Seven years after her husband disappeared, Tricia is trying to move on with her life, preparing to sign the papers that would declare him dead in absentia when she finds herself being haunted by visions of him in her dreams, and then in her waking life. Tricia's sister, who has come to live with her, is trying to put her own past to rest and begins to piece together strange connections between Daniel's disappearance and the creepy pedestrian tunnel at the end of the street.
Ignore the bad cover art on the DVD and the fact that this feature film was financed thru kickstarter. Absentia (2011) is a slow build horror movie in the less is more department that is bleak and with a mounting real sense of dread from the very beginning. The filmmaking is not as polished as it could be, but the story and performances are all very solid, as is the music score which heightens the sense of doom. Absentia requires patience that is rewarded because of its slow, natural build up. Without certain visual and aural reminders, it might be be possible to forget for a while that what you're watching is a horror movie and not a dramatic character study. The truly strange stuff doesn't begin to happen until about the hour mark in this ninety minute movie, but when it does it really grabs your attention. It was also nice to see a horror movie, especially one with such modest resources strike out in new territory instead of rehashing what we've all seen hundreds of times before.
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