By Mark Saldana
Rating: 3.5 (Out of 4 Stars)
My favorite Midnighter of the festival is an utterly disturbing film about an animal shelter employee named Seth (Dominic Monaghan) who becomes so obsessed with his former high school classmate Claire (Jeanette McCurdy) that he takes her prisoner. Keeping her locked up in a cage in the shelter’s basement, Seth gets a rude awakening when he discovers some deep, dark and alarming secrets about his prisoner and soon realizes that he may never, ever set her free. Seth has opened Pandora’s Box and there’s no going back.
Written by Jeremy Slater and directed by Carles Torrens, Pet is unrelenting, brutal, and frightening. The film is full of twists and surprises that I could not anticipate whatsoever. Both Dominic Monaghan and Jeanette McCurdy deliver exceptional and startling performances. Slater and Torrens deliver a psychological thriller that will leave audiences floored and breathless.