Director: Mike Flanagan
Writers: Mike Flanagan, Kate Siegel
Stars: John Gallagher Jr., Kate Siegel, Michael Trucco
Run Time: 1 Hour, 22 Minutes
Link: https://www.netflix.com/title/80091879
Synopsis
We see a regular day in Maddie’s life. She’s deaf, lives alone, and relies on her iPhone and computer for many things. She’s friends with her next door neighbor, Sarah, who recently finished reading Maddie’s book. Maddie’s not a good cook, and she burns her dinner badly.
Craig, whom we assume is Maddie’s ex, keeps trying to phone her, but she repeatedly ignores his call. That night, Maddie cleans the kitchen while Sarah pounds on the back door, screaming for help three feet away. Maddie, of course, doesn’t hear anything, and a masked killer slices Sarah up just outside Maddie’s kitchen door. Maddie doesn’t see a thing, but the killer watches her for a good, long time.
The killer gets inside the house, and he sneaks up behind her, but then her FaceTime rings, and he has to back off before he is seen on the phone. Then she starts getting messages on her computer that were taken of her, taken with her phone, just seconds ago. She knows someone in the house is doing it, but she can’t find him. She finally sees him outside, and she locks all the doors.
He cuts the wires and the power goes off, so she can’t use her Wi-Fi to call 911. He slashes her tires, so she can’t drive away. She writes a message “Won’t tell. Didn’t see your face. Boyfriend coming home.” He just stands there and takes the mask off; she’s seen his face now.
She remembers Sarah had her cell phone in her pocket, so she sets off her car alarm as a distraction. While the killer is disabling the alarm, Maddie goes out after the phone. She doesn’t get the phone, but there’s a lot of cat and mouse in the dark. He comes up with a crossbow from somewhere and tries to shoot her in the woods, but she makes it back to the house. She gets the crossbow away from him and sees twelve or fourteen little hash marks, one for each of his previous victims.
John, Sarah’s husband, arrives looking for Sarah. The man pretends to be a deputy, and he has John fooled until John sees one of Sarah’s earrings fall out of the man’s pockets. He sees Maddie pounding on the windows inside, and the man knifes John to death.
Maddie starts having internal conversations with herself. She shoots him with the crossbow, but not fatally, so he destroys her hand in the door jamb. He grabs a crowbar and still has trouble getting in through the glass door. Somehow he gets into the bathroom without her noticing and hides behind her; she stabs him in the leg and runs. She shoots him in the face with wasp killer and sets off her smoke detector. In the confusion, she kills him with a corkscrew to the neck.
She takes her phone out of the dead man’s pocket and calls 911.
Commentary
Between the MacBook, iPhone, FaceTime, Apple Pages, and other Apple products, I wonder if this film needed any audience at all to break even or if the sponsorships covered everything. Still, the use of technology here only adds to the creepiness. Once he gets her phone, he knows everything there is to know about Maddie. Why a single deaf girl living alone out in the isolated countryside doesn’t have a gun for protection, I do not know.
I like that it had surprises. You’d expect that toward the end of the film, the killer would rip off the mask and reveal that it’s the ex-boyfriend or someone known, but no– the lunatic shows his face really very early on, and it’s just some guy. Unfortunately, once you see the guy’s face, the film starts to drag. He’s got her trapped in the house, and she wants out with one little plan after another being foiled, all with no dialogue at all. Actually, there are over seventy minutes without a single spoken word.
For some reason, the man refused to break a window to come in. He has dozens of opportunities, but didn’t even try. At one point, Maddie rolls up a window and the man slams his hand on it in utter defeat after a chase. He had a hammer in his belt and a crossbow in his other hand. If he had wanted in, he would’ve gotten in. It’s dragged out to the point it was tedious.