You Should Have Left (2/5 Stars)

“You Should Have Left” is one of those ninety-minute movies that are about sixty minutes too long. Given the information that is conveyed on the screen, the movie could have efficiently structured as an episode of the Twilight Zone, which run about thirty minutes long. It stars Kevin Bacon as an ex-banker, Amanda Seyfried, his young wife and actress, and a daughter. I could not figure whether the daughter was Kevin Bacon’s child from a previous marriage, Amanda Seyfried’s daughter from a previous marriage, or their own child from the present marriage. It is very hard to tell, but it also does not matter.

In the first twenty minutes of the movie, the plot hints at a secret from Kevin Bacon’s past. I do not know why it hints at this secret, because the movie does not do anything else with its time except make lame off-plot attempts at humor. So, the audience kind of just waits around for the movie to come out and tell the secret for no reason. The movie could have started at the twenty-minute mark and no one would have been the wiser.

This is a haunted house horror movie. The family Bacon go on vacation at a mansion in the Welsh countryside. After a day, the house starts presenting weird omens and doing horrific things. However, how the house works is never explained. It just does what it wants when it wants to do it. The movie bordered on interesting for a moment when Kevin and his daughter measured a room in the house as twenty-five feet and then went outside the house and measured the same room as twenty feet. Why is there an extra five feet? The movie does not say. It is a magic house.

It is easy to be manipulated by a magic house because there are no rules. Any defeats or victories are completely arbitrary. Thus, Kevin Bacon never stands a chance and there is no suspense. Is it a metaphor? I think such an analysis would be giving this movie too much credit. Why should I put more thought into this than the creator?

The creator is Writer/Director David Koepp. Looking at this guy’s resume, I was kind of blown away. He has worked at a high profile in this industry for decades. Koepp is the screenwriter of Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man, and War of the Worlds. He also wrote for and directed Kevin Bacon in “Stir of Echoes”, a much better psychological thriller. What he felt he needed to make this movie is anybody’s guess. It does explain how the movie got made in the first place. If any new movie director had pitched this to a producer, there would have been no way it would have been picked up. No one is asking for a horror movie that is solely concerned with the conscience of an aging white male ex-banker. No other character in this movie, the few characters that there are, is developed in any appreciable manner. I think they got that Welsh guy from the store to do the movie’s ending voiceover which helpfully explained the moral of the story in case you were an idiot and/or fallen asleep half way through.

Why is this movie $19.99 to rent? It is a new feature but it is not playing in a movie theater, which would, at the most, charge $17.50. Plenty of smaller movie theaters charge less. There is no theater to pay upkeep for and no theater employees to pay. Why is it more expensive than a movie theater ticket? The experience is less in many obvious ways. My TV screen is smaller, I have more distractions in the room, I don’t have the ability to purchase a wide range of concessions, drinks, and food as I do at Nitehawk, Alamo Drafthouse, or Syndicated. I feel like I got ripped off by this Bacon banker guy.