31 Days of Horror: Psychosis (2010)

A remake of the "Dreamhouse" episode from the anthology film Screamtime, Psychosis follows prominent horror writer Susan (Charisma Carpenter). After moving to a sprawling country estate in order to recover from a massive mental breakdown, Susan begins to experience gruesome visions of a long-forgotten murder. Are these visions due to Susan's questionable mental health, or is there something else going on?

Psychosis is a competently made film that, unfortunately, is incredibly slow and meandering. The idea behind the film isn't a bad one, and in the right hands, could have made for a really interesting delves into the main character's psyche, but Psychosis just moves through the story at an incredibly slow and boring pace that made it a chore to watch. What makes this worse is that the ending is rather disappointing, giving you no actual reward for sitting through this dull film.

With that being said, there are a few gems buried within the film. The music and sound design is decent and the cinematography is pretty competent (with only a few weak spots scattered throughout the film). The actors, especially Carpenter, try their hardest to give good performances. Sadly, there is only so much you can do with a boring script.

While there are a few decent elements sprinkled throughout the film, Psychosis fails due to its slow as hell pacing and rather boring narrative. If you are looking for a good psychological horror film, I'd recommend checking out Jacob's Ladder and skipping Psychosis.

Verdict: See it if you are a huge fan of Charisma Carpenter and you have an hour and twenty-nine minutes to kill. Skip it if you hate films that are incredibly slow with a lackluster pay-off.