June 27, 2023

Day: 27, Movie: 27

A psychological horror film from Shudder called What Josiah Saw is one of the more unsettling and disturbing films I’ve seen in awhile. There was plenty of icky concepts and things happening.

It is the story of one family who come back together to face the horrors of their past. Three children, Eli (Nick Stahl), his twin sister Mary (Kelli Garner) and their slower brother Tommy (Scott Haze), and their slimy father Josiah (Robert Patrick), face with their sins from their life.

The film was broken into three sections. The first section included Tommy and Josiah, which included one of the most disturbing scenes of the flick. The next section was with Eli trying to get his life straightened out, but really not have much success. There was a whole section with Eli and a bunch of gypsies. Then we met Mary and her struggles in trying to become a mother via adoption. She was also shown as suicidal over something from her past. Eli came to see her about the oil company letter wishing to buy their childhood home property.

This is where the story came together as the three kids reunited and the past comes up. I won’t go into what that was because there were some major revelations here.

It was an uncomfortable film. There were very few characters that felt worth rooting for, though I did kind of connected with Eli, even though the very end of the film took that away from me.

I had a little trouble getting into the movie at first because Robert Patrick was such a horrendous person. Robert Patrick delivers an amazing performance because I really hated this character.

I’m not sure I would recommend this movie to many people. It was a slow burn and definitely filled with scumbag characters. Still, I thought the story was well developed and the performances were outstanding. This is another one that I will never watch again, but not because it was bad. I just felt like a shower afterwards.