Today movies are often split into two categories: big-budget extravaganzas and low-budget indie fare. It’s increasingly rare to find a studio-backed, adult-oriented film with major movie stars. Fortunately, the horror and suspense genre still has room for all kinds of stories under its umbrella, and it’s exciting to find a movie like You Should Have Left there, which uses the tropes of a thriller to tell a thoughtful, mind-bending story about love, guilt and betrayal.
You Should Have Left was adapted from German author Daniel Kehlmann’s book of the same name by legendary screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, Panic Room), who also directs. The story centers on Theo Conroy (Kevin Bacon), a wealthy middle-aged man who's having trouble coping with both the jealousy he feels over his much-younger actress wife, Susanna (Amanda Seyfried), and the continued recognition he faces for being accused of killing his first wife years earlier. While he was exonerated of the crime, the case still hangs over him like a cloud, to the point that it’s hard to understand how he managed to meet and marry anyone at all, let alone someone almost 30 years his junior.
Theo and Susanna have a 6-year-old daughter, Ella (Avery Essex) they both adore, but it’s hard to see what else the pair have in common. Susanna’s perpetually absorbed by her phone while Theo listens to a tape about relaxation and meditation. Although at first glance it’s easy to dismiss the movie’s central relationship as another tired example of Hollywood carelessly casting a much younger woman to pair with an older man, this is actually part of the design of the story.
In order to reconnect and get away from everything, the couple rent a house in the Welsh countryside through an Airbnb-like site. When they arrive, they’re impressed with their accommodations and looking forward to the quiet, but almost immediately strange things start to happen. Ella sees a mysterious shadow on the wall, Theo somehow continues to find new wings and rooms in the house and everyone is having nightmares. Things continue to get stranger as Theo begins to realize what’s happening may be much more than his imagination, and in order to make it through the situation, he’s going to have to confront the personal demons he’s pushed aside for so long.
If you’ve seen the trailer for You Should Have Left, you might believe the movie is a scare-a-minute ghost story with shades of the Harrison Ford/Michelle Pfeiffer vehicle What Lies Beneath. But the film is neither of those things. While the bathtub imagery is reminiscent of Robert Zemeckis’ earlier movie, the story is completely different. Meanwhile, although the story is certainly suspenseful, it’s not relentlessly scary. Instead, the creepy sequences and nerve-wracking set-ups are all in service of the psychological horror inflicted on the characters, making this more a thriller than a traditional haunted-house film. While Koepp keeps the tension high throughout the story, he also leaves room to address the problems between Theo and Susanna.
The small core cast does a fantastic job bringing their characters to life. Child characters in movies, especially horror or suspense movies, are often written as too mature for their age or too scared to be rational. This is not the case with Ella, and Essex ensures her character's reactions are smart, while still coming across as those of a 6-year-old. As Susanna, Seyfried isn’t always likable but she’s completely convincing, with a millennial obliviousness that’s perfectly calibrated to goose Bacon’s character’s baby-boomer uncertainty. Bacon gives a subtle, nuanced performance that volleys between upstanding husband and father and something more sinister. The layers of the character continue to peel back until the very end of the film, when the unexpected double-meaning behind the title becomes clear.
The other star of the movie, the house Theo, Susanna and Ella rent, is perfectly suited to the story. Strangely modern in a setting that feels anything but, the house is both inviting and foreboding, so when ominous things start happening there, it feels that much more believable.
You Should Have Left is enjoyably tense entertainment that's also a thought-provoking exploration of who we pretend to be and who we really are. The movie is a heady thriller that maintains its grip until the very end of its lean 93 minute run-time.
You Should Have Left was written and directed by David Koepp and stars Kevin Bacon, Amanda Seyfried and Avery Essex. It is available on demand on June 18.