Every review or synopsis of Requiem (tiff | imdb) that I’ve read has compared it to last year’s The Exorcism Of Emily Rose. This one will be no different. To put it simply, this is what Emily Rose could have been if it wasn’t stock Hollywood fare.

Because we’re preconditioned to expect the same schlocky tactics in every horror film, I spent the first half hour completely tense, waiting for a demonic face to appear in a closing bathroom mirror or a hand to grab an ankle from under a bed. After a while I realized it just wasn’t going to happen. Instead, director Hans-Christian Schmid built this creeping, lurking fear that this poor girl, who we got to know and wished the best for, was going to be ripped from the burgeoning life she’d only just begun to reclaim from her parents. The afflictions that eventually catch up with her manifest in (again) un-Hollywood ways, such that we’re never sure what’s wreaking havoc on her. No melting faces or speaking in tongues here, only behaviour that could be explained by possession, psychosis or stress, depending on what you want to believe.

[tags]tiff, toronto international film festival, requiem[/tags]