You Should Have Left (Movie Review)

Blumhouse has earned a reputation for delivering the goods when it comes to low-budget horror films. And with the recent success of The Invisible Man, it is clear that theirs is a formula that works more often than not. You Should Have Left is just the latest in a long string of such titles, and when it was announced that the film would be skipping theaters in favor of a VOD release, I was simply happy we wouldn't have to wait for theaters to reopen before we got to see it.

Written and directed by David Koepp, the film stars Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried as a married couple with a lot of secrets and emotional baggage. In a bid to save their relationship, they both decide to book a vacation with their daughter at a house located in a remote Welsh village. But as they soon find out upon getting there, there is more to that house than its beauty reveals.

You Should Have Left is a psychological horror film that borrows a little too heavily from others that came before it. The premise of the film is intriguing enough, and I especially thought the way it manipulated our perception of space and time during its narrative was neat. But the fact remains that this is merely another haunted house movie, and we've already gotten quite a few of those.

The movie thankfully doesn't rely on too many jump scares, but then again, we didn't get any quality scares of any kind either. And therein lies the film's biggest problem, that jaded feeling of knowing everything that is about to happen before it does. I won't go as far as calling it underwhelming, but I wasn't exactly on the edge of my seat either.

Ultimately, your enjoyment of You Should Have Left hinges on what you're expecting to get out of it going in. If you're looking for something cerebral and deeply unsettling, then you'll most likely come out disappointed. But if you're merely looking for something to pass the time, I was definitely captivated enough by the story to see it through to its end, but just barely so.