The Unraveling was a strange movie and for a long time I wasn't really even sure if it could be classified as a horror. It does feature elements from that genre alongside some sci-fi type stuff. Written, directed and edited by Kd Amond (Faye), this had a mysterious story that culminated in a slightly underwhelming conclusion.
Mary (Sarah Zanotti - Faye) is travelling in a car with her husband Grayson (Sam Brooks - Fear Street: Part Two - 1978) when they get in a bad crash. Fast forward several months and all is not right with the couple. Mary has come to believe that she has somehow travelled into an alternate dimension. While her husband sounds like the man she loved, she doesn't believe he is the original version of the man that she knew, nor does she believe other people in her life, such as her mother are the original versions she once knew. She also keeps seeing a hallucination of a demonic figure (Seth Dunlap) that seems to be stalking or observing her. Even more proof of her belief comes with a strange phone number that allows her to speak to the 'real' Grayson. Her family and doctors believe the woman has suffered brain damage as part of the crash, but is that the truth or has she really somehow fallen into a different reality?
Whether or not what she is experiencing is real or not is one of the big mysteries of The Unraveling. That does eventually get resolved, though at times it seemed like the viewer might be left with that key part unanswered. The majority of the movie takes place at her and Grayson's home with not much horror-like stuff happening at all. Mary may believe her husband to be an imposter, but he doesn't think that is true and acts nothing but patient and loving with her. Her paranoia is easy to understand and the film makes a point of showing her perspective, from the way that faces of people she is meant to know 'shimmer' at key points, to relatively frequent flashbacks that have her back at the scene of the car accident for brief moments of time.
An hour into this was when my friend who had been visiting asked me for a summary of the film so far. She stated that it sounded like a bit of a slow burn. I guess it is a bit, but it never felt like it was dragging. I found myself caught up in the drama of it all. The movie does a good job of showing a balanced view. At times I thought she really was in an alternate dimension and at other times I thought that maybe she really was just mentally unwell. The small cast were all good, mainly it is just the two characters, but Katherine Morgan as Mary's mother and the actor who played the therapist both gave good performances. The look of the demonic creature was decent enough, a humanoid-like figure who appeared to be covered in a black oily substance, with contact lenses to complete the look. I liked how this creature was inserted into scenes, often showing up in the background, sometimes even Mary not noticing the figure creeping around.
The story reminded me a lot of Ingress, while the way it played out felt very similar to an episode I saw in the last season of Inside No.9. As I said, it didn't have the most original way to end a film, but it closed the film out in a decent enough way. The Unraveling releases October 8th under The Horror Collective genre label of AZ if Productions.
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