My quick rating - 5.5/10. The Ruse reads decent enough to grab my interest. A home caregiver is sent to watch over a strange old woman in a secluded coastal home, and her unease escalates into terror. While it’s clear from the get-go that this film has its sights set on something more atmospheric and suggestive of frights rather than actual frights, and for the most part succeeds in doing so, there’s sometimes the sense that it’s holding our hands a bit too closely.
As a whole, the film isn’t bad at all. It is a reasonably well-crafted concept that has competent direction and a cast that is largely effectively acted. With that said, there does appear to be a certain level of inconsistency in every conceivable way. The definitive standout in this regard is a performance by Veronica Cartwright. She manages to give a thoroughly engrossing performance that simply keeps events lively and unpredictably twisty. Her dialogue is interesting, and there is a sense in which she evokes a corresponding sense of immediacy in every situation that she finds herself in. By comparison, there is a certain stiffness to the performance by Madelyn Dundon that simply does not convey as effectively.
Visually, The Ruse is impressively put together. The camera work is great, often utilized to convey a sense of tension through clever angles that focus on doorways and empty space. The location is stunning as well, doing some serious work in terms of establishing tone. Cory Geryak dials in some nice cinematography, and his drone work is fantastic in terms of creating a sense of scope in such a compact location. Additionally, Stevan Mena does some great work in creating an atmospheric score that never gets in the way.
Where the film stumbles is in its handling of violence and payoff. The kill scenes rely heavily on cutaways, which is always frustrating, especially when the tension is otherwise well built. There are some genuinely spooky sequences and nicely sustained suspense, but the movie often feels too restrained for its own good. The ending, while pretty fun, highlights this issue the most. It’s twisty and moderately complex, tipping its hand toward classic Hitchcock-style mysteries and even echoing the explanatory tendencies of Agatha Christie stories. Right down to the detective practically explaining the entire movie for us, just in case we didn’t quite connect the dots ourselves.
Mena's love of old school haunted house mysteries is an obvious influence, and while The Ruse is not quite on the level of these classics, it's a decent sequel to Mena's Malevolence trilogy. However, the third act takes a strange turn and has a definite made-for-TV quality to it, which undermines the ambition of what started off so promising. That said, it's a good mashup of the old school mysteries of the ‘80s and ‘90s, that's plenty interesting enough to pass the time.
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