Decay (2015)

Rob Zabrecky is utterly superb in this movie and is the only reason I continued to watch it through to the end. He reminded me of Crispin Glover.While at work two women break into Jonathan's home. Jonathan is a very strange young man with what some would describe as weird habits and mental health issues stemming from childhood abuse. Jonathan comes home to find the two women in his home, one of which who falls and hits her head and tragically dies in the basement. In a panic the other girl runs and gets killed by a car. Jonathan panics and keeps the corpse of the girl in his home and begins to treat it/her as his girlfriend. Of course she begins to decay and Jonathan's world starts to unravel as he becomes distressed, stressed and at a loss as to what to do.I found this movie disturbing and gross. Having said that it is superbly acted by all involved, the story and characters are very well thought out and really fascinating. I just didn't like the subject matter.

This film got some viewers quite upset, and I understand that. The Mommy character outdoes the stepmother psycho in Cinderella by miles! But the main subject in this film is not so much what Jonathan is doing- it's what drove him to it. However gruesome his actions may be, Jonathan lost my sympathy not for a moment. He's no Norman Bates, no Carol (from Polanski's Repulsion), no Hannibal Lecter. Persons who alienate themselves to audiences. Notice how polite and perfectly normal Jonathan is towards commuters. During his talk with them Jonathan is hiding guilt, but he has done no wrong. Not really. * Quite a few reviewers elsewhere called the movie too slow. I didn't notice. It's totally mesmerizing, and extremely well made. The cinematography is beautiful, the casting perfect, the acting great, the screenplay carefully worked out (Jonathan for instance speaks during dinners only once to his 'girlfriend', him blabbering away all the time would have spoiled the delicacy of those moments), the special effects are realistic, the metaphors subtle. And let's not forget the editing. One of the fabulous assets to this film is for certain the editing. It has an amazing ending, too, even as it left me with more than a few questions. Not because of a faulty script! Just one thing bothered me a bit; a tiny continuity error. Every morning Jonathan wakes up with a small nosebleed. And in every one of these scenes the red spot looks exactly the same. You get aware of it as his face is always in close- up at these moments. In all other regards this film shot itself straight into my top three of Dark movies. * About this OCD thing that people write about in relation to Decay: I wonder why the theme must be labeled OCD. We simply have a pain and abuse threshold, at a certain point we tend to short-circuit. Dentist's fear, a hostage situation, concentration camp and school bullying traumas. And they don't go away after a good night's sleep and a pill description and a professionally nodding therapist. Hence a guy like Jonathan. For whom I can weep. * But the point is, it seems that our intelligence level got too high for us to handle. When the "I think therefore I am" awareness crept in, we threw out Instinct, and ever since we have barely been able to control our sensibilities, and carrying around warped ideas and mental issues and disorders without a clear reason only seems to increase. Autistic/borderline/bipolar children, anyone? Mother Nature, what have you done...

This small scale horror is rich with intricate visuals and mood. There is very little in the way of scares here and deals more with the psychology of obsession and childhood trauma.Despite not being a splatter fest it still contains some imagery to make the skin crawl and the stomach churn. The acting is good and it gives off a purposefully skewed vibe of strangeness. It's kind of like a horror version of Lars and the Real Girl.Overall the film is a visually engaging, and a near one-man piece that is slow, meticulous and repetitive, but in this case that is the whole point.

I like dark movies. I am drawn to them like moths to a flame. But they have to have substance. They either need to be thought provoking, scary, or at the very least, suspenseful. This was none of the above. It was a drama - not a thriller. If you want jitters, watch "Love Object". This was not scary, nor did it have that campy humor of some dramadies (except for the first five minutes - talk about unlucky women). He was not creepy - just sad. But not quite enough to be heartbreaking. He was ill, but not frightening, as our beloved Normal Bates and Buffalo Bill were. I liked the actor - it was just a bad movie. It was also incredibly depressing, just the entire feel of it. Pass. Pass. Pass. (count to 30).