Movie Review: The Manor (2021)

Synopsis: After suffering a mild stroke and being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, Judith Albright reluctantly chooses to move into a historic nursing home, so her daughter and teenage grandson don't need to care for her as she deteriorates. Shortly after arriving, she notices a dark figure in her room at night and begins to suspect someone or something is killing the patients. However, due to her condition and recent diagnosis of dementia, nobody believes her.

Who's in it? The movie stars Barbara Hershey, Bruce Davison, Jill Larson, Nicholas Alexander and Katie Amanda Keane.

Review: My wife and I finished our first movie sooner than I expected yesterday and since we still had a couple hours before we'd be thinking about going to bed, I decided to make it a double feature with this film I came across earlier yesterday morning. Since I hadn't heard about the movie before and the plot sounded similar to plenty of other films, I wasn't expecting much but it turned out to be a creepy and entertaining film.

There are a couple things I really liked about this movie. One of the main ones was the mystery surrounding the figure Judith (Hershey) saw at night. It seemed as though everyone in that nursing home knew about it but were choosing not to discuss it with her either because they were hiding something or because they were afraid to. This in turn made it difficult to figure out who she could really trust. This included her own grandson (Alexander) who seemed to be on her side but also seemed to be able to get into a locked nursing home, at night, without drawing attention (something that seemed very odd considering the nursing home was going out of its way to discredit and isolate her).

On top of it, her dementia diagnosis added a little extra something to the plot. The doctor was either lying about it to cover up what she was seeing, making it even more difficult to prove she wasn't imagining things. Or she really was suffering from dementia, and it would turn out she was imagining the whole thing or at least some things.

The movie also had quite a few surprises. I correctly suspected one of the people involved but wasn't expecting the conspiracy to be much larger. Plus, the motivations were sort of obvious in hindsight given some conversations but not obvious to the point they are immediately clear. 

One other thing that left me pleasantly surprised was the ending. I frankly never saw it coming because the protagonist did the exact opposite of what any other movie would have her do and left me scratching my head about what I should think of her afterwards.

Final Opinion: It's not an overly scary film but it does have a creepy setting and a plot that isn't as predictable as I would have expected it to be. I don't know if I would go as far as to say it is a memorable film but is an entertaining choice if you're looking for something to watch.

My Grade: B