Things Heard & Seen : A "Confusing" Netflix horror story

Things Heard & Seen: A promising start with a puzzling ending

 The story had a very promising start with a lot of scope and possibility that only led to a confusing ending.

Written and Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, Things Heard & Seen is a Thriller

Horror, digitally released on Netflix in April 2021. It is based on the novel All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage

Plot

Set in the year 1980, Things Heard & Seen is a story of a young couple George and Catherine who in search of a fresh start settle down in a small town. The plot revolves more around the secrets that George has been hiding for years from his wife and the house that the young couple purchased in the new small town.

Soon after they started their new life in the small town with George being an art professor and

Catherine being the homemaker, strange things started happening in the house.

While George chose to keep a blind eye to them, Catherine not only acknowledged them but

also embraced them. Turns out the house had a history and was housing more than one ghost

both the good ones as well evil ones. 

Eventually, the layers of George’s lies started to come out one by one on Catherine and she decided

to leave him and the house. Turns out, while the good spirits were in touch with Catherine,

the evil ones were amplifying George’s negativity. What happened next will be a spoiler

so, won’t be disclosing the climax here but one thing for sure it will leave you wondering and

more than that “confused”.

Review

The story had a very promising start with a lot of scope and possibility. There were so many tangents

that the story touches and they all felt promising in the first half. The problem was the second half or

the conclusion of the story where everything went “chaotic”. There were so many loose ends that

never reconciled to give a proper justification of “why did it happen in the first place?” 

The USP of the story “The Ghosts” was a mess, we never could have understood their role

as in if they are good or bad, they are going to help or not?

The climax

The climax was an utter failure, it just ..? I don’t have anything to mention what happened?

The Ghosts angle failed miserably, the protagonist (if she even was) ended doing “nothing” and

the antagonist (George) did something that we are still wondering if it was him or the ghost?

So, nothing worked!

Special mention

The character George Claire was very well written and his character build-up was also good such that

only his character was a little bit understandable in this whole mess

The setup and production value were good as the whole scene looked very convincing belonging

from 1970 and so does the characters.

Verdict: Time wastage, watch only if you have enough time to spare for a story with no end.