Check in. Relax. Take a shower.: Silent Retreat - when a movie gets destroyed by its ending

SILENT RETREAT 2013

"To respect the process we keep things as quiet as possible."

A woman is sent to a small camp to serve out her punishment instead of jail. The camp is run by three men and holds five women at a time. The rules are very clear - no talking, no phones, no reading, no writing, no eye contact, and no touching. She is simply to sit and meditate and to serve out her sentence.

But something is off about this camp, and there's an unusual amount of fear surrounding something that lives in the woods. And how long exactly have these other women been here?

Overall?

Ohhhhh boy. This movie was rough.

Directed by Tricia Lee, Silent Retreat started out fine, I was buying what it was selling, but it took a turn and I was left there mouth agape not sure whether to laugh or cry in anger.

Let's talk about the beginning - it's an interesting story where our lead Janey arrives at this strange camp and encounters the Doctor who gives off a major creepy culty vibe. The other four girls basically ignore her at first while Janey adjusts to her new situation. But soon Janey starts noticing things are wrong. One of the girls speaks out loud and starts throwing food around and then she disappears for awhile. She turns up again like she's been brainwashed. Then another girl, Alexis, reaches out to Janey and that's when things get interesting.

The two girls quickly bond, buying time to talk to each other without getting caught and we learn more about them. We learn the reasons they're in this situation is actually not their fault, both were events they shouldn't have been punished for. We also learn that Janey watched her whole family perish in a car accident.

Then things start to take a turn. Janey and Alexis try to escape a few times and we start seeing little bits and pieces of what's in the woods. It remains slightly spooky but you can already tell the effects are pretty bad so you're hoping they never actually reveal the monster.

But they do.

And soon the girls discover that this camp is made to turn women into stepford style wives. They're hypnotized to become complacent and to only want to be a good wife and mother. Then the three men who run the camp sell the girls off to the highest bidder. But Alexis is being groomed for one of the men at the camp. And while she thinks she's only been at this camp for three weeks, turns out she's been there like two whole years but has no memory of it. This is all fun stuff!

Then the monster properly shows up and the movie completely falls flat. There's all this weird stuff about how the monster is trying to protect its' baby and the camp is somehow infringing on this situation. We also find out the monster is blind and reacts to sound, much like the creatures in the descent. And quite frankly, this creature basically looks like a total rip off of the descent.

Janey only properly defeats the monster by screaming in its' face.

Like two full minutes of her just screaming.

I mean....look...I get what they're trying to say here. I get the message. But good lord was this awful.

Which is a shame because the first half was plausible, but once the creature gets involved things very quickly fall into shambles. I don't even see the point of the creature. The fact that these women are stuck at this creepy ass camp being brainwashed into perfect wives is good enough for me. I don't ALSO need a weird territorial creature in the woods.

What did I love?

I loved Janey and Alexis. They were really great characters and had thick backstory and were appropriately emotional and realistic. They were a joy to watch. Janey was played by Chelsea Jenish and Alexis was played by Sofia Banzhaf.
The Doctor, played by Robert Nolan was also incredibly well done. He was so incredibly creepy. And while he never actually touched the girls, he came off so perverted.
As I said, I enjoyed the beginning and most of the middle but the end can suck my dick.
I loved the camp, it was spooky and the little cabins they stayed in were super cute.

What didn't I love?

Obviously the monster - descent rip off realness. And absolutely no point of it being there.
The movie got suuuuuper cheesey at some points where it became almost unwatchable.
The directing of this movie felt a little off. There were some scenes that were so drawn out you just wanted to yell CUT! and move the fuck on.

Recommendation?

I do not recommend this unless you're looking for a bit of campy, non scary fun to watch with your friends.

I'm going to give it a 4/10 because I did really love the beginning but that makes the ending that much worse.