Caveat

Directed by Damian McCarthy, Caveat follows a drifter (Johnny French’s Isaac) as he’s hired to watch over a young woman (Leila Sykes’ Olga) living alone within a large, creepy estate. Filmmaker McCarthy, armed with his own screenplay, delivers an exceptionally (and often unreasonably) deliberate endeavor that benefits from its foreboding atmosphere and compelling mystery, with, in terms of the latter, the narrative’s puzzle-like bent proving effective at sustaining the viewer’s attention through the movie’s more egregiously slow sections. And while McCarthy’s recurring emphasis on long, drawn-out sequences where nothing much of interest seems to occur (eg Isaac goes exploring in the dark one time too many, perhaps) is problematic, to say the least, Caveat admittedly does build towards a satisfying closing stretch that ensures the whole thing ends on a positive note – with the end result a decent debut that surely would’ve worked better as a short (ie even 88 minutes is way, way too long for this material).

**1/2 out of ****