Review: Significant Other

Somewhere in the woods of the Pacific Northwest, something out of the sky lands and a creature springing forth from it attacks an unawares deer. Meanwhile, a happy young couple (Maika Monroe and Jake Lacy) are ready for some camping in those very same woods. It will be their doom.

 

This 2022 sci-fi/horror offering from co-writer/co-director team Dan Berk and Robert Olsen (“Stake Land II”, “Villains”) seems to have been pretty well-received by those who have seen it. I was enjoying it too, for about 40 minutes or so. Unfortunately after about that point, things go horribly wrong for the film. Or at least my enjoyment of it.

 

On the plus side, the directors give us an eerie sense of dread at the outset, with the direction/cinematography really putting emphasis on those tall trees. It’s quite unsettling, actually. It’s a well-shot, and particularly well-lit film. It was being eerie and tense whilst really more of a sci-fi film than a horror film. In fact, if anything it’s a sci-fi/drama with elements of suspense and psychological thriller.

 

The two main characters spend the first portion of the film being genuinely likeable. Likeable characters in a genre film is extremely important to me, so I found myself quickly on board here. However, once that twist comes, one loses all sympathy for the characters, and when combined with a mental illness angle being played up alongside the supernatural? It left me not feeling so great about the message being conveyed here. And then it just up and loses the plot completely and becomes aggressively stupid in the final stages. Such a wonderfully eerie build-up for what eventually devolves into a mediocre episode of “The X-Files”. Sadly, after starting out quite well the two lead performances devolve too, with Jake Lacy in particular becoming comical and forced. Damn, this movie could’ve been something.

 

The first 30 minutes here are terrific. After that it turns into an over-the-top, comical woman-in-peril/alien invasion movie hybrid and it’s stupid and juvenile. I’m not with y’all on this one, I’m afraid.

 

Rating: C

 

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