January's Misery
Whilst living in South America January (Amy Manson) and her boyfriend Callum (Simon Quarterman) are involved in a road accident which leaves January not only temporarily stuck in a wheelchair but suffering from amnesia. It leads to Callum and January returning home to discover that January's family live in a stately home and 6 years earlier she had runaway. With her father (James Cosmo) trying to pay Callum to leave and never come back whilst her brother and sister seem determined to control her, January and Callum try to discover what it was which led her to runaway.
Do you find horror movies which slowly build up the storyline as tense and exciting or do you find their slow nature causing a sense of over whelming tedium. If you are in the second group then I suggest that "Estranged" is not for you as this is a movie which is in no rush what so ever to get things going and seems like it is constantly dragging things out, hoping to make every second a tense experience. And the trouble with it being slow going is that as soon as we return to the stately home and meet the curious collection of characters who say they are January's family we get a sense that things are clearly not as they seem.
And that is actually annoying because the actual storyline to "Estranged" is pretty decent with the revelations coming nicely through out the movie to create a genuine sense of intrigue and darkness to the going on in the grand home. In fact the acting from the main characters is also of a high enough standard to carry the movie's dark, unsettling nature. But because for me the pacing is too slow it continuously made a tense scene feel like it was dragging on and trying too hard to be tense in every single scene.
What this all boils down to is that "Estranged" could have been a really good horror movie but ends up one which ends up spoilt by the deliberately drawn out pacing.
