You Should Have Left: Kevin Bacon’s The Shining

Kevin Bacon goes to Wales and it doesn’t go well in You Should Have Left. His latest team up with David Koepp sees Bacon play a troubled rich, older white guy, Theo, who marries an attractive and considerably younger wife, Susanna, played by Amanda Seyfried, as their relationship hits the rocks in rural Britain.

When they start finding random doors and corridors in their AirBnB-type accommodation, you know things are going to go down. This is a modernistic haunted house tale with with sleek interior design purposed to freak you out, whilst old jump-scare troupes don’t fall too far behind. As Bacon’s Theo descends into madness, he wheels out his best Jack Nicholson impression (minus the axe, but he had the cold stare down) whilst Koepp clearly has a huge cinematic hard-on for The Shining in both themes and tone.

Bacon and Seyfried are perfectly fine as their relationship, despite being nothing new, brings some intrigue with it. There’s also an eeriness to it that proves somewhat effective, especially with the film’s pounding score, but the film’s final third hits a big pile of cliches and predictability that makes it a tame finish.