This is a "slice of life" movie about a family Thanksgiving in a slummy apartment with bad lighting and worse light bulbs. The characters are annoying and unlikable. It's not spoiling anything to say that if you expect something interesting or suspenseful or even just curious to happen, you will be sorely disappointed.

I NEVER give a score of 1 to a movie. Most films are at least a 5, the equivalent of "A for effort".

This waste of 2 valuable hours of my life waiting for something interesting to happen isn't worth that generosity.

Stephen Karam has not only adapted his Tony award-winning play for the screen but has also directed it and an exceptional job he's made of it, too. Set almost entirely inside a virtually empty New York apartment that Beanie Feldstein's Brigid and her partner Richard, (Steven Yeun),appear to be moving into it's definitely theatrical as her father, mother, sister and grandmother join them for a Thansgiving that will turn out to be memorable for all the wrong reasons. It's the kind of apartment that Rosemary's baby might feel happy being born in, in a building that has clearly seen better days and is the kind of place that enjoys working its old black magic on anyone who visits.

In some respects it's thoroughly banal but in a deeply disconcerting way. Karam definitely has an ear for the kind of everyday, inconsequential dialogue that we call 'small talk' yet which tells us all we need to know about the people we are interacting with and his cast of six are all superb; this is a great ensemble piece with Jayne Houdyshell, repeating her Tony award-winning performance , the stand-out. Of course, it won't do any business. This is too like real life and not enough like the movies to appeal to anything like a mass audience but in its very niche way it's utterly brilliant, a horror movie in all but name and one of the best films you will see this year.

This movie is based upon a book and a stage play. This movie has only got one small setting: a rundown new house in New York City, with broken electricity, cockroaches and extremely noisy neigbours.

And exactly this rundown house is the place where a Thanksgiving dinner is taking place with a family, of whom everybody is crumbling under emotional, financial and health problems.

This doesnt sound attractive to watch. And it definitely is not a cheery Christmas movie. But it is still a decent picture:

The good: it's refreshing to see actors plain acting. And nothing else. Just that. Long scenes, totally uninterrupted by editing. I just see a family get together, who are eating and drinking and talking together. Nothing much happens. But because the acting it top notch, it is still fascinating to watch this family chemistry unfold during a dinner.

The mood of this movie is (purposely) directed in such a way that I as a viewer get the sense that this place and this family is cursed or haunted in some way. There is a really dark undercurrent. NOT horror, more of a depressed, bleak feeling.

Any bad? This is NOT the movie you wanna see at the holidays with your family. Because it's quite depressing, sad and bleak. But it is still worth while watching, but probably only suited for the die hard arthouse movie fans, who can stumach a depressing family get together in a cockroach infested house...