After watching Damian Mc Carthy’s Oddity, and absolutely enjoying it, I knew I had to check out their first film Caveat. Because if I was so locked into Oddity, I wanted to experience that kind of feeling once again through this director’s lens. And Caveat, lived up to the hype. It was just as tragic and disorienting as Oddity. And instead of being an upfront murder mystery, it felt like it had some of the isolating and unsettling elements that we’ve come to know from the Saw franchise. The difference is that all of this takes place on an island, with only a handful of characters driving the story forward.
In Caveat we meet Isaac played by Johnny French. He was also in Oddity and played the character Declan. In Caveat he’s a lone drifter suffering from partial memory loss. He accepts a job to babysit a troubled woman in an abandoned house on an isolated island. But if you hadn’t read the synopsis, you don’t get that he has partial memory loss. And due to that fact, this murder mystery unfolds in an unpredictable but intelligent way where all the pieces make sense when it comes to Isaac. He knows that there is something wrong in that house and he does everything he can to escape while piecing together how he fits into this puzzle and how to get that harness off.
The bunnies and tragedy of it all…
At the center of the story is also the creepy bunny with a little drum set. That bunny appeared in the trailer for Oddity. In Caveat, it works as a sort of signal that the malevolent spirit in the house is approaching. And I think that the movie did well in identifying who the malicious spirit was in the very beginning. Because even then, that spirit wasn’t the most dangerous thing in the story. Like its counterpart, man is the most dangerous beast. Moe, played by Ben Caplan, is the nightmare. He’s the one who hired Isaac to help kill his brother, threw him off a balcony after sneaking into his apartment, and who had taken part in keeping what happened to Olga’s mother a secret.
As much as I think Isaac is a tragic character, not remembering what he did, he still did it. So Olga, the daughter that has been left behind in this creepy house, she’s just as much of a victim in all of this. Played by Leila Sykes, I definitely felt conflicted when she came for Isaac. She did it in a way that I haven’t experienced as much in horror. In Hollywood films, scares are all about making noise and big emotions. Olga is reserved in her violence. Almost bored but also vengeful and scared. Ultimately, you just want to know more about her. And the film pulls you back and forth between Isaac and herself as to who you want to survive.
Oddity and Caveat really are sister movies…
Caveat is just as stylish as Oddity. Both took the time to hold on to scenes and the characters within them. There wasn’t continuous jump-scare after jump-scare. They trusted their audience to piece things together as everything descended into madness. And then the one time they did do a jump-scare, Olga’s mother in the wall, it was so unexpected and part of the build-up, that I feel like my soul left my body. This is coming from someone who does not get scared easily. But Caveat had me wrapping a blanket around myself because of the way that it managed to put me under its spell with its gripping storytelling.
The end manages to be as satisfying as its companion movie. The tragic characters come to a place that feels like they’re on the cusp of a new adventure. For Isaac, he’s faced his past and has a new four-legged friend to keep him company. As for Olga, that ending felt like she was being given a choice. Either stay in this house or walk out with Isaac, never to see it again. Usually I hate ambiguous / open-ended kinds of movies. But the way that the story was structured and delivered in this film, there is finality to this leg of their journey. And whatever they do from here on out will be a completely different story than what they faced in Caveat.
We need more of this type of horror…
So thank you to every single comment underneath the trailer for Oddity that said that people should watch Caveat. It was just as good as Oddity and proof that horror hasn’t stagnated. Hollywood might have. But the horror genre itself, it’s rich with talented writers and directors who know how to create a story that makes you feel for the characters while also being utterly terrified.
Watch the trailer below:
Caveat is available to rent/buy on streaming.
What’s funny is that I watched Caveat the day after watching Oddity but didn’t even know it was the same director. Without giving anything away, I loved the first and second act of Caveat. But, man, they missed a golden opportunity to bring back the rabbit but it’s like they forgot he was there. It was so prominent in the beginning.
4/5 stars, though. Highly recommended.
I don’t think that Isaac killed the father. He went to the house and started writing a note to warn him. He finds the father already locked in the basement. I believe that the mother’s spirit did it. Later, she helped Isaac to escape because she only intended to hurt the people who had murdered her (father & uncle).