No One Gets Out Alive has a terrible title and an interesting mood. It’s also wildly unfocused, spins its wheels to reach movie-length (before the requisite 10 minutes of Netflix credits), and then had the audacity to sneak up on me and give me something different.

The film is about an illegal Mexican immigrant in Cleveland who takes up residence in the world’s most obviously haunted boarding house. It’s clearly haunted, what with almost no light and the whispers of the damned from the vents. Or maybe the not-at-all-a-serial-killer owner has bodies stacking up in the basement? Who knows? The movie sure can’t stay focused long enough to commit.

So yeah, there’s ghosts and there’s maybe a killer and there’s random ominous moths and a half-dozen fakeout dreams, and a mystery box that they probably should leave closed. The movie is scattershot and almost completely loses me on a story level. It wants to have something to say about immigration, I think… and it seems to have evocative Incan iconography… so it’s saying something about south of the border… in Cleveland, Ohio.

All suggestion says I shouldn’t like this movie… and yet. And yet it has a very good atmosphere. It’s moody, it generates a sense of dread. It gives us ghosts and has the common courtesy to avoid THE MUSICAL STING! It doesn’t seem sure itself what the movie is about… but at least it does it with style.

And we get one of the most messed up weird “what the heck am I looking at exactly” creatures I’ve seen on screen. Seriously… this was one weird looking whatzit. It comes super late in the movie… walking in like “what up? I thought this movie was about me? No? Ok.” But regardless… it was imaginative. And f’ed up. And pretty cool.

This movie is a bit of a mess but if you want something to create that spooky season mood and you don’t think scary means “jump scares or it didn’t happen”, this movie might – MIGHT – work for you. It did for me. And whatever that thing was at the end, kudos to the design team.

Score: 81