Bereavement (2010)★★★★☆

I like this one, but I don’t really have a good reason to. The story is interesting (if a bit convoluted and contrived) but that’s about all this really has going for it.

The pacing is all over the place – at times things feel busy and hectic and the action happens at a mile a minute, while at others the film seems to drag on endlessly while the characters prattle on about one thing or another.

The acting is flat basically across the board. I love Michael Biehn, but this wasn’t a shining role for him and there wasn’t enough character development for me to get too attached. Without spoiling too much of this movie, I’ll just say it’s another film where he seems to be a mostly decent guy stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I also like Alexandra Daddario normally, but I felt like she was bored the whole time she was filming this. I thought at first she was trying to play the character as aloof – until I swear I caught her sleeping during the scenes where her character Allison describes her world being torn apart by the car accident that killed her parents.

The ending is decent though and there’s some good payoff to the tension that does (eventually) build up throughout. I find that I like this movie an above-average amount despite its components being average themselves (at best).