Caveat (2020)

I caught up with Damian McCarthy 1st feature film Caveat after seeeing Hokum in a cinema last week and Oddity in 2024. 

Caveat in Latin means Warning/ Beware. 

Creepy, claustrophobic, atmospheric very low key and extremly well done low budget debut feature shot in Cork, Ireland.

Loses some steam in the third act but it's paced at 1h30 so it's all good. It's basically  for the viewer a one person drama and experiences and emotions -through Issac (Jonathan French's amnesic character).

The harness is a gimmick worthy of Edgar Allan Poe's stories. 

The film's dialogue is minimal, and the sound design/ soundtrack is keeping the ternsion up, as with the camera movements and the set design of the creepy house with falling walls, the basement, floors creaking and those distant cries of the foxes...

The most interesting thing in the film is the drumming toy rabbit that beats Stephen King/ Osgood Perkins' Moneky for creepiness and weirdness.

***The toy rabbit featured in the film was acquired via eBay by McCarthy, who "always had an interest in wind-up toys". It was stripped of its fur and sent to costume and prop builder Lisa Zagone, who finalised its design.

3 1/2 out of 5 / 7 out of 10

Sight and Sound: The uncannily claustrophobic design of the setting matches the tightness of the irrationally unfolding narrative in this slice of ghostly surrealism, so beautifully styled that you can practically smell the mildew-stained walls.