What if your supposed family curse was, in fact, a horrifying reality? In hauntingly gothic Recluse, the Wyatt curse spreads to anyone who crosses paths with a notoriously reclusive artist (Xander Berkeley) who refuses to exhibit his work. The film’s focal point is not on said tortured artist, but instead on his ambitious daughter. Constantly haunted by the shadow of her father’s narcissistic work, sound recordist Joan (Sasha Frolova) is a compelling character to follow. With a nonexistent father/daughter bond, Joan’s exploration of his estate makes her a sort of audience surrogate; we are just as unnerved as Joan, whether that be by dream sequence or by eerie nighttime shenanigan. Henry Chaisson’s feature debut provides plenty of fresh nightmare fuel for genre fanatics, building up tension as shapes linger in backgrounds, and a massive family mansion promises lurking dread around every darkened corner. Atmospheric and disturbing, Recluse unearths the horrors of the past to become a fresh obsession.
At the top of the film, globs of paint and puzzlingly bizarre methods of artistry result in Lawrence Wyatt’s freakish accident. His daughter, Joan, gets drawn back to her estranged artist father’s sprawling estate to promptly put his affairs in order. Before she even gets there, Recluse feels seeped in spooky subtext. Lawrence, completely bedridden, encased in a plaster mask covering his face, speaks in barely intelligible mumbles. As Joan sifts through dated cassette recordings, the chilling spectre of the Wyatt family curse looms large. Some memories come in spurts, appearing as glimpses of footage straight from Joan’s mind.
In the home, Joan is not completely alone. The hired help remains, including crossbow-toting caretaker, Lydia (Toby Poser); Lydia’s son, the cute new gardener, Todd (Kimball Farley); and Lawrence’s nurse, the warm Emily (Mia Vallet). The way this trio becomes entangled in Joan’s arc lets them exist not as static characters, but as very real players in the action. Though many family secrets have been buried for years, questions still hang in an ugly way, many of which have prompted Joan to assume the Wyatts may be cursed. Most concerningly, the unsolved disappearance of Joan’s mother still stings. Joan’s trauma goes back even further though, and the delicate script carefully dives deeper and deeper its Joan’s psyche to traverse it.
As far as sound design is concerned, Recluse is the exact kind of movie that I wanted from the hugely overrated Undertone. Though that movie did utilize sound in a unique way, Recluse actually goes places with Joan’s journey, and expands what she hears as it directly relates to the unspooling narrative. From distorted recordings to whispers behind walls, mysterious audio fragments all become larger clues to the mystery at hand. Perhaps a major part of why this works is that Recluse actually builds to something, utilizing many various bits of horrific imagery to pad out Joan’s time at the mansion. The plaster mask alone unnerves enough to infiltrate Joan’s unconscious state, adding an extra bit of distance between Joan and Lawrence.
Driven by the compelling familial drama at its core and supplemented by a striking visual style, Recluse makes the most of its isolated setting. The cinematography lingers on darkness and silhouette, with creepy shrines and partially obscured figures lurking just out of view adding that extra supernatural factor. Even with a dash of ambiguity in its closing moments, the final act takes an excellent turn that strengthens everything that came before. Featuring palpable atmosphere and a bold mystery, Recluse delivers a consistently unnerving experience whose horrors linger even when strictly off the record.
Recluse debuted at 2026’s Tribeca Film Festival.
