The dangerous paranoia lurking beneath the seemingly idyllic existence of a family of hermits living on a remote island begins to come to the fore when their daughter starts to question her parents’ worldview.

It is rare for me personally to be unable to quantify a movie while watching, let alone when it is over. Resin by director Daniel Borgman is a film that is incredibly hard to pin down and express with words how it makes you feel. While the story is quite simple, with few characters creating a very intimate tale, the emotional roller coaster that the audience is put through is much harder to express. At its very core, you could say it is a cautionary tale about what happens when you refuse to let go, whether that be a person, an idea, or a lifestyle. The title itself, in the beginning, relates to a viscous compound from trees that can incase creatures, but later on taking a much more morbid meaning.

The story abruptly starts with Jens talking to the police that his daughter fell overboard and is presumed dead, but a conversation with his wife brings this into question. Many summers later we see their young daughter Liv alive and being raised, happily, in a derelict house in the woods with her father and bedridden obese pregnant mother Maria. Soon their simple serene lives are interrupted when Jens’ mother Else comes to visit in hopes of connecting with her granddaughter. From Else we discover the reasoning behind faking Liv’s death was to stop her from being taken away from her “unfit” parents. Slowly the possibility of Liv’s survival becoming public begins to make the family more and more paranoid until everything begins to fall apart.

What makes this movie so haunting is how well it is performed by its actors and how real every moment feels. The filming location of a barely maintained cabin in the woods is a common enough visual that most people, me included, have spotted at least one once in their lives. The possibility that any one of them could have a wild family isolating themselves from the rest of the world adds an eerie realism to the whole film. Combine this with the fact that the family looks filthy and unkempt for the whole film and you get a picture that just feels a little too real. Lastly, you have the gorgeous cinematography that sets the mood with each shot whether it be the bright and lively forest scene or the gray and drab town that exists nearby.

However, the movie is not without its faults, most coming mainly from the pacing. This may sound odd but this film suffers from being slow but intense, meaning that some scenes while riveting go on for far too long. Mostly an issue near the end it, unfortunately, causes the audience to get drained waiting for the tension to release, which can be fantastic in some films but is held for far too long in this.

The easiest way I could describe Resin would be if Wes Anderson directed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There is a heart to all the characters and the world they live in that creates a horrifying juxtaposition when the unsettling realistic horror of the situation begins to settle in. With the tone being whimsical and horrifying I don’t know what audience I would recommend this film to. If you enjoyed Hereditary but wished it was grounded, more unsettling, and less heart wrenching, I feel like Resin would be right up your alley.