Cara review
A psychological drama and an extreme horror movie walk into a bar…
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Cara
Directed by Hayden Hewitt
Written by Hayden Hewitt
Starring Elle O’Hara, Sarah Jane Duncan, Johnny Vivash, James Dreyfus, Michaela Longden, Laurence R. Harvey and Jacob Roberts
Cara Review
The movie reviews going up today and tomorrow have an interesting connection despite being about unrelated movies from two different countries in two different languages. Today, obviously, we’re talking about Cara. A dark psychological horror movie about a woman who becomes convinced the people around her are conspiring to send her back to a rehab facility where she had been previously abused. Tomorrow…we’re talking about a movie where a man falls down an unopened manhole cover. While they couldn’t sound more different…and couldn’t be more different for most of their runtimes…both make an absolutely bonkers choice at some point in their story that radically changes what we are watching.
When a story takes a turn as dramatic as Cara and tomorrow’s movie #Manhole…they become difficult to review for two key reasons. First, we can’t discuss what happens in the most important moment in the story. At least…not fully dive into it. Spoilers, you know? We can talk around it enough to paint a picture…but you really have to see them for yourself. Which brings us to the second reason. How jarring turns like the ones in Cara and #Manhole will be received by the individual watching them is impossible to predict. You may watch these movies and love both…or hate both…or split the difference. And that reaction is important enough to color your entire opinion on the film.
I can give you my perspective on it…while, of course, dancing around what happens in the stories. From my viewpoint…Cara’s turn works better. It’s less of a narrative twist than a genre shift. From a slow burn psychological drama into a violent revenge film. #Manhole, as we’ll discuss tomorrow, pulls a major character twist that changes its third act into something new…but does so in a way that feels completely out of place with what’s come before. It changes with no build up…out of thin air. Cara builds to its shift. It makes sense. It’s shocking because it’s designed to visually shock. You may see things differently.
Cara is terrified of being sent back to a psychiatric hospital. She goes to meetings…works as a cam girl…and tries to get through life without incident. Cara is a slow movie to start. It fleshes out both Cara’s life and her mental state. It does the latter with some clever tricks that allow us to see what she is perceiving as reality. A tinted color adorns the frame, and we see and hear things that Cara believes are happening…instead of what is there in reality. The movie can’t quite sustain itself for as long as the narrative plays itself somewhat straight…but Elle O’Hara does a great job bringing the complicated character to life.
She’s surrounded by some truly disgusting people…and that’s not counting the ones she has come to perceive as a threat. It’s a strong premise. A dangerously crazy person who believes the people closest to her are working to send her back to a place of abuse and torment. Seeing things from her point of view allows us to understand why her mental state is fracturing…but also reminds us that what she’s experiencing isn’t always what’s happening. It puts the film’s most dangerous antagonist inside the mind of the protagonist we follow. O’Hara has a hard line to walk with her portrayal of Cara. She’s not an easily likable person…and she’s increasingly losing touch with reality. But we still want to follow her. That’s a credit to her performance.
The drama works. The acting is strong. Using visual flares on her delusional sequences works perfectly. But the longer Cara remains a psychological drama…the less effective it becomes. Which is what makes its crazy shift into violent madness so welcoming. The perspective of the story is that of a troubled girl desperate to protect herself from threats that may not exist. The story itself…is about something slightly different. When it reaches its climax…Cara peaks in both interest and entertainment to match it.
Then…it kind of drops the ball on the character we’ve been following the whole time. It ends abruptly…giving us no time to consider how any of the madness it unleashes makes us feel. About the movie…or the character. In fact, the character of Cara is treated in a manner that is probably meant to be shocking…but comes across as befuddling and, honestly, incomplete. It’s a shame for the film’s final idea to undo so much good work in creating a provocative end to a slow build that it managed to pay off.
Still, that pay off elevates the whole of Cara. A bold turn towards something even darker, more vicious, than the psychological drama that preceded it. As we’ll see when we discuss #Manhole tomorrow…that’s not always an easy thing to pull off.
Scare Value
Cara makes for an interesting dark psychological horror movie for most of its runtime. O’Hara is great in the titular role…some fun narrative tricks liven up a depressing little story. Then things go off the rails. In a good way, I’d argue. In a way that turns Cara from a threat of danger into something more dangerous than you expected. It ends too abruptly…seemingly abandoning the agency of a character it spends so long building up…but it does so with a wild and memorable climax.
3/5
Cara Link
Rent/Buy on VOD from Fandango at Home
