Blu-ray Review: The Veil

Synopsis:

From Jason Blum, the producer of Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Get Out and Us, comes this gritty horror film starring Jessica Alba (Stretch, Sin City), Thomas Jane (The Punisher, Thursday), and Lily Rabe (Miss Stevens, American Horror Story). Follow the lone survivor of a religious cult mass-suicide as she returns to the scene of the tragedy for the first time, after 30 years, with a documentary crew in tow. What they unveil is more disturbing than they could have ever imagined. Written by Robert Ben Garant (Balls of Fury, Night at the Museum) and directed by Phil Joanou (Three O’Clock High, State of Grace).

What We Thought:

Overall I liked The Veil. It’s not groundbreaking cinema or anything, but for a movie that came out in 2016 with some known names and affiliated with Blumhouse yet no one’s ever heard of it, it’s pretty entertaining.

Lily Rabe plays the adult version of a survivor of a cult. Thomas Jane was the cult leader and as far as everyone is concerned, the cult members committed mass suicide and Rabe’s character, who was only a few years old at the time, is the lone survivor. Jessica Alba plays a filmmaker wanting to talk with Rabe and go back to the site of the cult. She’s interested in the story because her father was a federal agent who stormed the site, but was too late to stop the deaths. Both women have been dealing with the issues of the cult since their childhood in different ways.

Rabe agrees and Alba and her film crew take her to the cult’s location. Rabe starts to remember a bit, but they are there to find some film footage that federal agents never recovered. Rabe takes them across a pond to a house time forgot and they start discovering some new information that changes everyone’s thought process on just what was going on with the cult. The film then takes a turn into the paranormal.

Now the flick is far from perfect. It relies on jumpscares which I’m not a fan of and it’s not overly scary to me, but again I kind of liked it. I think Tom Jane is an underrated actor and he’s great as the cult leader. He’s charismatic and enough of a showman to win people over. I’m not overly familiar with Rabe, but both her and Alba are good enough in their roles. I’m not sure if the timeline adds up with the women’s ages, but again for a movie no one’s heard of, I won’t hold that against them.

The Veil won’t wow anyone. It’s definitely a film Blumhouse seemed to have pushed aside and didn’t care about. For it to take 4 years to hit home video is saying something. It came out in 2016, but I’m not sure when it got made in the first place. If it was 2015, that would make sense. If it was 2010, that would also make sense. I guess having zero expectations for it certainly helped because I didn’t hate myself for watching it.