What would you do if someone you loved just disappeared? A husband, a wife, a child vanishes into thin air, as the cliché goes–how do you react? What will your life be like now?

This is the starting point for Shortwave, a new movie by Ryan Gregory Phillips, that explores the effect of one such disappearance on a young couple’s marriage and their relationship to each other. Or does it? This movie starts as though it might be a straightforward mystery/drama, dealing with the couple’s missing daughter and their feelings of guilt and loss, but it soon enough evolves into something else entirely.

Josh (Cristobal Tapia Montt) and Jane (Sara Malakul Lane), are the couple in question. The film begins with An opening sequence that gets your immediate attention. In one single tracking shot, Jane walks her daughter into a book store where a young lady is reading to a group of other children. Jane leaves her daughter with the group of children for a moment while she uses the restroom. When she comes out, her daughter is gone, the book reader is gone, the other children are gone.  Everybody is gone.

Jane and Josh are now moving in to a new home, isolated in the middle of a forest, but with nice high-tech accessories. It frankly looks like an IKEA showroom of the future, all clean lines, plastic chairs, and clear Lucite remote controls. As his wife spends her time staring wistfully at videos of her missing daughter, or staring out the window to the forest, or wandering the futuristic house, Josh and his research partner, Thomas (Kyle Davis), have a breakthrough involving a mysterious shortwave radio signal. The signal sets off a reaction with Isabel and she begins experiencing what appear to be hallucinations, visions of distant memories, and quick flashes of dark shadow people menacing her.

From there things just get weirder and weirder. Are these visions just happening in Jane’s mind? Who are those dark figures and what do they want? Do they even exist? ? Why does Jane have seizures and pass out every time she tries to leave the house? And will someone please hide all the knives and razors in the house??

I liked this movie a lot. It starts slow, and I was ready to give up (I have a low tolerance for watching people stare out windows), but if you hang in there like i did, I think you’ll find it just as rewarding. Phillips does a great job wringing tension and suspense out of the tiniest look or movement or sound, and the special effects are sparingly used but bloody well done (heh). His framing and cinematography are beautiful, and I could take any shot in this movie, blow it up and hang it on the wall as art. He’s that good.

The script is serviceable, but there are a few bits of dialogue that just didn’t ring true (or it could have just been the actor’s delivery–Montt and Lane are really good and very emotive, but Kyle Davis as friend and coworker Thomas is pretty much a wet blanket with little range).

So, keep a non-razor-bladed eye out for Shortwave; I think you’ll like it. Uncle Mike sez check it out, and watch the trailer below!