Good afternoon, House of Madness orphans:
If you knew you were adopted, would you eventually try and track down your birth parents, or would you be content never knowing who they were, and focus on the parents that actually raised you? Not being adopted myself, I have no idea how I would choose in such a scenario, but I can't imagine the decision is an easy one. Would your adoptive parents feel betrayed if you sought out your birth mother, or would they be supportive, and push you towards finding the closure you so desperately covet?
For Hunter White (Alicia von Rittberg), the decision is extremely difficult; she's had a fantastic childhood, being raised by her father Ray (Clarence Smith), a former police officer who discovered Hunter as a baby after she was abandoned in a graveyard with nothing but a silver crucifix, and wrapped in some kind of ritualistic blanket covered in symbols. As Hunter packs for her new life at Georgetown University, her father has zero idea of his daughter's ulterior motives; Hunter is going to Georgetown, but failed to mention her little pit-stop in Norway along the way in search of her birth mother. For Hunter, it isn't so much as connecting with her mother, as it is finding out why she abandoned her in the cemetery all those years ago.
Hunter thinks she knows who her real mother is, but upon meeting her at one of her music gigs, she learns that her mother isn't Cecilia (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), but is in fact Anna Norheim (Maria Alm Norell), the girlfriend of Cecilia's former band member Kristian (Morten Holst). Turns out the couple had many issues, and Kristian went crazy when learning Anna abandoned Hunter, and killed her in a vengeful rage, leaving him committed to a mental asylum where he remains to this day. Upon learning this, Hunter poses as an American journalist, and heads out to speak to her real father.
To say things don't go well with her father would be like saying things didn't go as planned during a Thanksgiving dinner between Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell, but Hunter still has her biological family in the area to get some answers to the many questions she has. Upon meeting her grandfather Torstein (Stig R. Amdam), she realizes there are secrets he's hiding, and he's not being completely honest with her regarding her mother. Not only is her grandfather seemingly harbouring secrets, but her cousin Stian (Herman Tommeraas) seems to be acting peculiar, and gives off some serious Jerry Lee Lewis vibes with his perverted demeanor.
Is there actually more going on behind the scenes, and is Hunter unknowingly disrupting some kind of ancient evil cover-up, or is this all a twisted manifestation created by a mind that so desperately wants answers to life long questions? I'll be honest, I had a really hard time getting past a girl who was born and raised in Massachusetts having a European accent all film, and a lot of the 'mystery' seemed fabricated in order to progress a muddled story the director sloppily tried to disguise. In the end, I was mildly entertained, but the atmosphere in "Leave" definitely didn't have me crying for my mommy.
Madness Meter: 4.6/10
NB
