A mysterious figure gradually advances upon a rural home in this confusing chiller, which wastes some decent nightmare fuel

Sometimes a single image is enough to carry a film so far. This pared-down Blumhouse chiller opens with a brisk, detailed overview of the disarray that a remote rural fixer-upper has fallen into since the death of a paterfamilias. No power; no food in the cupboards; a bereft, incapacitated mother (Danielle Deadwyler) leaving two children to fend for themselves; cracks in the plasterwork offering their own doleful commentary. Then, one morning the lingering spectre of absence is compounded by an unignorable presence: a huddled figure in mourning garb (Okwui Okpokwasili) who appears on a chair in the backyard, and over a single day moves gradually ever closer to the property. That’s the image – as unnerving for us as it is for the characters – and there’s your elevator pitch: Grandma’s Footsteps: The Movie.

Sam Stefanak’s script is at its strongest when leaning into the folkloric. The fact that that this house is unplugged from the wider world registers as both plot point and mission statement. Spanish genre specialist Jaume Collet-Serra precisely establishes where the woman sits in relation to the house, and cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski’s sunny images approach an uncanny Andrew Wyeth beauty – although we’re mostly indoors looking out, as the yard woman proves less significant in herself than for the reactions she provokes. If the obvious reading is that this interloper represents unaddressed grief, Stefanak complicates matters by yanking at unravelling threads: the mother’s stitches and sanity; a dog’s chain. It’s not just the woman who is shifting.