Mark Reviews Movies: REUNION (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 4, 2021

The climactic payoff of Reunion, which dives into an entirely different genre than everything that has come before it, doesn't match the puzzling intensity of this story's ruminations on guilt, memory, and a particularly dysfunctional family. Then again, considering how much of this story is seen through the eyes and memories of an unreliable protagonist, maybe it does fit here.

How many layers of lies and false recollections and uncertain visions can a movie stand? Writer/director Jake Mahaffy certainly walks up to that line, and perhaps it's better if we're not entirely certain if he crosses it with the film's final act.

What we get before that point, though, is a creepy and tricky little story. Simply, it's about a woman and her overbearing mother, although that description is just the start of what kind of person the mother is and relationship this turns out to be.

Ellie (Emma Draper), pregnant and recently separated from an abusive partner, returns to her family home to finish writing a book about black magic. She was expecting peace and quiet, but instead, her mother Ivy (Julia Ormond) and nearly catatonic father (played by John Bach) are there.

Mom is having the house refurbished—by Ellie's ex-boyfriend (played by Cohen Holloway), no less—before selling the place. Ellie is equally frustrated by the noise and the unexpected presence of her mother.

There isn't much of a plot, because Mahaffy instead takes us on a tour of the history of this family—specifically the rough bond between mother and daughter, a half-sister (played by Ava Keane) whose ghost or memory haunts Ellie, and a tragedy in Ellie's youth that still torments her. Ellie goes from room to room, remembering the sister that showed up one day ("Who knows how many children your father has produced," Ivy tells a young Ellie, after giving the girl plenty of reasons to hate the man), and keeps coming into conflict with her mother. She doesn't want to, but Ivy seems to feed on it.

There's horror here, particularly during the climax, but most of it comes from seeing the depths of how Ivy, played with polite venom by Ormond, has sabotaged Ellie's sense of self, self-worth, and the worth of what she thinks and feels. Reunion might think it needs to scare and shock us with more, but this bond is frightening and disturbing enough.

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