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Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl

Remember THE GIRL WHO LIVED DOWN THE LANE? How about LET’S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH? Ok, what about RACE WITH THE DEVIL? Still nothing? Well, there’s a boatload of gems waiting to be seen and there’s three for starters. What these films have in common is their delivery to show great storytelling in a subtle manner. Writing that comes first and delivers great character to leave an everlasting scar as the final moments remind you why it was deemed a horror film in the first place.

 

This is an era A. D. Calvo has attempted to recreate with SWEET, SWEET LONELY GIRL and then the pacing to a snail crawl to focus on it’s central character with a shock finale.

 

When Adele (Erin Wilhelmi) begins to take care for her reclusive sick aunt, here lonely role as carer begins to take its toll. That is until she meets vivacious Beth (Quinn Shephard who we certainly hope to see more of after her performance here). From then on, she starts to come out of her shell and as she gets closer and closer to Beth, her aunt becomes as abandoned as the house in which she resides. There’s little in the 76-minute runtime that denotes this as a horror film but the turn of events certainly gets under the skin and with the keen detail behind Adele’s character development at the centre of this film the after effects are all the more poignant.

 

SWEET, SWEET LONELY GIRL is a throwback to 60’s and 70’s era cinema where the emphasis was more on great storytelling than special effects. Nothing tells this more than the film’s request for patience leading to the final ten minutes of actual horror. For anyone wanting an eerie or spooky affair throughout are best kept away from this but if you do have patience, and a love for a more basic method of storytelling then SWEET, SWEET LONELY GIRL would suit a void.

 

This film won’t appeal to everyone and will alienate anyone seeking a traditional horror film, even with the character building that is at play here, it’s really hard to explain what happens in the first hour in anything longer than a sentence, while the film is one of the shortest genre films of recent months, it still feels like it should have been cut shorter with literally little more than a relationship blossoming in 60 of the 76 minutes on offer.

 

Director A. D. Calvo is relatively unknown on these shores but the Argentinian director harks back to an eerie story that blends Ti West’s THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL with HAMMER HORROR letting the natural drama unfold into something that clicks right at the very end. Doing well to capture an effective reminisce to the 70’s from costume to storytelling.

Director: A. D. Calvo

Released: 4th May 2017

Running Time: 76 minutes

Age Rating: 15

 

Reviewer: Martyn Wakefield

RATING


Plot: 3
Fear: 2
Gore: 1


R3/5​

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