Grieve was on my Watchlist due to a recommendation from a friend. I figured I’d add it and get around to it eventually. But then it (sadly) met the Watchlist challenge criteria of least popular film on my list. But, hey, it gave me an excuse! It would probably have met the micro-budget criteria and been a better use of my time than Shark Exorcist!

The flick is about a guy grieving for the death of his wife. He goes out into the cold countryside and experiences weird hallucinations about her… or a creature… or maybe he just stares too long at the trees, a dead rat, or whatever the camera fixates on.

The film is trying to replicate what grief feels like… obsessing over little things that tick away as we emulsify our pain. It’s borderline (if not outright) experimental in how little it focuses on a concrete story… and a little of that can go a long way so the film is kindly only about an hour long. Too much more wallowing would be too much more film.

The horror aspects sometimes feel like something grafted onto the arthouse experiment to give it a hook. But, hey, at least these sequences are a bit unsettling.

If you are the kind of person who admires a slow burn, hypnotic, experimental, or elevated tone poem horror, you might like it. I grooved along slowly, sometimes fighting the doze, but made it out the other side admiring the effort.

Score: 75