ISABELLE (2018)

Studio:      Vertical Entertainment
Director:    Rob Heydon
Writer:      Donald Martin
Producer:  Rob Heydon
Stars:     Adam Brody, Amanda Crew, Zoe Belkin, Krista Bridges, Booth Savage, Dayo Ade, Michael Miranda, Sheila McCarthy

Review Score:

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Summary:

After experiencing a personal tragedy, a young couple learns their budding family’s fate connects to a satanic conspiracy next door.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Pregnant couple Matt and Larissa Kane move into a new home. Larissa later meets her strange next-door neighbor Ann Pelway and observes Ann’s paralyzed daughter Isabelle watching her from a wheelchair in an upstairs window.

Larissa suddenly miscarries her baby, which she and Matt planned to name Colton. While being treated at the hospital, Larissa dies for one minute before being resuscitated.

Matt asks hospital chaplain Father Lopez to pray with him and Larissa over Colton’s body. Larissa behaves coldly, grabbing the priest’s cross and exiting before the prayer begins.

Nightmares involving Colton prompt Dr. Karl Niedorf to prescribe anti-depressants for Larissa’s increasingly suicidal mood. Larissa still experiences hallucinations where Colton appears in the nursery and continues seeing Isabelle staring from her window. Ongoing stress impacts Larissa and Matt’s relationship.

Online research reveals Isabelle’s father Frank Pelway sexually abused his paralyzed daughter in a series of satanic rituals. Larissa’s visions of Colton and of Isabelle intensify. Larissa reveals to Matt that she saw someone or something pulling her into a fire during the minute she was clinically dead.

Larissa becomes suddenly ill when Isabelle appears inside her home. Crazed from the ongoing frustration, Larissa intentionally falls out of a second story window.

Matt talks to Father Lopez about his wife’s possible possession. Father Lopez comes to the house, but Larissa refuses to see him.

Ann sees Father Lopez leaving. Ann rushes inside her house and mutilates her hand with a rosary as penance in front of a shrine to Isabelle.

Matt contacts Larissa’s sister Jessica for help. Jessica takes Larissa to see holistic healer Pedro Salazar. Pedro counsels Larissa to let go of Colton’s spirit, which she does. However, Pedro senses a malevolent female entity determined to get inside Larissa.

Larissa sees Isabelle staring at her again. Larissa perplexes Ann by warning the woman to keep Isabelle away from her.

A flashback shows Ann issuing a cryptic assurance to Isabelle as they watch Matt and Larissa move in two weeks earlier. Ann then suffocates Isabelle with a plastic sheet.

In the present, Ann goes to investigate Isabelle’s room. Ann becomes locked inside. Isabelle’s empty wheelchair attacks Ann, prompting Ann to flee her house and drive away.

Larissa becomes ill from a strange odor when Isabelle appears inside her home. Isabelle locks herself in Colton’s nursery, suddenly vanishes, and reappears in her window next door.

When Matt returns home, Larissa tells him what she saw. Matt disbelieves Larissa’s claim that a wheelchair-bound woman somehow entered their house, leading to an argument between the troubled couple.

That night, Isabelle appears over Matt and Larissa’s bed with glowing red eyes. The odd smell returns, prompting Larissa to force Matt to search for a possible intruder.

Matt reads an article in which Frank Pelway claims from prison that he gave his daughter to Satan.

Larissa fires a gun at a vision of Isabelle wearing her wedding dress. Isabelle vanishes and reappears next-door taunting Larissa from her window.

With Larissa’s visions of Isabelle intensifying and their marriage worsening, Matt goes to see Pedro Salazar for help. Pedro warns that the malevolent spirit is trying to exchange its life with Larissa’s. Pedro advises that Matt must return Larissa to the gateway between life and death with another near death experience. There, Larissa must abandon her destructive mindset and willingly choose to live.

Matt comes home to Larissa having overdosed on pills. While Larissa recovers, Matt goes next door hoping to confront Ann. Matt finds Isabelle’s corpse in her bedroom closet. Cops later confirm Isabelle died around the time Matt and Larissa moved in.

Matt doesn’t notice Larissa entranced with red eyes when he gets into bed. While Isabelle possesses her body, the real Larissa appears mute and paralyzed in Isabelle’s wheelchair next door.

Matt calls Detective Smith when he seemingly sees Ann return home. Detective Smith tells Matt that Ann was found dead from suicide in her car by the river.

Ann’s spirit comes to set Isabelle’s spirit free. Ann is shocked to see Larissa in her daughter’s place.

