Based on the book of the same name by Daniel Kehlmann, You Should Have Left is the latest film from writer/director, David Koepp, in collaboration with Blumhouse. It follows a couple, Theo (Kevin Bacon) and Susanna (Amanda Seyfried), who take their young daughter, Ella (Avery Essex), to a remote house in Wales, so they can spend some time together before Susanna has to go to a film shoot in London. However, as time passes, Theo begins experiencing nightmares, and strange things seem to happen around the house. Perhaps, there is a supernatural force at work, or maybe Theo is simply haunted by his anxieties and his past.
The setup is fairly basic, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing since filmmakers have often made excellent work out of a seemingly simple premise, either through thematic explorations or pure stylistic indulgences. However, in the case of You Should Have Left, Koepp not only doesn’t really dig much below the surface and beyond the generic tropes and beats of a contained psychological thriller like this, he seems to go out of his way to avoid playing with the ideas that he had set up in the first place.
It’s hard not to talk about the fact that our central couple is played by actors who have a 27 year age difference, not just because it is weird to see, but it also happens to be significant to the plot, at least, somewhat. The film does address the age difference, and how it can affect the relationship. Theo is confused for Susanna’s father when he visits a set she was working on earlier in the film, and he also later fears that she might be having an affair. He only seems to care for her when she can satisfy his ego, but the film doesn’t do much else to explore this relationship.
Then you have Theo’s past, which we don’t see, but are told about with some fuzzy details. He previously had a wife who was found dead in her bathtub, and because he was a wealthy man, he became a bit of a pariah in the media, casting him in a shady light. It isn’t made clear whether he was arrested or went through a trial, but he was eventually deemed innocent of any involvement, but the events still haunt him to this day, and people will still act like he is guilty, which further fuels his agitated and overwhelmed mental state.
Instead of diving into these elements, the film mostly just waddles through fairly standard haunted house-esque scares, none of which are particularly inventive or terrifying. Although, some of the sequences where Theo finds himself lost in the maze of hallways in the house are rather tense, even if the house isn’t given much of a personality or distinctive aesthetic. And by the time the film really gets into some strange imagery, the path ironically becomes much more clear as to where things will go. There just isn’t much in terms of surprises.
However, I will say that Kevin Bacon is quite good here. He is of course no stranger to David Koepp, since they famously collaborated in the 1999 horror film, Stir Of Echoes, which if my memory serves me right was really good. Bacon is a seasoned pro at this point, and he easily sells the torture and the desperation of the character with a subtle, but consistent, underlying sense of something sinister that seems to be waiting to come out. Seyfried is fine, but is given nothing of interest to do. If there’s anyone that does good with very little, it’s Avery Essex, who gets more screentime and dialogue than kids in these movies usually do, and she is able to hold her own in her scenes with Bacon and Seyfried.
You Should Have Left is perfectly watchable, it’s put together handsomely, and at a mere 93 minutes, it will go by pretty fast. It just won’t challenge you, it won’t linger in your memory long after seeing it, and I’m sure even the most sensitive viewers will find the scares in here only mildly intense. It’s frustrating because you can tell there are people behind this who seem to know what they’re doing, and are more than capable of crafting something good, but the final result is mediocre and forgettable. It is simply destined to have its title used for obvious jokes by dopes like me. You’re right movie, I failed to heed your warning, and leave before it was too late.