"Lyle" tells the story of a middle-aged lesbian couple that moves to a new apartment with their young daughter Lyle. When Lyle becomes the victim of a terrible accident, it soon becomes questionable if all just happened out of hazard or there's a more sinister plan behind it. Who can be trust anymore? The movie is of high production value for an independent film. I didn't feel so excited about the first half of the film but I have to say that the pace picked up and the tension started to rise in the second one. In my opinion, some of the mysteries could have been extended as they happen to come a bit out of the blue, the movie is rather short, so that wouldn't have been much of a problem. Nevertheless it is a film that keeps you guessing until the very end and at a certain point you can well adopt to the otherwise rather traumatized character.All in all this is one of the better independent movies within the genre. There is still some potential for improvement but especially the second half of the film is highly entertaining and will keep you caught in front of the screen.

First of all, this film has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes which is basically unheard of and should tell you something. Also, if you read any of my reviews I live for indie horror films and I can be brutal in reviewing them but when I love something I get really excited. This is a movie to get excited about. Gaby Hoffman is so terrific and real and raw and crazy you can't take your eyes off of her. Is it like Rosemary's Baby? Sure, yes, but it's also different. And let's face it, every story is just a retelling of a story that came before it, and that's that. Nothing can be original anymore. But if they had done this film wrong, that would have been a shame. Instead this movie is wholly satisfying and entertaining.

LYLE is a well shot time waster seemingly filmed on a micro budget in a single apartment in New York. The story is about a woman traumatised by the accidental death of her child, a trauma which leads her to become paranoid and withdrawn, convinced that her neighbours are out to get her. When she falls pregnant, events begin to spiral out of control.If this all sounds a bit like ROSEMARY'S BABY then that's because it is very much a copy of the Polanski film, however it's a weak imitation at best. This is an indie film with nothing in the way of production values and no incident in the plot either. The main actress is pretty effective but that's not really enough to hold the viewer's attention for an hour or so. The realistic filming style is pretty decent and adds a level of dull realism to the production, but the cop out ending reinforces the impression that this is a waste of time.

...that's not enough to necessarily prompt a recommendation, if that makes any sense. Gaby "Field of Dreams" Hoffman, portrays her protagonist role with reasonable credibility, but truthfully she's still a pale shadow compared to obvious predecessors like Mia "Rosemary's Baby" Farrow and Lee "The Omen" Remick. The rest of the cast doesn't register terribly well, either, and I'll not comment further about that on the basis of discretion being the better part of criticism.No, as is almost always the case, "Lyle"'s problems boil down to the script, in this instance by its tyro director. The plot is little more than a secularized retelling of the above-mentioned films cloaked in a meaningless lesbian domesticity, involving characters so sparsely sketched as to be virtual ciphers, mere placeholders. In short, there's little to make us care about them, to draw us into Leah's increasingly paranoiac situation. We've seen all this before, and "Lyle" offers nothing new to entertain us, or frighten us, or illuminate us in any way. An extra twenty minutes of backstory and/or character development might have helped; I really don't know. Conversely, twenty minutes trimmed might have produced a tighter, tauter story with some genuine tension, tension that "Lyle" lacks almost completely.I have to look at this one as a vanity project, a learning exercise that never really shook off its developmental shackles and fully breathed, a premature birth, perhaps, in service to some greater, yet frustratingly ambiguous goal.Unless you're a fan of one of the actors or the production crew, "Lyle" is regrettably dispensable.