Bad Bunny

Film: Caveat
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on gigantic television.

There are times when, to follow a movie where it wants to go, you have to give in to some ridiculous premises. Caveat is a movie like that. There’s going to be a moment early in the film that beggars one’s ability to willingly suspend disbelief. If you can manage to deal with the fact that the movie demands that you accept something completely ridiculous, you’re in for some good scares and an interesting concept.

Isaac (Johnny French) is a man with significant amnesia and no real direction. This makes him the perfect person for a job from his landlord, Moe Barrett (Ben Caplan). Barrett has a niece named Olga (Leila Sykes) who suffers from bouts of catatonia and lives by herself in an isolated house. Barrett wants Isaac to go and stay with her for a couple of days. Essentially, if she is left on her own for too long, something bad can happen to her, because she can zone out for long periods of time. Isaac agrees to the job, especially because he’s going to earn £200 per day.

The job is hinky immediately. First, it turns out that the house that Olga lives in isn’t so much isolated as it is on an island in the middle of a lake. Second, and much more upsetting, is the fact that to stay in the house, Isaac will need to wear a leather harness that is connected to a chain attached to the floor in the basement. Basically, Isaac will need to wear this harness and chain the whole time he is there—he’s locked into it—so for five days that means no shower, no leaving the house, and most importantly, no going into Olga’s room.

Things are immediately strange beyond the harness and chain. When she is not catatonic, Olga walks around the house with a crossbow. Isaac also finds a stuffed bunny toy. It looks like one of those monkey toys that bangs on a drum, but it also has forward-facing, very human looking eyes. And, it drums on its own without being wound up, almost seeming to respond to questions that Isaac asks it.

We’re also going to get the lore of the house and Olga’s life. We learn that her father killed himself in the basement in large part because of his abusive relationship with his wife. He was incredibly claustrophobic, and his wife locked him in the basement until he went mad. Earlier tortures included locking him in the harness (originally created for a sleepwalking grandmother) and then swallowing the key to prevent him from escaping. Her mother went missing soon after.

Isaac is going to be plagued with minor supernatural events, and will spend some time exploring the house as much as he can while locked up. He’ll also discover that the bunny works as a sort of divining rod when he is near something hidden. One of the things he’ll eventually learn is that he may have been to the house before, and that his amnesia may be hiding his own history with the place and with Olga’s family.

Caveat is genuinely creepy and upsetting in a lot of places, assuming you can get past the idea that Isaac is okay with being locked into a harness for close to a week without respite and with no way to contact anyone outside of the house. The set up is so clearly upsetting and bizarre that no one who didn’t have some weird submission and prisoner kink would submit to it.

Beyond that, a lot of Caveat takes place in extremely dark places with only a flashlight for illumination. There are a lot of times when it’s difficult to see what is going on, and that’s a shame because a lot of what is going on is genuinely scary.

What that means is that Caveat is a movie that really wants to be good. I have to wonder where that premise came from and who thought it would fly. It’s not like Isaac is getting paid an incredible sum. At the rate promised, in current money, Isaac is going to walk away with about $1350. For that you strap yourself into a harness you can’t leave and spend five days in a house with a mentally ill woman carrying a crossbow?

There’s something here, but it’s not as good as it should be, and most of that comes from the premise and the cinematography.

Why to watch Caveat: If you get past the premise, it’s pretty great.
Why not to watch: Boy, is it dark visually.