The Baylock Residence is a 2019 thriller film about a woman who inherits her family’s estate and soon discovers that it may be haunted.
In war torn Europe 1944, on the bombed out streets of England, Patricia Woodhouse (Kelly Goudie) gets a letter notifying her of her sister Susanna Baylock’s (Karen Henson) passing. The two have been estranged for some time, but Patricia ventures over to the large estate where Susanna lived with her maid Annabel Blair (Sarah Wynne Kordas), who plans to leave now that she has no employer. Patricia learns that she’s inherited the home and keeps the maid on, soon discovering however that the old house is stocked with troubling secrets, putting Patricia in the middle of a deadly truth.
Poor old English estates are getting a bad rap these days, their dark halls and links to the past a nest for stories about ghosts and tragedies. Such is the same here with writer and director Anthony M. Winson‘s competently made indie chiller The Baylock Residence, a hazy subtle mindbender that doesn’t have a lot of money behind it, packing itself with a cupboard full of genre standards while managing to have some genuine interest. Bumps in the night. Mysterious knocks. Creepy dreams. It’s all here layered in 1940s British upper class accoutrement. What’s perhaps most interesting though is that Winson is remaking his own movie, previously titled The Haunting of Baylock Residence, released in 2014 and set in the 1970s. It’s the same movie just in a different time.
Either way, it’s quite small, the cast almost entirely featuring the two women, often shown for extended moments having expositional conversations as details emerge about a strange presence lurking in the halls. Winson loves his close-ups and more so blatant jump scares, pouring them liberally over the tiny production with near abandon. This wouldn’t be all bad except that the house, which should be the most compelling character in the film, is all but unexplored, never really given the frightfulness it deserves. Sure, there are strange things happening within these walls but not much beyond falling books, gusts of wind, and ghostly images in doorways. It’s all very generic.
Still, the cast gives it their all, getting a bit campy in their evolving distress as stories of the past come back to shape the wrath now consuming the house, including a massacre two decades earlier involving Susanna’s missing husband. It sort of sets up a mystery and some opportunities for flashbacks but the production just doesn’t have the weight behind it to go as big is it feels it wants to, despite a good story that certainly has some legs. The filmmakers do what they can with such limitations, but it’s held back by a few overripe performances and a ghost that doesn’t really seem all that threatening, even as the characters try to hard to convince us otherwise.
Either way, this is low budget horror that readily adheres to the conventions, propping itself up with everything fans of these kinds of movies come looking for. A solid effort from Winson, who works hard to be historically accurate while confining himself to a straight and narrow path. Maybe in five years, he’ll do it again in the 1920s.