Caveat Review (Film, 2021)
content warning: blood, mental wellness, death by suicide
Editorial note: Caveat uses some ableist language and action to set up key character dynamics in the opening stretch of the film. The portrayal of mental health is much more nuanced and thoughtful the rest of the film, but the first few minutes do include some problematic elements for character development. You’re meant to be upset by this.
In Caveat, a man recovering from a traumatic injury impacting his memory is offered a job by a friend he can’t remember. He will be paid $200 a day to watch his friend’s niece, a young woman with some mental health problems. The job keeps changing after it’s too late to back down, leaving the man chained to the house to limit his movements so the woman knows where he is at all times.
Writer/director Damian Mc Carthy crafts a compelling horror/mystery film from this concept. It’s surprisingly dynamic for a film that largely focuses on two characters trapped in a house together. We’re explicitly told that the man cannot remember anything and the woman struggles with her perception of reality. The film starts to really take off when they both realize the uncle told them entirely different things about what was happening at the house.
The sound design on the film is superb. This is a loud film considering the size of the cast, but it’s not driven by jump scares. The settling of the house, the rattling of the chain, the fox cries in the distance, and the wind in the eaves ebb and wane in a natural way. The man is not familiar with the house, so every sound is new to him. It’s a great conceit to build tension or even distract from the early arrival of some of the story’s dirty little secrets.
The props are also great. The harness system looks convincingly real and has a simple explanation for even existing. Year before, the woman’s grandmother was a sleepwalker, so she had the harness system installed to stop her from wandering outside while she slept. The distance from the chain to the door also stops anyone from entering the farthest bedroom, which helps the woman feel safe from her fear that something will attack her while she sleeps.
Then there’s the rabbit toy. This antique drumming rabbit toy is one of the first things we see in the film. The woman is wandering around the house, holding onto the rabbit and listening to its drumbeat. She hears some kind of pattern that guides her to the basement. A quick search reveals a newer sheet of drywall and a saw. She cuts out a hole and reaches inside.
Caveat plays with those visuals throughout the film. There are so many hidden little holes and windows that the two characters use to see and feel what’s actually happening. The rabbit seems to drum when it wants to, but only for the woman and the man. These two conceits drive the action of the film in totally unexpected ways. It’s quite remarkable.
Caveat falls into that paranoia-fueled horror territory of modern indies like The Lighthouse, Possum, and The Block Island Sound. These are the modern versions of the original Southern Gothic stories, where the unreliability of the narrator doesn’t mean that what they see isn’t really happening. Caveat is a tense and well-designed horror film that will leave you wishing to be freed from the confines of that house.
Caveat is streaming on Shudder.
