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United Kingdom · 2022
1h 28m
Director Damian Mc Carthy
Starring Jonathan French, Leila Sykes, Ben Caplan, Conor Dwane
Genre Horror, Thriller
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Isaac, a lonely drifter suffering from memory loss, is hired as a caretaker for Olga, his landlord's psychologically troubled niece. The one caveat to his new job is that he must wear a leather harness that restricts him to certain rooms in the house. As Olga's mental condition worsens, he discovers terrifying secrets that leave him fighting for survival.
Caveat exists in a liminal space between genres, which is fitting for a film about the skeletons that might hide inside the walls of an old house. However, Mc Carthy’s mix-and-match approach reveals the story’s need for a more solid foundation.
Mc Carthy serves up a generically foreboding premise and pulls off several efficiently traditional jump scares in this variation on a haunted-house formula, but it’s the shape-shifting mind games of his own narrative that most unnerve the viewer, as seemingly fixed plot points of who is under threat — and when, and why, and so on — keep darting out of sight.
The Film Stage by Jared Mobarak
The visuals ooze creepiness, even if the payoff doesn’t arrive until the very end.
The Guardian by Leslie Felperin
The final endgame is a little unsatisfying, but this is a very interesting debut for McCarthy.
Paste Magazine by Natalia Keogan
With a tight 87-minute runtime, Caveat would have made for a perfectly lean chiller had it opted to maximize the claustrophobia inherent in literally chaining the viewer to one terrifying location for the entirety of the film.
Los Angeles Times by Noel Murray
Caveat is like a gothic horror tone poem, with pungent notes of decay.
RogerEbert.com by Sheila O'Malley
Caveat is a masterpiece of understatement for a title, and a witty opener to Damian Mc Carthy’s directorial debut, an impressive and often terrifying film, taking place almost solely in one location, with two people trapped in a moldy dimly-lit house.
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