Parker's life is taking a very circuitous route to debt-ville after the recent loss of his child. He then reluctantly returns to work as a private investigator. Embarking on an unusual assignment to observe a woman from an abandoned apartment, Parker witnesses bizarre happenings surrounding her...
Sims-Dennett's ambitious low-budget effort obviously borrows riffs from Eraserhead, The Shining and other classics, but it's very much its own film. And a bloody creepy one too, mate.
Starburst
October 15, 2015
Observance implores you to continue watching, but doesn't quite fully reward its audience for doing so.
Largely incoherent, inconsistent and unauthentic, Observance offers such scant characterization in its limited number of protagonists that it becomes a challenge to pay attention.
Sims-Dennett's slippery take on manipulation and madness ushers in a welcome return for the messy obfuscation and creepy indeterminacy formerly found in the neurotic cinema of the late '60s and early '70s.
The cool, languid pacing of the film is only occasionally disrupted by flashes of phantasmagoria, showing further confidence with restraint in a story that could have gone down the path of oversized jump scares and filtered flash cuts.
an intriguing, elliptical enigma that confronts us with our own complicit voyeurism, even as it leaves us unsure what exactly we have seen - or overlooked.
A clever, low-budget exercise from the young Australian-based director Joseph Sims-Dennett, Observance is a hybrid of two familiar brands of psychological thriller.
Joseph Sims-Dennett's Observance bundles voyeurism, blind obedience and grief up in a package that is already plenty disturbing before the biological horrors slink in.
