Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
In an effort to repair their relationship, a couple books a vacation in the countryside for themselves and their daughter. What starts as a perfect retreat begins to fall apart as one loses their grip on reality, and a sinister force tries to tear them apart.
You Should Have Left is a competent but underwhelming psychological horror effort. The premise of a haunted, reality-warping house with time-loop elements feels derivative of better films in the genre (The Shining being the obvious touchstone), and the screenplay struggles to meaningfully develop its marital tension before collapsing into murkier supernatural territory. Bacon and Seyfried give serviceable performances that elevate thin material, and the Welsh countryside house is visually striking with some effective wide compositions, but the cinematography rarely transcends functional. The ending is abrupt and unsatisfying, failing to pay off the dread that the middle section builds. As an adaptation of Daniel Kehlmann's novella, it loses much of the literary ambiguity in translation. Overall a mid-tier horror film that neither embarrasses itself nor distinguishes itself.