Kristen (2015)★★★☆☆

Well, hello 2024! I’m excited to be back with this blog, and excited to be starting with a New Year’s Day film from the Netherlands.

I was all in on this movie at first. I watched it alone in the dark, late at night on a cold winter night. (Maybe a little too tired for an English subtitled film, but I made it through!)

And it starts out great! It does do that “mid-story flashback as opening scene,” but I’ll forgive this one. The atmosphere is creepy, the actress who plays Kristen is sympathetic and believable, and there’s a healthy sense of dread built up nice and early.

…and then things get weird. (Spoilers ahead)

There’s a point at which it becomes clear something supernatural is going on. Which, great, supernatural horror intruder film, I can get behind that. But then it turns from supernatural to…religious? And they throw in a single, awkward jump scare just before they go full on Old Testament for a bit.

Look, I should have been prepared. Kristen turns on the TV to a religious sermon she can’t shut off, there’s a very early, very weird implication of Kristen having had an abortion when she was younger, and it wasn’t like the movie was making “sense” plot-wise from the start, but I was still thrown and just couldn’t rate this higher than three stars.

I will say, though, the moment Christine says Iwan’s name… whoo, that got to me, like it hit me immediately – and Kristen’s slightly slower dawning realization was so perfectly acted!

I think this movie is probably worth watching if you really like creepy intruder/survival horror, just be cautioned that there aren’t really any satisfying answers… and there is some weird religious stuff.