Film Review - Let Her Out (2016)

Damaged bike courier Helen is ladened down with such cumbersome psychological baggage, it’s a wonder that she has any strength left to deliver any parcels at all.

After suffering the kind of car accident that only ever befalls the horror movie populace, it transpires that her skeletons are not rattling around in a closet after all, but are fish-hooked deep inside her own cerebral matter.

She soon realises that some medical anomalies have a voracious capacity for survival, and seek to outstrip the metaphysical in their attempts to tear through the delicate shroud of the human soul.

If the terrified Helen can survive the hideous blackouts that threaten to devour her identity for 3 more days, she will reach the possible salvation of an operation. However, her raging inner-bitch becomes progressively incensed and hacks relentlessly away at the final flimsy strands that anchor her sanity.

Using fetal resorption as a launchpad for your high-concept horror film is a risky powder keg move, but Cody Calahan’s dementedly pacy flick shrewdly dodges most of the moral splash back.

Thankfully his script, co-penned with Adam Seybold, makes no attempt to probe the complex sentiments of this condition, and Let Her Out never pretends to be anything other than a brutish and gory B-movie dipping its speculative toe in the backwaters of medical fact.

Although the notion of vanishing twin syndrome, where one twin absorbs the corpse of its duplicate after in utero death, is a troubling and potentially sensitive one, it is also incredibly common. So common in fact that some experts firmly believe that left-handedness could actually be a residual legacy displayed by survivors of this bizarre phenomenon.

Using this medical curio to induce an emotional gag reflex, far greater than its relatively cursory consequences, whilst strangling any pretentious rhetoric, cultivates and nurtures the films boisterous midnight movie feel.

After a stubbornly rapey and ruthlessly stabby pre-credit medley, the flick streamlines into a rhythm of nonsensical nastiness that is both entertaining and at times very funny. This is personified by a stupefyingly bonkers episode of stethoscope centred what-the-fuckery that epitomises the broad mindset of Let Her Out.

Most of the acting is far better than the intermittently jittery script deserves, especially from aesthetically staggering newcomer Alanna LeVierge, who fleshes out, at times quite literally, the lead role with a sinewy surety that transcends mere ornamentation.

Conversely, all the male roles are underwritten into one-dimensional dormancy, but as they only exist to have their members menaced by box-cutters this represents barely a hiccup in the movies infectious flow.

Super talented Torontonian Steph Copeland renders another epigrammatical score that provides both shivers and a warm safe haven whenever the picture loses confidence and requires a reassuring hug.

The effects are uniformly excellent with many a blood puddle for the gorehounds to lap from, including lashings of truly lurid flesh-tearing and a satisfyingly flashy 360° camera pan smack in the middle of a frenetic slashing.

Let Her Out is an admirable addition to the evil twin cannon that shows a robust aspiration to give the fans what they want.

A few ropey character decisions fail to rub the lustre from this darkly bitter, surprisingly spiteful shlocker.