Caveat (2020)

 Isaac (Jonathan French), suffering memory loss, takes a "babysitting job" offered to him by an uncle named Moe Barrett (Ben Caplan) to a "mentally unstable but mostly harmless" niece named Olga (Leila Sykes), offering the bearded and cautious amnesiac $200 a day. There are three caveats: the house is isolated on an isle surrounded by water, he must not go anywhere near her or inside her room, and he must wear a harness locked to a chain that keeps him from approaching her at night when she's most afraid. Nope, nope, nope, I was yelling at the screen, telling Isaac to have nothing to do with Moe. Everything about this payment arrangement screams out like a banshee, "DON'T FUCKING DO IT!!!" Isaac decides to do it and, as pretty much any horror fan worth their salt can figure out, over the next few days/nights he encounters a lot of trouble. Olga has serious issues. She sits certain places, such as in her room, and holds her hands to her face to cover her eyes. She shouldn't be trusted with her father's crossbow. She bleeds curiously from the nose. This creepy deteriorating bunny toy that beats on a drum (seemingly assisted by some supernatural force) is all over the house when it shouldn't be since we only see it in the possession of Olga most of the time. Olga's secret involving her mother and father's death (it is said to Isaac by Moe that she went missing and he committed suicide after being locked in the basement, succumbing to claustrophobic madness), not to mention, Isaac's own history with the Barretts (Moe, in particular) will become more and more clear...Isaac's memory eventually returns and Moe's nefarious actions emerge to him. A lot of the film utilizes minimalist music score (sort of attaching itself as underpinning to the sinister tone and mood of the story and working in concert with the ambiance of the setting) and follow Isaac as he tries to get out of the damn house without Olga shooting him time and again with arrows from a crossbow. Reaching for a key to the lock holding him encased in his harness through a hole into her room, Isaac doesn't anticipate Olga waiting for his hand, breaking one of his fingers. But not to be deterred, Isaac later finds the body of Olga's mother, remembering during their conversation that she had a key on a necklace around her neck belonging to the lock that kept Olga's father in the very same harness Isaac was trapped in. The pallid-skinned corpse of Olga's mother behind a wall in the basement becomes a character in and of itself: and that is the stuff of nightmares, let me tell you. How the corpse seems to be "active" gave me the heebie jeebies, so I can imagine what it must have been like for Isaac when trapped in the crawlspace within the house knowing Olga's mom was nearby. Olga's antics certainly doesn't help Isaac's situation, either, especially when he tries to find a way out from behind the walls of the house, crawling about plumbing, cobwebbed narrow spaces, with nothing but a flashlight. The house is a past-its-prime relic, with holes in the walls, dusty, scattered dishes and household items strewn all over the place, wallpaper peeling back and decaying, eerie paintings that almost seem to have a life of their own, with furniture, bedding, shelves, and furnishings in various stages of ruination. The chain attached to Isaac (while locked to his harness) getting a good yank or pull certained raised my hairs so I can imagine how he'd feel, not knowing who (or what) was doing so out of his line of sight. That basement, with its secrets, is especially a spooky locale I sure wouldn't want to be locked in for any given period of time. The director really gets so much mileage out of the house, out of the dark, taking advantage of the harrowing, goosebumps story, well aware that as Isaac gains further understanding, all the information is made known to us at the same time, unraveling everything by film's end. I definitely knew Moe was not to be trusted, and the fact that Isaac is convinced twice to go to that damned house has an irony all its own. But the story, with not too much originality, even when all the details surface, gives the director just enough so he can reach into his bag of tricks and pull out all the stops. Just the use of the corpse and archaic house, the director realizes what his strengths are...that is where the film is at its best. 3.5/5

To me the showstopping sequence involves Moe in the basement expecting to bash Isaac in the head with a log as a knife carves away a section of wall, shocked to hear him across the intercom no longer in that area...and the one in the basement with him he never imagined, one extra jolt the director has up his sleeve.