“The Shade” is a horror/drama movie that revolves around a family still grieving at the loss of their father, the movie follows the middle son of the family, Ryan as he navigates through a darkness that the family is surrounded by, as mysterious figures begin to haunt and control their lives. Unfortunately, while having an interesting premise and set up, it fails to scare or give well thought out messages of death or grievance.
The official premise of the movie goes as follows: “Plagued by a mysterious entity, a grieving college student must confront the dark presence before it destroys what remains of his family.”
To summarize this movie, it explores themes like grievance and death in the eyes of the main protagonist, as he is still affected with the loss of his dad. The movie begins with the father doing some sort of ritual and to be presumed as Ryan sees his father end himself. The rest of the movie follows Ryan as he tries to be the best older brother he can be for his youngest brother. The movie has little to any jump scares as it just becomes a melodrama, between himself and those around him. It takes a turn when his older brother, Jason comes back home and brings a weird monster that torments him and later on the rest of the family.
As the movie progresses so does the drama, where the friends of the main protagonist start to dread and even avoid him. His brother ends up leaving them similar to how the dad left them, then this creepy and weird woman begins to appear tormenting the family and ends up leaving the main character isolated and alone. There are many therapy sessions throughout the movie that provide a nice and unique look into the psyche of the main protagonist. Towards the end of the movie the monster starts to terrorize the family as well as this tree-looking human of his older brother. The end of the movie concludes with an overly dramatic cut scene of the main character and his brother, who can now see this creature, flipping the monster off. Truly poetic.
While the movie does a great job of presenting the theme of grieving and trust by having this therapy sessions and the main character talking out his feelings. This movie fails to answer any questions and much of the development of the characters and plot points are seemingly forgotten or half answered, like why the father died, the significance of the man stuck to a tree, the shadow man that appeared in the opening cutscene, and the monster lady terrorizing the family. The ending itself was unsatisfying and seemed rushed, as the main character with the brother ends up flipping off the monster and playing a heavy metal song. The movie builds up so much tension that if anything, it felt like the movie flipped us off after spending 2 hours of watching it.
Overall, the movie, while not being bad, it definitely felt rushed and more a student film project, as many of the themes and questions were unresolved and left there to be questioned. The ending left viewers frustrated for wasting time, money and effort of watching/taking this movie seriously.