Isabelle attacks Matt. Realizing that their spirits changed places, Matt runs next door to rescue Larissa. Isabelle supernaturally causes the Pelway house to shake. To bring her near death, Matt chokes Larissa while pleading with her to choose life. Cops burst in and shoot Matt.

Time rewinds to Larissa’s first near death experience in the hospital. However, Colton survives this time. Yet when Matt and Larissa bring their baby home, Larissa sees Isabelle watching from her bedroom window.

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Review:

Matt and Larissa have appeared in countless movies prior to “Isabelle,” just under different names and played by different people. They’re the quintessential young couple. She’s pregnant. He has a promising new job. The next step in achieving their shared dream of starting a family involves buying a home with a perfect nursery for the baby on the way. This being a horror film, Matt and Larissa’s new house also comes with curious new neighbors.

Wearing all black and a perpetually frazzled frown, weird widow Ann Pelway peeks at Larissa from behind a curtain next door. Upstairs, Ann’s wheelchair-bound daughter Isabelle looks at Larissa from a window. You’ll have to get used to the leers as much as Larissa. Isabelle, both the movie and the character, uses peeping and peering as the chief currency for putting stare-based scares in the register. If Isabelle’s gaze doesn’t unsettle you like it does Larissa, the film will run far longer than 80 minutes.

A word of warning about potentially troublesome triggers. To kick its story into gear, Larissa suffers a trauma that sends her into a downward spiral of depression and suicidal thoughts. Brought back home, Larissa’s manic behavior morphs into paranoid madness when she becomes convinced something insidious spurs Isabelle’s constant gawking.

Online research, a standard trope for introducing exposition yet employed with unmotivated abruptness here, informs Larissa about Isabelle’s dark past. Ann apparently married a devil worshipper, and her husband Frank pledged their paralyzed daughter to Satan through a series of rituals that sexually abused Isabelle. Already haunted by awful hallucinations, this revelation turns Larissa’s fear into frenzy.

Believing his wife might be under the influence of a malevolent entity, Matt turns to a priest, Larissa’s sister, and finally a holistic healer for help. What the couple gradually uncovers is an occult plot pitting Larissa and Isabelle against one another in a spiritual battle only one of them can win.

“Isabelle” probably could have gone further with its limited fright factor if its key characters were seasoned with more flavor. In its current condition of subdued satanic creepiness, the movie merely meets moderately above average expectations for a routine possessed pregnancy thriller.

Picture “Isabelle” progressing inside a spiral straw. Plotting circles redundant loops repeatedly, particularly the beat of Larissa experiencing yet another Isabelle sighting, before coming back around to move forward. There’s only so much tiptoeing around and jumping at visions a viewer can sit through. At some point, suspense has to lead somewhere it can finally deliver on its buildup. “Isabelle” rarely gives its spooks time to rise above room temperature, resulting in a lot of low impact thrills.

Come-and-go characters also gum up the gears of momentum. Matt has a receptionist who may or may not be/come a mistress. Who knows, relevance doesn’t accompany her inclusion. Larissa has a sister who only bridges the gap between Larissa and a spiritualist. The spiritualist’s primary purpose is to provide supernatural solutions the ineffectual priest doesn’t have.

Matt’s state trooper father has something to say about Matt’s absentee mother. Larissa has a parallel revelation about the true fate of her father. “Isabelle” oddly elects to detour down such sidetracks with only 20 minutes to go, when the audience has long lost incentive to further invest empathetic emotion.

Amanda Crew and Adam Brody do what they can to make mountains from molehill characterizations, although scripting favoring function over form ties them to pedestrian personalities. Brody’s vaguely vacant presence feels cursory, an obligatory addition to imply “you’re crazy” when his wife complains of nightmares and conspiracies. Crew hits familiar notes expected of her Rosemary Woodhouse clone, which is all any actor can do when a film commits itself to formula.

Bleakness abounds in “Isabelle,” and that’s a heads or tails tossup regarding how its TV movie tone will personally appeal to you. A slightly sapped color palette paints an appropriately overcast atmosphere. Echoing piano keys on the sparse score perform their part to cautiously establish eeriness. “Isabelle” gets a good deal of the way there as a mildly moody psychological thriller, but slows to a skip when it settles for spinning its wheels.

For a more satisfying Canadian-lensed horror film whose postpartum possession plot puts more chills onscreen, check out director Brandon Christensen’s “Still/Born” (review here). It appears both filmmaking teams operated from identical agendas. Except where “Still/Born” is memorably macabre, “Isabelle” is only mediocre.

Review Score: 60

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