Pregnant Leah (Gaby Hoffmann) and her girlfriend June (Ingrid
Jungermann) move into a new, gorgeous apartment they got at an incredibly
low price together with their little daughter Lyle (Eleanor Hopkins) - and
while June's out working most of the time, it's Leah's job to touch up the
apartment and look after Lyle ... and in a mere moment of neglect, Lyle
falls out a window and is killed, even though Leah could have sworn that
window was closed and far too hard to open for a girl of less than two. Leah
expects foul play from the beginning, while everyone else thinks the shock
has just turned her a little paranoid - which would be understandable,
really. But then she finds out the house she lives in has become known as
a "dead house", where several children have died under
mysterious circumstances. Plus the landlady (Rebecca Street) acts
suspiciously weird, inasmuch as she sometimes pretends to be pregnant,
even if she seems to be a bit too old for this. Still, everybody thinks
Leah's just overly nervous, and understandably so because of her pregnancy
and the shock - everybody but Taylor (Kim Allen), a model living upstairs
from Leah ... but once Leah finds out what's reallygoing on, it's almost
beyond comprehension ... Lyle is one of those little
horror thrillers that really doesn't need much in terms of effects or
excitement to be genuinely creepy all the same: Instead it relies on its
deliberately slow narrative build-up to create unease, relies on a strong
ensemble cast to carry the story, and a subtle yet atmospheric directorial
effort really makes this work. Oh, and in case you wonder, yes there are
similarities to Rosemary's Baby, but those are only very fleeting. Totally
worth a watch!
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