Right from the start this film seems to go out of its way to be antagonistic in as many different directions at once; starting with yelling and screaming, then with a quintessential upper class "Ugly American" couple, Sasha and Peter, making asses of themselves to their driver in Kyiv and antagonizing him for not speaking English.
They then proceed into an apartment building inherited from Sasha's grandmother. No idea why they're basically moving into the place that has been supposedly uninhabited for years, possibly decades. Peter then brings in their lawyer Roman, a guy who absolutely looks, sounds, and dresses like a human trafficker, presenting Sasha with a bunch of paperwork all in Russian that she can't read and is being pushed into signing so she can acquire the building.
Sensibly, she refuses to sign for now, asking for a translated copy of the papers. For some reason this becomes a major hassle that requires Peter to leave for days at a time, leaving Sasha to roam the apartment building hearing shouting and thumping and screaming each night. All the while there are a bunch of nondescript men dressed like Russian mobsters standing outside the house all hours of the day every day doing nothing.
Virtually nothing happens for huge portions of the film save for the constant noises and musical stings that lead up to nothing. There's no jump scares, not even any slow burning or creepy moments. Sasha is just wandering around the apartment, hearing noises, and that's it.
At one point she finds a book that supposedly belonged to her grandmother, and she starts piecing together a story of what actually happened with her grandparents and their servant girl before they moved to America. Along the way, everyone she is encountering is almost cartoonishly menacing, devious, or out-right threatening her and she seems completely unfazed by any of it.
At one point the greasy leather-jacket wearing lawyer Roman basically threatens her to sign it, saying something like "you're going to find out sooner or later" what's going on in the place, and when she latches onto that he's like "relax, it's nothing". Multiple characters basically say this or something similar to it to her at various times, and she is completely blissfully unfazed by any of it.
About the only rational and reasonable thing she does is refuse to sign when Roman and Peter act cartoonishly devious and suspicious around her, although there is no reason for her not to sign it. There's no reason for her to even be there in Ukraine, completely alone most of the time, not able to speak Ukrainian or Russian, and wandering around with menacing looking Ukrainians glaring at her in multiple locations while she just wanders around aimlessly.
So much of the film is just this that by the time anything actually starts to progress with the main plot, I had gotten so bored I tuned out what was happening. The ending was long overdue despite making absolutely no sense.
They then proceed into an apartment building inherited from Sasha's grandmother. No idea why they're basically moving into the place that has been supposedly uninhabited for years, possibly decades. Peter then brings in their lawyer Roman, a guy who absolutely looks, sounds, and dresses like a human trafficker, presenting Sasha with a bunch of paperwork all in Russian that she can't read and is being pushed into signing so she can acquire the building.
Sensibly, she refuses to sign for now, asking for a translated copy of the papers. For some reason this becomes a major hassle that requires Peter to leave for days at a time, leaving Sasha to roam the apartment building hearing shouting and thumping and screaming each night. All the while there are a bunch of nondescript men dressed like Russian mobsters standing outside the house all hours of the day every day doing nothing.
Virtually nothing happens for huge portions of the film save for the constant noises and musical stings that lead up to nothing. There's no jump scares, not even any slow burning or creepy moments. Sasha is just wandering around the apartment, hearing noises, and that's it.
At one point she finds a book that supposedly belonged to her grandmother, and she starts piecing together a story of what actually happened with her grandparents and their servant girl before they moved to America. Along the way, everyone she is encountering is almost cartoonishly menacing, devious, or out-right threatening her and she seems completely unfazed by any of it.
At one point the greasy leather-jacket wearing lawyer Roman basically threatens her to sign it, saying something like "you're going to find out sooner or later" what's going on in the place, and when she latches onto that he's like "relax, it's nothing". Multiple characters basically say this or something similar to it to her at various times, and she is completely blissfully unfazed by any of it.
About the only rational and reasonable thing she does is refuse to sign when Roman and Peter act cartoonishly devious and suspicious around her, although there is no reason for her not to sign it. There's no reason for her to even be there in Ukraine, completely alone most of the time, not able to speak Ukrainian or Russian, and wandering around with menacing looking Ukrainians glaring at her in multiple locations while she just wanders around aimlessly.
So much of the film is just this that by the time anything actually starts to progress with the main plot, I had gotten so bored I tuned out what was happening. The ending was long overdue despite making absolutely no sense.