next day, no one remembers anything and they have a cookout. The wife falls lethargic and when her husband goes to comfort her, he notices a lump the size of a thumb running up and down her arm, under the skin. The local girl becomes terrified and runs away. The husband insists that they visit a hospital, but the wife says she is tired, so they all just go to sleep. (?????) That night, the lights and screaming come again, but this time the brother manages to knock down the door. He sees the husband hanging suspended in the air above the bed. As soon as the door comes down, the husband drops, hitting the bed frame. At this point, everyone falls unconscious again and there are no focused shots for the rest of the movie. They wake up in the morning to discover the wife is missing. They drive all over town to look for her. They don't find her, but they do find their local friend. For some reason the camera focuses on her feet as she insists that she hasn't seen the wife and that she's sorry. It is clear she knows something terrifying, but she says nothing. The brother angrily gets back into the car and they drive off into the wilderness, eventually finding the wife in a pine barren. She appears catatonic. They decide to drive home, for some reason still not seeing the need to visit a hospital. As they drive home, night falls. A light suddenly appears in front of the car. The husband gets out and fires some shots into the darkness. A few seconds later, he is thrown into the windshield which shatters, destroying all visibility. The camera is now filming in total darkness. You can see vague shapes in between bouts of static. For a second, you can see the sister being apparently pulled from the car. Then there is a shot of the car from above. The camera then falls to the ground, and a couple seconds later, the brother lands beside it, dead. That's the end of the movie. So, what happened to the baby? Or the mother? Why take a 7 month old fetus? Why not wait 2 more months? Are the aliens following them? If so, why does the local girl seem to know something? The baby was taken from a family in a town hours away from where she lives. Why can the aliens erase memory, but haven't figured out how to erase a video camera? Why start the film with a missing baby if the baby has nothing to do with the plot and never re-appears? These are the parts of the non-story that you don't know.