In short: Unholy (2007)

Hope (Siri Baruc), a seemingly happy young woman, commits suicide on her birthday right in front of her mother Martha (Adrienne Barbeau!).

Martha can neither accept nor understand her daughter's death. With the help of her son (Nicholas Brendon!, also involved as a producer) she begins to ask seek answers to her many questions. It doesn't need much probing until they find themselves stepping into tinfoil hat world, where a dead Nazi occult scientist working secretly for the US government (or is he?) tries to find the (and I quote the film) "Unholy Trinity" of time travel, invisibility and mind control, using people like her daughter for his experiments.

But now that she knows too much, whom can Martha trust anymore? Her neighbor? Her son? Herself?

 

Many people seem to have their problems with this film, some of them related to not understanding the plot, to which I can only say that this is not a problem caused by the film, but rather by the lack of certain qualities in the viewer. Others seem to think the movie's not all that believable.

I can relate to the latter problem, though I have found the method of dragging my unbelief out of bed, shooting it and then burying it in the cellar of my brain to work quite wonderfully against it.

After doing that, one suddenly finds a fine little low budget film with ambitions, clever ideas and an entertaining amount of weirdness.

The acting is especially interesting (and for once in a film like this quite good): while Barbeau and Brendon are playing their roles in a straight realist mode, the rest of the actors practices conscious overacting which amplifies the weirdness factor beautifully.

Once you ignore the plausibility question, the film's plot leads to a neat and consequent conclusion. All questions are answered, everything makes sense inside the rules the film has established - what more can you ask for?

Recommended to everyone who is not afraid to suspend poor old battered disbelief for some time and/or who likes conspiracy theories for their sheer madness rather than their supposed truth.

 

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