Film Review: Cruel Will (2013)

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SYNOPSIS:

Tragedy strikes married couple Paul and Lily, when Lily’s father dies. Lily has her father cremated, brings the urn home and now Paul has to come to terms with the death of his father-in-law whom he had despised. The situation gets a bit frayed when the lid to the urn mysteriously disappears, and Paul begins to experience happenings no one else is aware of.

REVIEW:

First of all – Doug Jones. Doug f**king Jones. Seriously, worth the price of admission, even if he was a bit under utilized.

Moving on, so this is basically a ghost story I suppose. The story begins with the death of Adrian (Doug Freakin Jones), an apparently abusive father. His daughter Lily (Marissa Pistone) and her husband Paul (Arron Kinser, who is also the editor and one of the producers on this film) attend the funeral.

Once home, the couple realize that the lid to Adrian’s urn has somehow vanished. They spend some time looking for it, and ultimately decide it isn’t a big deal and plan to visit the mortuary in the morning for a new one.

In the hours after the service, Paul is convinced he is being haunted by his father in law, who never liked him very much to begin with. Strange stuff starts to happen – small things at first, but increasingly more frigthening as time goes on. Of course, no one sees any of the strangeness but him, and the film kicks off from there.

Paul eventually goes to see a shrink (played by Harry Lennix)recommended to him by his employer Frederick (Spencer Garrett). That doesn’t go well, just in case you were wondering.

A few other characters populate this twisted world, including Lily’s college Professor (Brenan Baird), Lily’s Auntie (Barbara Goodson), and Paul’s nerd buddy Blake (Read MacGuirtose).
The stage is set for some next level weirdness, and it definately comes. Paul is never certain what is real and what isn’t, and just wants someone..anyone…to believe him. As you can imagine, that doesn’t work out so much for him.

This is a slow starter, no two ways around it. And it does get a bit confusing early on, especially with some special effect related edit flaws. In fact, the plot kinda meanders a bit, giving us flashbacks and dream sequences that really don’t seem to make any sense. But the story does finally settle in to itself, unfortunately almost at the end.

There’s a lot of plot related stuff I just can’t talk about. Spoilers, sweeties. And the twist ending may be obvious to you, or you may be taken by surprise. Honestly, I just don’t want to ruin the experience if you decide to watch this thing.

It’s very slow early on. I mean…turtle on morphine slow. I had to restart this thing three times because I just couldn’t focus on it. But in all honesty, it’s not terrible. And anyway…DOUG JONES.

So on a scale of one to ten, ten being aweome, I give this film 4 urns. Because DOUG JONES.