Daughter

Sometimes, Deshon’s obsessive attention to detail drains some of the fun from Daughter, and the movie might burn too slowly to please every horror fan. Still, the movie is a rare achievement, turning a small budget and a simple story into a cinematic experience we can unravel to find new things over multiple viewings.

Daughter is not scary, but I don’t think it was intended to be. I wanted to see what was going to happen next while enjoying the slow-paced ride all the way to the finish line.

At points I wondered if this is a film that tells us anything about anything. Some of its ideas feel a bit thrown together.

The symbolism remains heavy, but it’s all in service of a powerful prisoner’s story, about the small ways people find freedom.

Only the most committed genre fans and academic-minded masochists will want to hang around until the bitter, arthouse-meets-choose-your-own-adventure style ending.