Restraint

*Spoilers ahead because this film isn't worth preserving.Restraint is not a film I could recommend to anyone unless they just want to waste time and have something on as background noise. I hate the story, the ending and the way it was all told. The only detail the description of the film leaves out is that the mentally disturbed wife murders everyone relevant by the end of the film. Even the fetus didn't make it as DIY abortions are still a thing. Also, the husband tried to be nice guy and gave his psycho wife far too much leeway. Sleepwalking is one thing, but when she left his daughter at school for 6 hours because she couldn't be bothered to take her meds and pick her up, well, it's time to pack her bags and get the divorce papers drawn up.See, some people might say that's harsh but let's be real. The husband has the safety and well being of his daughter to consider not to mention his own peace of mind and if the wife can't even be trusted to pick up his daughter from school even though all she does is sit around the house all day, then how can he trust her when an emergency arises? There is a photo of the couple on their wedding day in the film and the expression on her face was anything but joyful. Was the husband that desperate that he couldn't see the insanity standing in front of him, the crazy in her eyes? Apparently not and he was buried alive for his troubles.The film ends with a worse case scenario, she kills the daughter to force the husband to focus solely on her and then conveniently forgets about the consequences of aborting as if she could somehow heal the fetus and still deliver the baby (yeah, she was clearly ready for the puzzle factory). Then she stabs the husband and buries him alive after showing him that she killed his daughter. So the husband gets to die horribly with the thought of "I should have never married her." Yeah.Great. If family court and divorce doesn't get you, psychological instability will? Stay single bro.1* This film sucks. Even the editing is trash because there were too many times scenes were not allowed to play out to finish a character's actions. This happened throughout the film and it was annoying because it implied too much instead of explicitly presenting what was happening even in instances that were pretty straight forward. Trying to be stylish or clever in the editing room but it ultimately didn't work for me. Worse still, the wife actually lived. That's what really annoyed me about Restraint. The wife murdered her husband's daughter, killed him and got away with it even if only for a time. Even in Fatal Attraction, Glenn Close dies at the end either by a gun shot to the stomach or by slicing her own throat depending on which version you're watching and rightfully so. She was nuts and karma demands payment sometimes beyond the measure of the offense. But this wife gets to not only murder but revel in it? Not cool. The husband should have been the one looking at the wife on the slab after putting one in her head for the trouble she caused. He should have gone off into the sunset with his daughter, lived happily ever after (single). The end.But we can't have nice things.

The title and description tell us what is going on in this movie, so it's not a secret. A newlywed with violent tendencies finds it more and more difficult to restrain her violent urges.Let's see, a young wife is dreaming of shoveling a large amount of dirt in the first scene. Foreshadowing? And then she is physically woken from that dream by someone having sex with her body behind her back. I've heard that people who are sexually used/abused while they are in some sleeping state develop insomnia, night terrors, sleep walking.Then Angela, the young wife, gets eats some berries from a bush. She doesn't know if they are poisonous or not. But what the heck, she has no restraint and she doesn't feel much regard for her body, it is no longer under her control.She buys cigarettes, but she doesn't smoke. She stops off to buy wallpaper when she's supposed to be driving the kid to school. (She is now the nanny, maid, cook, and on demand sex-slave even though they could afford some help for her.)She is out of touch with her body because too many other people have claims on it. (Oh no, what if she became pregnant? Sharing her body with another life and changing her brain chemistry would be way too much.) She lives inside her head a lot. Probably thinking about the various objects in her surroundings that she is trying not to use for her violent deeds, like a large plastic container, the land in the back yard, the kitchen knife, the razor blade.Angela says when she was young she got to take care of a baby chicken or something like that on a farm. She also remembers the barbed wire that can be used to poke an eye out. Wonder what happened to her pet chicken? Her parents were there that summer, but somehow they both died of cancer before she got married. That doesn't sound very likely.She's been on two ant-depressants since she was a teenager but then when off them for the wedding. Good idea! And she never told her husband. She doesn't like to take pills and doesn't like to ask for help.She loves the story "The Yellow Wallpaper" which is what this movie made me think of the first time I saw her staring at the wallpaper in the trailer. Her nightgowns are dowdy, like the old woman in the story about being shut up in the yellow room, but she's got cool tattoos. I think the reason she doesn't wear underwear is because that would be a restraint (or constraint, and socio-political symbolism) and she either doesn't want the constraint on her body and mind, or she just doesn't care about what goes on her body. Either reason works for me.Her husband is a major penis and shows no restraint when it comes to visiting sex shops and yelling at everybody. But, he's not the bad guy here.The story and acting are fabulous. I can't believe this is supposed to be and indie.

at the beginning. By the end of the film I couldn't understand why this extremely unsympathetic female character, who deliberately went off her medication, was doing these horrible things. Was this supposed to be an anti family or feminist statement? Why did her husband marry a psychotic? He just didn't get her into the hospital lockdown fast enough. I would not call that "controlling". He stays in her corner for far too long. No patience with this one at all.

What makes this movie scary? It's partially in the not knowing exactly what is going on (what are the woman's motives, was it the berries she ate on the camping trip that started doing this to her, is she simply completely crazy?) and it's the triggers laced throughout, including marital rape, self-inflicted abortion (or an attempt, anyway), and child abuse.There was something mystifying and addicting about this film. Even though you don't get to know the history or the current story of the characters, you still feel this overwhelming urge to watch. It's a horror film in the psychological sense. This isn't a film filled with blood and gore, though there is some blood. This is a film that is terrifying because of what you see AND what you don't see.

Gave it a good 20 minutes, then I couldn't stomach anymore BOREDOM! If you can enjoy watching a dull, expressionless woman slowly ironing wallpaper, then you deserve losing an hour and a half of your life for nothing. I got more entertainment from reading the reviews, as I found out the husband was "Bobbie" from Twin Peaks fame. I kept thinking he looked familiar!