I'm not sure if this was meant to be a horror or a thriller, but to me, it was definitely more of a thriller - and a pretty good one, at that.
There are spoilers in this review.
It focuses on the story of two young girls. Lily, aged six, and Victoria, aged eight. Five years earlier, their father went on a wild killing spree, then decided to speed down an icy road with the two girls (then one and three years old), crashing into a woody area where an abandoned small house was. The father had planned on killing Victoria, but a mysterious monster appears and kills him instead, leaving the two young girls alone with the monster for five years. They were found and brought home where they were cared for by the fathers' brother, Lucas, and his not-so child friendly girlfriend, Anabel (that's how the subtitles spelt it, I'm not sure if that spelling is correct).
I'm not sure if this was how the story was meant to be received, but to me, it came across to show the true beauty of a mother-child bond, even after death. For this reason, I found myself on several occasions feeling sympathy for the monster - a monster who we later learn is called Edith, a woman who used to live in a hospital for the insane, where she took her baby the nuns were caring for and jumped off a cliff, killing her - especially the connection she had with the youngest of the girls, Lily.
Similarly, I found the bond later formed between Anabel and Victoria an even more beautiful bond (mostly because it wasn't morally wrong and didn't end in death). I, too, don't want kids and never do so hopefully the message here was not women have maternal instincts, whether they realise it or not but rather love can form an unlikely bond. It also reminds me of the dance done in Sia's music video, Elastic Heart, which also makes my heart feel weird things.
As the actual thriller part of the movie goes, it was pretty wonderful. It had plenty of jump scares. It didn't contain anything terrifying, nothing to keep you up at night, but what it did have was parts to make your heart beat a little faster and your brain wondering what would happen next. The wolf-like nature the girls were in when they were first found, I found particularally interesting (and that whole Victoria thing called Lucas her dad just broke my heart, if these kids don't grow up with deep phsychological problems, they escaped a very narrow door).
