Two days hence IFC Films will be opening Sean Durkin‘s The Nest theatrically. Alas, in relatively few…well, actually one Los Angeles-area location when you get right down to it. I’m talking about Santa Ana’s Regency (South Coast Village, 1561 W Sunflower Ave.Santa Ana, CA, 92704). Honestly? So starved am I for a theatrical experience, I’m thinking of driving all the way down there to see it.**

“It’s been nine long years since The Nest’s writer-director, Sean Durkin, made a splash with his superb feature debut, Martha Marcy May Marlene. (In between, he directed a miniseries, Southcliffe, for England’s Channel 4.) That film was fundamentally a triumph of editing, cutting back and forth between different time periods in a way that made past and present feel interchangeable. Here, Durkin has teamed up with the great Hungarian cinematographer Mátyás Erdély (the original Miss Bala, Son Of Saul, Sunset), and together they’ve fashioned something remarkable: an utterly non-supernatural haunted house story.

“Nothing overtly creepy or menacing ever happens, with the exception of one moment in which a door is mysteriously open after Allison is sure that she’d locked it. Yet The Nest deliberately replicates the ominous look and feel of a slow-burn horror movie, with establishing shots held just a beat too long, shadows that swallow up corners of the room, and physical distance between characters that generates constant free-floating unease. This approach may well frustrate genre buffs who jump to the wrong conclusion early on, but it provides a startlingly fresh angle on otherwise routine domestic discord.” — from Mike D’Angelo’s 9.15 AV Club review.

** I’m presuming that a link is available but I’d rather buy a ticket and eat popcorn.