Nice looking, well lit, acting for the most part was good, particularly the main character. She emoted pretty well.
What let it down was it lacked the experience of the bond between mother and son, and the experience of the police not doing their job, the event and stakes of not finding her son's body so we can get behind her and on board for her goal that doesn't happen till nearly an hour in and she goes to the location when the film opens.
We need all the essential context to understand and FEEL the need for her to find the body herself, it's hard to feel the need when all the context as to why she has to do this is told to us, how incompetent was the search for her child? What did that look like? How did she feel then? We need that experience to be on board with her. Because I don't, I was never with her.
There was a question as to why was it so concerning to harvest the field, it was launched early in the first act and then it's quite a while till it's payed off, too long, so long that I forgot the question existed, a small enough issue but significant enough.
The main character doesn't effect the plot much, just interviews people, gets stories, opinions, it's not a thrill ride i was hoping for, it's not terribly dramatic, we don't see any events that really move me, other than a quick flashback to the bus sinking, and to learn her neighbour was lying about the serial killer. I just feel like she didn't have to really work hard to get all the twists and info. She goes into a derelict house and finds the photo.
We don't experience just how bad her life is without her son's body to rest, it would have been awful and she would have been a nervous wreck. I feel like had we experienced the search for her son and him not being found and then saw how she felt and what she did in the aftermath I would have been more invested in her goal. She feels like the sister or cousin of the mother because of the lack of this.
She finds out that her temp neighbour's son is the serial killer who killed her son. In the flashback where the bearded man loses his son and he has a conflict with the protagonist about burning the field, that was pretty compelling enough.
That, that conflict, that context needed to be launched early in the second act and launch her goal to burn the field and come into escalating conflict over this throughout the second act. Instead the second act was mostly her wandering around and asking people stuff, so it really lacked the thrill and drama it needed to be, or could have been.
She burns the field, the policeman digs up the part where her son's shoelace was and he confirms her son's remains are there. Much like my issue with the set up, the payoff is not there, we don't get to see her bury her son and get the closure she needs, not that I yearned for the reward from the goal she has achieved anyway, such a pity. We don't even see the remains, see her have them taken away, what? This isn't an ending!! What a let down, ugh. I want to at least "swim in the waters" of her getting what she needed, her reward, closure, having her son buried, grieving and moving on, where did that go???
Also, this is supposed to be a horror? No, supernatural, maybe a little. Drama, sort of too, but in no way a horror.
