As good as the book should have been.

Rating: 8/10 (19 May 2019)

It's hard to put into words why this is just a swellerific feature.
I don't want to sound snooty but a lot of this genre can seem a bit lacklustre. But this movie just seems to be made of some kind of golden stuff. Every moment oozes atmosphere, even when they're just chatting.
Maybe its the lurid color of the semi-bourgeois inner city and reserved but decisive approach to camera work. It can seem a bit campy and grand guignel (I think I'm using that right) but that only helps its attempt to through you into a strange new world almost like our own.
Dread builds and is intensified with a constant feeling of understatement and denial. Apparently the book is a lot more subtle but I felt that the approach in revealing the narrative was impeccable as the hidden darkness among the seemingly normal emerges.
Vivid.
Just an update: I read a review in Halliwell's that this movie is "Good in a Heavy Handed way, the book being a lot more subtle". Well, it's not actually that subtle, the movie I think is the better made even if it is sort of apples and oranges.