FILM REVIEW: WHAT JOSIAH SAW (2021) DIRECTED BY VINCENT GRASHAW

Josiah is a well-made film. The direction and cinematography are suitably dark and oppressive, and I would definitely be up for more written by Dilts or directed by Grashaw.

What Josiah Saw (2021)
Written by Robert Alan Dilts
Directed by Vincent Grashaw


A Film Review by: Mark Walker


A family with buried secrets reunites at a farmhouse after two decades to pay for their past sins. (IMDB)

I had a bit of a tough time with Josiah and what he saw. On the one hand we have some impressive performances from the main cast; Robert Patrick chews the scenery as the over-bearing, drunken father, Scott Haze as the youngest, troubled son and Nick Stahl and Kelli Garner as his equally troubled older twin siblings. Matched with the slow burn direction and the oppressive, southern gothic atmosphere, Josiah builds up the tension between the family carefully and deliberately over the 2-hour running time.

On the other hand, I got a little distracted.

Josiah is built like an anthology and divided into three parts. We start with an introduction to Josiah himself (Patrick) and his younger son Thomas (Haze). They live on an old, run-down family farm, away from town and away from other people; Thomas, legally obliged to do so through a restraining order from his ex-wife. Josiah and Thomas have a difficult relationship, strained further when Josiah begins to see visions of his dead wife who took her own life when the kids were younger.

Meanwhile, an oil company is buying up land around the town and their farm is one of the last plots they are trying to get their hands on. Writing to Thomas and his siblings, Eli and Mary (Stahl and Garner) with an offer they can’t refuse, the firm unwittingly draws the family together opening old wounds and revealing secrets from a past life everyone is trying to escape.

I liked this set-up, it draws you into the world of Josiah and Thomas, where things are not quite right. However, the film then takes a big turn when it introduces us to his brother Eli and then sister Mary in two chapters that leave Thomas and Josiah completely behind for a good hour of the film. While I understand the reasoning behind this, setting up both siblings, their lives and backstory, the film moved away from the heart of the story for too long and my attention wandered.

Much of what we learn in that central hour of the film could have been condensed and delivered faster; the whole film (in my opinion) could have easily coped with having thirty minutes cut from its runtime. The film focusses on sins of the past, the trauma and events of the three kids’ childhood and they would have had more time to confront those demons and explore their fears, the sooner they were all thrown together on the farm: the childhood home where all that trauma was created.

And, as soon as they were all back together, just 30 minutes before the end of the film, it drew me back in. Revelations come flooding out and the realisation of what happened in the past and the relationships between the family are both unsettling and horrific. They are not entirely clear either, the narrators not being the most reliable of people; do we really get the whole truth and nothing but it? There are multiple interpretations of what Josiah saw and none of them are particularly pleasant, but the film works best when focussing on them.

Either way, this is a very dysfunctional family, and the film is better when they are together, reliving that past trauma. For me, the film should have concentrated on this more, rather than giving us a 30-minute short story about Eli stealing gold from ‘Gypsies’ (sic) that really didn’t have much bearing on the rest of the film. The same can be said for Mary’s section. While these chapters provide hints and suggestions of what happened in the past and they do build their characters, it feels like there was a little bit of filler in these sections.

And that is why this review is so hard.

On the one hand I was glancing at my watch in the middle section of the film. On the other, I was glued to the screen for the first and last 30 minutes. There is also one major reveal that has a massive impact on the whole set up but feels rushed when it arrives and could have been used to create further tension between the three siblings; the film moves past it before you even have time to fully process the ramifications.

Josiah is a well-made film. The direction and cinematography are suitably dark and oppressive, and I would definitely be up for more written by Dilts or directed by Grashaw.

Being in the company of Josiah and Thomas is unsettling, but compelling. I “liked” the characters (none of them are particularly likeable, but they are well-played by the cast) and the setting. The run down, forgotten small town in southern, rural USA is always a good setting for hiding secrets and building dread.

Josiah scores well on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes for a horror and I can see where those scores are coming from. For me, the middle section of the film drags a little and feels at odds with the “better” bookends set on the farm where there is a greater sense of dread and horror at work. The film felt like an anthology to me, where the bookends linking the story threads were the best part of the movie, and we just didn’t get enough of them.

That is just me though, and your mileage may vary, it just didn’t quite work for me.
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Either way, What Josiah Saw is a decent Southern Gothic Horror that is worth a watch, even if you have to sit through a little padding to get to the good bits.

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