Advertise with us and reach over 500,000 horror fans all over the world!
TO THY REST (2025)
3 stars
Miracle Media. Digital. 21st April
A series of strange imagery flash across the screen – A man awakens. It is travelling medium Arthur Sydenham Sharp (Rikki Chamberlain). He is at Helsinki airport, waiting to be picked up.
Janet (Rebecca Ward), his agent, calls. She tells him to go outside to find his car pick up. It is the last stop on his tour and he is due to stay in a luxury hotel in Finland.
He waits and waits in the cold. He eventually finds his taxi and it’s rather grumpy and rude driver. After a long drive, they get to the very remote destination. He is greeted by the efficient and somehwat brusque Helena (Monika Lindeman), the day manager. It is late and there is no food available, despite Arthur being very hungry. She shows him to his room and informs him they can meet tomorrow about setting up the room for what he calls a ‘gathering’ – a kind of seance.
He settles in and goes over some files for the next day. He needs information about how people have died. He is shocked to suddenly sees a woman with outstretched arms, dripping wet, who just as quickly disappears. One of his visions? Or just because he is tired…
Wandering down to the foyer, in search of some sustenance (something of a running thread) he meets the English night porter (played by the director Darren McStay) who gets him a beer. The hotel seems empty but he is assured there are other guests there.
Back in the room Arthur goes over his notes. A local mystery where 13 people were found dead, the largest mass suicide in Finland. Connected to the Order of the Half Moon and some kind of purification ritual. Psychotropics were found in their systems.
He tries to use skills in psychometry to try and get some kind of ‘reading’ but to no avail.
The next day he starts his talk – the people attending start to ask him questions, asking him to tell them about the hotel, what happened there, what is still happening. There is talk about spirits. Ghost stories. Mystics. Mediums. Arthur is then struck by one of his scary visions again.
What is going on? Is it connected to the mystery of the suicides. Devil worship perhaps? There are sequences in Finnish with no English subs, which adds to the creepiness.
Obviously made on a low budget, the script by McStay and Henry Valo, has good ideas at play but ultimately felt unsatisfying. Hints are dropped throughout of what is going on in the area but it never really fully explores them and the ending can either be read as undercutting everything that you have just seen or maybe something far more sinister. The best thing here is Rikki Chamberlain – he’s terrific as the dour, always hungry, Scottish medium, trying to work out what is occurring. With a run time under 80 minutes, this felt like an episode from a TV show.
