Things Heard & Seen

Director: Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
Year Released: 2021
Rating: 1.0

Art history "professor" George (James Norton) and his wife Catherine (Amanda Seyfried) - who specializes in art restoration - move to the (fictitious) town of Chosen so George can work as a lecturer at (the also fictitious) Saginaw College ... but there's something wrong with both their house (which blinks, stinks and has a grizzly history) and their relationship.  There's plenty of talk about Emanuel Swedenborg (an eccentric mystic) and American painter George Inness (of the Hudson River School gang) but that's mostly a distraction to make you think it's smarter than it is, because at its core it's another #MeToo movie, with George being the embodiment of a Sociopathic Abuser: he cheats on her with a co-ed (Natalia Dyer), is "emotionally unavailable," a pothead and a liar ... and later, you discover he doesn't have a Ph.D., cheated to get his job and then has to start killing to keep up the lie(s).  There's absolutely zero nuance, and it's too similar to 2020's You Should Have Left, another "horror/thriller" that has no right to exist (Amanda is running the risk of becoming typecast as an unhappy wife).