You Should Have Left (2020)
Directed by David Koepp
In an effort to repair their relationship, a couple books a vacation in the countryside for themselves and their daughter. What starts as a perfect retreat begins to fall apart as one loses their grip on reality, and a sinister force tries to tear them apart.
6 connections found
View:
6 films that influenced You Should Have Left
What critics say influenced You Should Have Left
The notion of an already damaged man being further tormented by strange happenings in a mysterious locale is intended to remind you of The Shining, and that’s probably why the protagonist’ occupation was changed from “screenwriter trying to write a sequel to his previous success” to “retired banker.”
Set almost exclusively inside a spooky Welsh mansion rented by a rich banker with a troubled past (Kevin Bacon) and his younger-by-decades actress wife (Amanda Seyfried), Koepp’s adaptation of Daniel Kehlmann’s early-aughts novella is composed of many tiny pieces of other, better genre efforts: a dash of Robert Zemeckis’s What Lies Beneath, a helping of Mark Z. Danielewski’s cult novel House of Leaves, more than a bit of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and even a healthy dose of Koepp’s own 1999 Kevin Bacon vehicle, Stir of Echoes.
To be fair, inconsistent geography is a trick that The Shining employed to great subconscious effect, but it’s the unsettling feeling it silently provided, not someone explaining the architectural inconsistencies outright, that made it work.
Certainly not as busy or special effects-laden as the likes of The Amityville Horror or Poltergeist and their various sequels and reboots, this one written and directed by veteran David Koepp is more cerebral and likely to be compared to The Shining more than anything else.
You Should Have Left often feels like a watered-down version of The Shining, but Koepp still manages to maintain interest in its mind-bending story.
The reunion of writer/director David Koepp and his "Stir of Echoes" star Kevin Bacon is an adaptation of a German novella by Daniel Kehlmann that plays up connections to “The Shining” and shades them mid century modern.
The third act itself is also reminiscent of other media like the novel House of Leaves and the 2009 horror-thriller Triangle , but these fan favorites handle their similarities better than this film can even consider attempting.
Best known for his script work on excellent movies such as Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, and Panic Room, I was hoping that this latest film of his, which he also directed, would be a return to form for him after the less than stellar Tom Cruise-lead The Mummy film back in 2017.
But veteran screenwriter and director David Koepp ( The Mummy , Mortdecai ) uses so many tired tropes of the Blumhouse genre — skittering shadows, warped lenses, sudden levitations — that he might as well be mining another movie he made with Bacon over 20 years ago, 1999’s Stir of Echoes .
Half a decade since his critical failure Mortdecai and only a few more years since his highly criticized The Mummy script, Koepp is handling double duty as director and writer here.
Think of the latter day love you see for Nicolas Cage in Mandy or Jeff Goldblum in a Disney+ TV show simply about him “Goldblum-ing” around the world.
Advertisement
No, this house doesn’t sport outwardly, dastardly appearances like in “The Haunting” (1963) or “Crimson Peak” (2015).
Apples and oranges, but the two films that came to mind were The Wolfman (a horror film which took its time to develop its characters but failed to build interest in them) and Crimson Peak (where I spent the film feeling terribly sorry for Mia Wasikowska hoodwinked bride).
Maybe it’s just bad timing and a coincidence, but You Should Have Left almost wants to capitalize on the luxurious house from 2019’s Best Picture Oscar-winner, Parasite , while colliding with the uncertainty and the head games from The Lodge .