Let Her Out (2016)

Let Her Out follows Helen, a bike courier who suffers a traumatic accident. As she recovers, she begins to experience strange episodic-black outs, hallucinations, and night terrors-that lead her to discover that she has a tumor, a benign growth that is the remnants of a "vanishing twin" absorbed in utero. Over time, the tumor manifests itself as the dark and demented version of a stranger. As Helen's emotional and psychological state begins to deteriorate further and further, she begins to act out in psychotic episodes that are influenced by her evil twin - making her a danger to herself and her best friend, Molly.

Review

Writer and director, Cody Calahan (Antisocial), almost had something here. Let Her Out is a well made film. It has some great ideas. There really is something there. But the film also has issues. Calahan's vision is solid, if not done before, with a protagonist who has a twin absorbed into their body before it trying to take control later in life. The Dark Half, anyone? Either way, story wise it's good, and Calahan's direction is excellent.

There is some decent horror in the proceedings, too. Scenes of the unexplained, and some more thoughtful film making gives the film an edge over a lot of recent Hollywood output. It's pondering, and slow enough to make you think. The problem with that comes when you start to think too much, but we'll get to that.

Onscreen is Alanna LeVierge (debut feature) and Nina Kiri (I Am Vengeance). Kiri is pretty good as best friend Molly, but LeVierge struggles with shouldering the bulk of the heavy lifting in the film. But it's serviceable.

The problems from the film come in the logic leaps, or unexplained plot points. It's as if pages were torn from the script - or more likely scenes trimmed to suit a run time - and no one cared enough to watch the film after to see if it still made sense. Helen courier's a package to an apartment and lets herself in when delivering it. Who is this guy? Did she just break in? What? Helen hangs out at and seems to have a key to the motel room she was conceived in. Why? How? She has a painting that haunts her. Why doesn't she burn it?

Overall it's a pretty film with some good ideas. It's not overly scary, but it's not really that sort of
horror film. I do feel that too much was left on the cutting room floor for it to make sense.

At least I hope that was what happened. If not, Calahan needs to get someone to beta-read his scripts.