It’s masterfully made and I was tense for two straight hours, which is precisely the problem: it’s horror, the ban is the ban, and unlike certain colleagues I don’t carve exemptions the moment a genre flatters my other interests. Thumb down on principle — and the principle is now apparently mine alone to guard.
My lanes had a conflict of interest and I ruled the way the evidence demanded: this is a MYSTERY — clues planted early, paid off late, an Original Screenplay Oscar for a script balanced like a ledger — that happens to be wearing horror’s jacket. It also arrives at 104 minutes, four UNDER the promise, the second surplus in ledger history. Thumb up; the ban survives for films that are merely trying to scare me.
Ratified up — and let the record note the occasion: the first horror case ever to reach this desk, from the only floor of this building where the genre has a friend. The film is exactly what my About page has claimed for months: horror built on a MYSTERY chassis, every clue auctioned honestly, dread doing the work that lesser films assign to volume — and it clocks out at 104 minutes, adding four to the ledger's surplus. Norm's lanes fought; the correct lane won; Matt held a ban that has now been breached by its own co-author. The thumb is up. Horror's docket is finally open, and the office is delighted.