The Suppression of Hannah Stevenson

After deciding to explore the city, a couple on a holiday together want to try spicing up their relationship with advice from several locals, but when she appears to come under the spell of a strange entity following their encounter, he sets out to find her and restore her back to normal. This was a solid enough if flawed effort. Among the better features here comes from the fine setups that take place to signal her as someone to be targeted. Starting off with their relationship as it does with their journey around the city while traveling that alerts those around them to her beauty and innocence that will be perverted and exploited is a fine way to go here. As her issues become even more pronounced that serves to enhance her sympathy even further, the suddenness of her possession and descent from her normal self to the feral and demonic version that's featured in the finale that has a lot of twists and turns for a lot to like about it. However, there are some big issues here that hold this one down. One of the main factors here comes from the generally lame pacing that leaves this one dull and quite bland for long portions of time. As the first half here focuses on the buildup of her shyness impacting what's happening to them, hardly any of these events generate any kind of thrills or genre feel which takes a lot of energy out of the film with a lame first half. It also manages the same general tone throughout the second half where it again keeps the genuine thrills to a negative factor due to having no overt threat to what's going on. That, as well, is the other big issue here where the film never really knows what it wants to be. The actual setup and storyline here play out in a fashion that indicates everything going on as a supernatural curse inflicted to take control of her, but the end result makes far less sense with the outcome appearing as if the whole experience was the result of an unexpected reaction to a topical remedy. Despite looking and behaving as if there's a demonic entity controlling her, instead, this seems to be reversed by herbal medicine and everything is the status quo which is quite alarming and could be highly unsatisfying. These factors are what brings this one down. Rated Unrated/R: Violence and Language.

After deciding to explore the city, a couple on a holiday together want to try spicing up their relationship with advice from several locals, but when she appears to come under the spell of a strange entity following their encounter, he sets out to find her and restore her back to normal. This was a solid enough if flawed effort. Among the better features here comes from the fine setups that take place to signal her as someone to be targeted. Starting off with their relationship as it does with their journey around the city while traveling that alerts those around them to her beauty and innocence that will be perverted and exploited is a fine way to go here. As her issues become even more pronounced that serves to enhance her sympathy even further, the suddenness of her possession and descent from her normal self to the feral and demonic version that's featured in the finale that has a lot of twists and turns for a lot to like about it. However, there are some big issues here that hold this one down. One of the main factors here comes from the generally lame pacing that leaves this one dull and quite bland for long portions of time. As the first half here focuses on the buildup of her shyness impacting what's happening to them, hardly any of these events generate any kind of thrills or genre feel which takes a lot of energy out of the film with a lame first half. It also manages the same general tone throughout the second half where it again keeps the genuine thrills to a negative factor due to having no overt threat to what's going on. That, as well, is the other big issue here where the film never really knows what it wants to be. The actual setup and storyline here play out in a fashion that indicates everything going on as a supernatural curse inflicted to take control of her, but the end result makes far less sense with the outcome appearing as if the whole experience was the result of an unexpected reaction to a topical remedy. Despite looking and behaving as if there's a demonic entity controlling her, instead, this seems to be reversed by herbal medicine and everything is the status quo which is quite alarming and could be highly unsatisfying. These factors are what brings this one down. Rated Unrated/R: Violence and Language.