Michael Shawn’s review published on Letterboxd:
An extraordinarily uncomfortable movie, at times, and one with odd characters who aren't worth a damn and who leave you no one to root for. Sofia DeBose (Natalia Cordova-Buckley) takes her husband, Alex (Ryan Kwanten), to his family's palatial estate in hopes of stirring a memory to shake him out of the stupor he has been in since an accident left him brain damaged. Once there, she discovers a huge painting in the attic, a self-portrait of Calvin DeBose, an ancestor of Alex's who is his spitting image, and who, she learns, was involved in a double murder and then disappeared back in 1937. But she soon finds that she and Alex may not be alone in the huge house. The painting seems to be exerting a strange influence over Alex, and Sofia comes to believe that the abusive, murderous Calvin may not have actually disappeared after all...
It's an inventive but very strange story that only becomes more alienating the further into its twists that it takes you. Alex begins exhibiting abusive behaviors against women that made me extremely uneasy, which I suppose was intended. But then the other characters are so off-putting, too. Alex has a cousin played by Virginia Madsen who is a super-freak, sadly, since I normally really like her. And Mark-Paul Gosselaar plays a groundskeeper who is always saying the wrong thing or being inappropriate, and that's even before he goes all Jesus-freak on Sofia. It all adds up to just the weirdest horror movie I've seen in some time, and I don't know in what spirit it is all intended.
The direction doesn't tie it all together, either, but leaves you kind of three sheets to the wind, in the chaotic sense of the phrase. Instead of a building sense of dread that this story needed, it gives you quirk and confusion. It's very hard to describe exactly how off the whole film feels. Like the director couldn't make sense of it, either. In any case, it's just a total washout. The casting is bad, the cinematography is murky... so it's not just one thing holding it back. Skip it unless you just can't contain your curiosity.
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