ILL-conceived home invasion horror Push is a cat-and-mouse tale of two very distinctly jarring halves.
New to Shudder, this beautifully shot film picks up the story of Natalie Flores (Alicia Sanz), a grieving woman haunted by the memory of her late fiancé, who finds herself alone, eight months pregnant and in desperate need of a new start.
Despite her family’s belief that she can’t cope in the big bad world and needs minding, Natalie is determined to regain her sense of self. To prove she’s more than capable, she moves from Spain to America and uses her real estate license to take on a challenging listing.
However, she soon discovers that there’s good reasons why this impressive property has been on the market so long. As luck would have it, some ghastly murders have taken place within these costly walls.
Natalie’s new beginning gets off to a very shaky start when only one person turns up at the open house, and unfortunately for her, it’s a sadistic killer (Raúl Castillo), recently escaped from a mental institution. But with a baby on the way, life is still worth fighting for, and she quickly shows that she’s not as meek as some of her mouthy relatives believe.
After becoming stranded in the property, Natalie falls into premature labour, starting a physiological ticking clock as she must find a way to escape before she gives birth.
From the very opening scene, before she even finds herself trapped in the eerie mansion of a home where most of the drama is set, there’s a palpable tension that you could almost ignite.
Alas, while for the first hour or so, Push is up there with some of the better home invasion films — Hush, The Strangers, Martyrs — it all comes crashing down gloriously in the final third. Directors David Charbonier and Justin Powell instead decide to take a complete change of tack in the last 30 minutes and opt to go out in a Halloween 2-esque blaze of glory, which does not deliver!
(2/5)
