So I want to begin by saying I have no idea what the hype is about this movie. Before I watched it I expected something amazing due to all the 9/10 type reviews on here. Let me tell you I was SADLY disappointed. It is a very interesting slow paced thriller, I will give it that, but man did the ending blow. The whole movie had me intrigued and expecting the slow wait to pay off. No. No it did not in the slightest pay off. It leaves you questioning why you even sat through the whole thing. As a fan of slow paced movies, typically that is all gearing up for some great or at least decent ending. I'm sorry to say this is not a film worth watching.

Callie (Katie Parker) and Tricia (Courtney Bell) are sisters. Callie is a former drug addict who has traveled quite a bit. She can spout off about "dark matter" and "tangential universes." Tricia's husband Daniel(Morgan Peter Brown) has been missing for seven years. She is having him declared dead in absentia. She is also pregnant (do the math) and odds on favorite the kid will be as bald as Detective Mallory (Dave Levine) the man investigating the case.Callie comes to visit her sister as the fateful day of declaring Daniel dead has arrived. She will help her sister move on. Callie likes to jog and when she does, she passes under a tunnel located under the highway. As she does, odd things start to happen. Like a good horror/mystery/thriller it starts out slow and builds up.There are a few negatives on this film, first and foremost was the soundtrack. It was second tier all the way, especially during those sad scenes which ran way too long. There were a number of times I thought Courtney Bell forgot what role she was playing. And the third thing was the boom mike visible in the upper right hand corner in a midway scene that involves Callie walking into the bathroom. While the actual image on the DVD cover did not appear in this feature it was thematically correct.Since the DVD box didn't say anything more about the plot, I won't spoil it because it is worth a view. If you enjoy odd missing persons films, you might like, "Yellow Brick Road" which I though was superior to this story.F-bombs, no sex or nudity.

I'm sorry but I can not wrap my head around it that there are people out there who actually enjoyed this movie. I have watched a lot of horror movies and have encountered quite some bad ones and this is one of the worst I've seen. The extremely annoying music with the bad acting and god awful story line mix together to make one of the most boring horror movies out there. Two sisters near a tunnel where people are going missing, mixed with awful camera work... There's not much more you need to know about this. If you in any way value your time, do yourself a favor and avoid this movie. If I could give a negative rating, I would.

Written and directed by Mike Flanagan, Absentia finds Tricia (Courtney Bell) and Callie (Katie Parker) as two sisters who come to believe that the underpass nearby could be linked to the many disappearances in the area.A slow burn indie horror is not everybody's idea of a good time, but Flanagan has crafted a smart atmospheric chiller, one with a nifty fairy tale fantasy bubbling away under the surface. Narratively it's low-key, though the air of grief and terror is palpable. The setting is a low rent area of Los Angeles, a place where the girls are told to always keep the doors locked, with the ominous underpass haunting the edges of every other frame.Flanagan filters his story through the urban locale while populating it with characters who are haunted by something unseen, or by others who are troubled by personal issues (Tricia's husband disappeared 7 years ago and Callie is fighting a needle habit). The formula scares are kept to a minimum, Flanagan choosing to imbue the story with a sense of dread, toying with the sisters and us the viewers that there just may be something truly awful lurking just out of the eye line.This is not a creature feature, like The Relic or Mimic, this is a different horror film to those. The horrors are born out of what you don't see, or what you barely glimpse, just like the classic horrors of yesteryear, with Flanagan cheekily dangling ambiguity into the bargain. It's unnerving and sad, creepy yet cunning, and a refreshing experience for those tired of big effects driven horror movies. If you like the slow burn less is more approach, with well written human drama in the bargain? Then give this a chance. 8/10