You Should Have Left Movie Review

You Should Have Left is a 2020 horror/thriller movie directed by David Koepp and starring Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried.

The movie begins with a man called Theo(Bacon). He is married to a younger woman called Susie(Seyfried). She is an actress and he was a banker. They have a daughter called Ella. Theo wants them to go for a holiday so they book a house in rural Wales. When they reach the house, it is huge.
It is also out in the middle on nowhere. Lights go on an off by themselves. Ella sees a strange shadow on the wall. We learn that Theo was married before. His wife drowned in the bath. He was accused of her murder and it has caused him a lot of anger issues. Theo goes to the local grocer and he asks him about the house. It is relatively new, but the grocer tells him that there was another house there previously. He seems to know something about it. He gives Theo a triangle to measure the angles inside the house. Theo is amused.

Theo writes all of his thoughts in a journal. When he goes to open it, he sees that someone has written 'you should leave' in it. He wanders around and finds loads of corridors in it. Someone is taking polaroids of him. It turns out to be a bad dream. He decides that they should leave the place. He finds out that Susie has been cheating on him. He tells her to leave for the night and they will talk in the morning. He looks in his journal and finds the words ' you should have left. Now it's too late'. Theo  loses Ella in the house. He runs around looking for her. He eventually discovers her and he tells her that they have to leave the house. They are going to walk. He calls the grocer and asks him for help, but he doesn't help.

Theo and Ella walk through the countryside looking for some help. They end up walking right back to the house again. It looks as if someone is in there. They have to go back into the house again.
Theo sees his dead wife and then he sees himself. Something is happening to time and he sees himself as he was when they first arrived. He talks to a version of himself and things get weird. The next day, Susie shows up and he tells her to take Ella with her and he tells her that he has to stay in the house. He admits that he knew that his wife was drowning and he did nothing to help her so he was responsible for her death. He has to stay in the house as punishment for what he did. They leave and he goes back inside. The movie ends with the house being advertised on the internet.

This film was not very good. It was supposed to be a horror movie, but there were very few scares in it. I thought that it was more like a thriller but even so, the film was light on suspense. I thought that the story could have been so much better and the ending just fell flat for me. I was expecting some big reveal, but nothing good happened. I like Kevin Bacon, but this film was not good and even he couldn't make it better. I usually enjoy haunted house movies, but this wasn't really one of those either. The house was some sort of purgatory or something and I thought that Theo was paying for his past sin by having to stay in the house. That's what I took from it.  Anyway, I felt that this was a poor offering so it is getting a 4/10.