Film Review – Entity

The Entity is about a small English TV crew from the show ‘Darkest Secrets’ set out for the Siberian forest. The show focuses on revisiting the sites of unsolved crimes and they employ the gifts of a psychic whose extraordinary powers may help shed new light on cold cases. In 1998, thirty four unidentified bodies were found in shallow graves in a remote Siberian forest. The last communication to their production office in London stated that they were approaching the Siberian region where bodies were found and the case had been unsolved for years….So there you have a fairly standard setup for this kind of film.

First off the film looks great for something that shot on a tight budget, which isn’t something that gets said a lot about this style of movie. The film switches from found footage POV angles to regular camera shots and the hybrid of these two styles works pretty well except that the POV style footage gets sucked into too many of the tropes that are now rote (and truth be told – expected) in an already bloated subgenre. These tropes are on display whenever something dramatic happens – we get a swirl of camera work sounds and then a still camera after everything has calmed down, which has been done to death but with limitations with the budget you can almost forgive that.

The acting is not too bad and a few minor issues aside, everyone still gives it their all. The psychic Ruth (Dervla Kirwan) is particularly good and essentially the film sinks or floats on her performance. The other players, the host of the TV show Kate (Charlotte Riley), the cameraman Matt (Rupert Hill), the sound guy David (Oliver Jackson) and their Russian guide Yuri (Branko Tomovic) all have their parts play and each one of them does just that.

The film fully buys into the spirit world from the get go with the first apparitions turning up about ten minutes into the film, this was a good move from writer and director Steve Stone as it sets the tone for the film and places Ruth as the centre of the film. Her abilities are not questioned and as such the audience is on board early.

The sound design in the film is one of its strongest assets. Early on it helps create a real feeling of dread with the low rumblings and ghostly whispers and then when things start going a little crazy, it turns up the fuzzy distortion and whilst it has been done before, it works well within the confines of the film.

The film looks as though its going down the ambiguous ending path like so many of its kind but it pulls an about face and the ending whilst not shocking is very much downbeat. A pretty good film that was created on a budget and one that is high on atmosphere and doesn’t look for an easy ending. Entity is worth a look.

Ryan @TigersMS78