Mary Lambert once directed Pet Sematary, a film that still makes people cry over a dead cat and a zombie toddler. Two decades later she gave us The Attic, a film so confusing and joyless it makes you wonder if Lambert accidentally directed it in her sleep. Or maybe in someone else’s attic.
This is not a horror movie. This is a two-hour therapy session where the therapist quits halfway through and leaves you to drown in Elisabeth Moss’s eyeliner smudges.
The Plot: Hallmark Movie Meets Schizophrenia
The setup is simple: a family moves into a house that is creepy because—well, because it has an attic. Our heroine, Emma (Elisabeth Moss), instantly hates the place. And by “instantly,” I mean she practically faints on the welcome mat like the ghost of bad real estate decisions whispered “boo.”
Things go downhill when Emma goes upstairs and is attacked by her evil twin. But not her actual twin. Her ghost twin. Or maybe her imaginary twin. Or maybe Beth, her long-dead sister who died twelve days after birth. Yes, twelve days. Apparently, she had just enough time to grow up, learn karate, and come back decades later to strangle people.
Emma then spends the rest of the movie moping, whispering about curses, and accusing her parents of practicing Satanic rituals—because what else do suburban parents do in their spare time? She recruits Detective John Trevor, a man whose detective skills mostly involve showing up at weird hours and looking handsome. Together, they unravel a mystery so nonsensical it makes Scooby-Doo look like True Detective.
Elisabeth Moss: Misery With a Side of Mascara
Yes, Elisabeth Moss is in this. Yes, that Elisabeth Moss—future Emmy-winning star of The Handmaid’s Tale. And watching her in The Attic is like seeing Shakespeare perform in a Chuck E. Cheese parking lot. She spends the whole film wide-eyed, sweaty, and looking like she just lost a staring contest with depression.
Moss does her best, but the script gives her nothing. Emma is written like a goth teenager trapped in an adult body—whining about her family, sulking in corners, and screaming about spirits in between melodramatic monologues. Her evil twin Beth, on the other hand, is basically Moss in a bad wig. The climactic “fight” between them looks like a soap opera blooper reel: Elisabeth Moss choking herself in front of a mirror for ten minutes.
The Parents: Satanists or Just Really Boring?
Emma suspects her parents are Satanists. Why? Because the house has weird symbols in it. That’s it. Never mind that her parents—played by John Savage and Catherine Mary Stewart—have the energy of two Ambien pills. These are not people summoning demons. These are people who complain about HOA fees.
When Emma eventually kills them, it’s less shocking and more like mercy. If I had to listen to them mumble through one more dinner scene, I’d be lighting the pentagram candles myself.
John Trevor: Detective or Discount Ghost?
Jason Lewis plays John Trevor, a detective who appears out of nowhere to “help” Emma but spends most of his screen time looking like a J.Crew mannequin who got lost. In the final twist, we learn Trevor doesn’t exist—he’s just another figment of Emma’s unraveling brain.
But wait—plot twist to the plot twist—by the end he’s a real estate agent showing the house to new owners. Which means he was real all along? Or the house just conjures imaginary men with chiseled jaws for lonely women? Either way, it makes less sense than a Ouija board written in Wingdings.
The Twist: Emma Was Just Crazy (Groundbreaking!)
After Emma shoots herself in the head during the climax—because John Trevor tells her to and he’s not even real—the police arrive to explain the entire movie to us like we’re five-year-olds who wandered into the wrong theater.
“Beth was just in Emma’s mind.”
“Trevor was just in Emma’s mind.”
“This movie was just in your mind.”
By the end, the psychologist literally says, “Houses don’t kill people. But this one did.” Which is the screenwriter’s way of saying, “We give up. Here’s a line that sounds deep if you’re drunk enough.”
The Horror: Or Lack Thereof
Scary moments? Nonexistent. Instead, we get:
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Emma staring at walls for ten minutes.
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Random satanic doodles that look like rejected Hot Topic merch.
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A ghost attack scene shot in near-total darkness, which might have just been a cameraman tripping.
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A demon voice cameo that sounds like someone gargling mouthwash into a microphone.
Even the deaths are boring. Emma kills her parents with all the suspense of a grocery run, her brother dies off-screen like the movie ran out of budget, and Emma herself checks out with a handgun in the least shocking “twist” since M. Night Shyamalan said “What if trees were evil?”
The Ending: The House Always Wins
The film ends with another family moving in, because of course it does. A little girl wanders into the attic, where John Trevor—now rebranded as “Ron the Realtor”—sneaks up behind her and whispers, “We’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”
That’s not scary. That’s a sex offender registry waiting to happen.
The implication is that the house itself is cursed, like Amityville Horror. But the only real curse here is being forced to sit through 85 minutes of Elisabeth Moss talking to imaginary people.
The Tone: Lifetime Movie of the Week Meets Creepy Pasta
The Attic doesn’t know if it wants to be a supernatural thriller, a psychological horror, or a cheap Exorcist knockoff. Instead, it feels like a Lifetime Original Movie accidentally spliced with a Hot Topic commercial.
Every scene screams “made-for-TV”—awkward lighting, cheap sets, dialogue that sounds like it was written by an AI programmed on goth Tumblr posts. The “scares” are PG-13 at best. You could show this to your grandmother and she’d probably just fall asleep halfway through and dream of better horror films.
Final Verdict
The Attic is not scary. It’s not thrilling. It’s not even good-bad fun. It’s a damp towel of a movie, limp and vaguely unpleasant, that leaves you wondering if Elisabeth Moss lost a bet to star in it.
The only true horror here is the screenplay. Everything else—evil twins, imaginary detectives, Satanic doodles—is just window dressing for 90 minutes of confusion and boredom.
If you want to watch a movie about evil attics, watch literally anything else (The Others, The Conjuring, even an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark?). If you want to see Elisabeth Moss suffer, just turn on The Handmaid’s Tale. At least that show has good writing.
Rating: 1 out of 10 ghost realtors.
One star for Elisabeth Moss, who somehow survived this attic and went on to actual greatness. The rest of us? We’re still trapped up there, waiting for the movie to end.
