Checked out the new Netflix horror movie Eli. This is a weird combination of sub-genres in horror movies and that kind of makes it interesting.
Eli is about a child who is allergic to everything so lives in a bubble at home and navigates the world in an medical contamination suit. His parents find out about a doctor who promises a miraculous gene therapy that will cure him so they make the move to her lab. That lab is a retrofitted old mansion, sealed off from the world so the kid can move about without the suit. Unfortunately, you probably shouldn’t build your high tech lab in a haunted house.
And that’s the gimmick here. The movie is part medical suspense thriller and part haunted house flick. When the kid isn’t being subjected to scary medical treatments, ghosts keep trying to make his life miserable. And, of course, his parents or the doctor (played by Lili Taylor) don’t believe him. And neither does the friendly – but possibly ghostly – girl who appears outside his window every night. She’s played by Sadie Sink – Max from Stranger Things.
This is a decent little haunted house movie. It’s uneven though… but just when I was about to write it off as generic, it started to play more and more with different sub-genres of horror. There’s some fun little surprises and a wholly unexpected ending that left me with a pleased grin. It wasn’t exactly a scary movie, but it was a bit more devilish than I expected.
Score: 74