This movie is Osgood 'Oz' Perkins debut movie (who has also written the screenplay); that is the oldest son of Anthony Perkins, who's most famous for his role of Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcocks Psycho. It tells the story of the two catholic girls bording school students Kat (Kiernan Shipka) and Rose (Lucy Boyton), who are both not picked up by their parents in time for the vacation in February and therefore have to stay at the bording school; Rose gave her parents a wrong date on purpose as she has something important in her life that she wanted to sort out first. Kat on the other side fears that something bad must have happened to her parents. The director who is eager to leave the place, places freshman Kat under Roses observation, and for luch, they'd be allowed to visit two of the nurses, that live on premis. In another place the parents (Lauren Holly, James Remar) of one of the girls of the bording school are on their way, and pick up the hitchhiker Joan (Emma Roberts) that is going in the same direction. They have to hurry, because a snow storm is threatening their voyage.

I don't want to say more about the story; the movie is rather subtile and a slow paced horror movie, that mainly focusses on building up a horrifying atmosphere, with a lot of dark images, few and sometimes really silent dialogues, the setting (a really run down building), and an incredible camera work. Added to that is a creepy score which is seldomly but rather effectively used, and that is composed by Elvis Perkins (brother of Oz Perkins) as his debut movie score. Many things are just conveyed by images in a rather clever way; here's an example:

[spoiler]A person looks at himself in the mirrow, we see him from the front and see that his shoulder has a scar - fast cut - a scene where a man is firing a gun at someone we're not seeing - fast cut back - we see the person in front of the mirror, now from the back, and find the same scar on the back of the shoulder as well, and understand: This is the person that was shot at, and the bullet went thorugh the shoulder.[/spoiler]

I also found it interesting to see how the camera used the space on the frame, or how some of the transitions are done. Everything works very well and you can get lost in all those details and the briliant work this photographer and the editing did. At the same time - and that is also ture - it's a really slow paced, slow burning movie, and this is much more difficult for the average viewer and what he is used to, today. There's also now classic jump scares used (there are two scenes where I was flinching, however these are not "classic" jump scares, but actually part of the scene that continued even after the initial scare, so the scare is just a natural part of the scene that leads into much scarier things). The actors are incredibly, which is not surprising given we have some stars, like Emma Roberts, James Remar, or Lauren Holly. We also have the (at that point) rather unexperienced leads by Kiernan Shipka and Lucy Boynton, and they can keep up with ease. Boynton was incredible and could later land roles in much bigger productions such as "Murder on the Orient Express" (2017), "Bohemian Rhapsody" or "Barbie". Both are really good, but I was actually really impressed by Shipkan, who managed to perfectly switch her mimmiks between naive innocence, depressed victim and pure evil - and that, at the time of the production at an age of 16. And she does not only act, she also plays the piano and sings "live" (i.e. in scene and not edited as voice-over), and does an incredible job. I think we'll see her winning us over in many other movie productions.

My personal biggest problem witht he movie is, that it was full of little images and scenes that are all "visual clues", and that - when you are attentive enough - allow you to understand things much earlier. In the 95 minutes of runtime, I had a hunch at round about 30 minutes in; at 45 minutes in I was rather sure, and the last half hour I could mentally tick of every though I had as I was seeing it. There is of course a few things you cannot forsee but in general I had it all together, and so there wasn't any surprises anymore and I was a bit bored just because of it. However, I was watching this with my partner, and she did not forsee anything. And after watching it and checking other reviews online, I've seen that a lot of people actually praise it to be rewatchable, because after knowing the plot you'll pick up all the clues and see that this didn't come out of nowhere. So maybe it was just me? Maybe I've seen too many movies, maybe I am too analytic when watching movies, but as there are many people who did not pick up on it, I will not count it as a negative.

Which is why I'm at **4/5**.