It is weird and honestly unsettling to think that most films in the tricking the person with amnesia into being with me genre are romantic. Considering we live in a world that warns about gaslighting and promotes having a healthy level of skepticism directed at the news, one would think that these movies would be long forgotten. Well Considering that there was a remake of Overboard only two years ago and it made a profit it seems like the market still exists. However, what if there was a film that explored how scary this situation would be, where someone is taking advantage of you at your most vulnerable and treat it as the real horror it is? You Go To My Head as much as it tries to capture this idea, is far more interested in being artistic for art’s sake and never really exploring what makes this situation scary, and instead becomes another amnesia drama.

A woman wakes up after a horrible car accident to find the man she was with is unresponsive and she is stranded in the desert. After wandering for a day and a half she is found by a man named Jake who takes her to his place and calls a doctor. The doctor tells Jake that “his wife”has had a bad concussion and as a result has amnesia. When the woman awakes Jake begins to explain to her what happened and the life that she has forgotten. As she listens and tries to remember what happened she feels uneasy with the answers Jake is giving and struggles with her gapes in memory, including her name.

The fact that there is an Oscar category dedicated to film scores is reason enough to understand how important score can be at setting the tone and emotion of a scene. The score for You Go To My Head feels like someone watched The Shining and just copied every violin and string pluck they could. It not only comes off as uninspired but there are moments where the violins begin to go crazy and nothing tense or shocking is on the screen. This undercuts any tense moments that are attempted to be built later in the film because the score is something we’ve already heard. When it isn’t the violins the film goes for a synth orchestra that somehow feels cheap and clash with the visuals constantly.

What struck me in the first fifteen minutes and throughout the film is that the cinematography is visually stunning and the film language is used effectively but is dampened by bad decisions. At a run time of almost two hours, this movie feels like its bursting at the seems with padding. Shots are too long, moments are repeated for no apparent reason, and some dialogue feels like it goes nowhere. A gorgeous presentation can only take a film so far when it feels vacant of interesting moments and contains a shallow plot.

You Go To My Head promises in the first third, as well as the marketing, to be the film to show the horror of a person abusing someone’s misfortune for their perverse gain, but instead is a slightly chilling clone of Overboard. What could have been a fantastic film was smothered in padding and a third act that seemingly goes nowhere. Everything down to the ending is incredibly disappointing and just ends up a two-hour-long experience of missed opportunities and a tired plot.

2 out of  10