Allure Movie Review

『The Destruction Born of Obsession: A Dangerous Seduction Hidden Within Youth』

🎥 Film Overview

🎬 Title: Allure (2018)
🌍 Country: 🇨🇦 Canada
🎞️ Genre: Drama / Psychological Thriller / Queer
⏳ Runtime: 105 minutes
📢 Directors: Carlos Sanchez, Jason Sanchez
🖋️ Screenplay: Carlos Sanchez, Jason Sanchez
📺 Platform: VOD, Samuel Goldwyn Films Distribution

👩‍💼 Cast: Evan Rachel Wood – Laura Drake (Laura)
Julia Sarah Stone – Eva (Eva)

🧩 Deep Story Exploration (Spoilers)

🌪️ Resonance Born from Emotional Deficiency

Laura and Eva meet while both are suffering from profound emotional voids in their lives. These voids become the core force that drives their pathological resonance with each other.

• Laura is the perpetrator and emotionally unstable figure in this relationship. Her primary deficiency lies in her desperate need for control, stability, and self-assurance. Laura constantly seeks someone to dominate and protect as a means of reaffirming her worth. Wearing the mask of a seductive savior, she approaches Eva with manipulative tenderness.
• Eva is the victim and vulnerable teenage girl. Growing up under overbearing and controlling parents, she yearns for love, freedom, and independence. To Eva, Laura appears as someone who treats her like an adult, understands her emotions, and offers what she perceives as “true love and freedom.” Laura identifies this vulnerability and assumes the role of rescuer Eva longs for, drawing her into an exploitative relationship cloaked in affection.

🖤 From Seduction to Imprisonment

After Eva willingly moves into Laura’s home, their relationship quickly transforms from a passionate romance into a toxic captivity.

• Emotional exploitation: Laura imposes sexual and emotional intimacy on Eva. Their bond, built on Laura’s anxiety and obsession, leads her to erupt in jealousy whenever Eva shows interest in the outside world or others.
• Physical confinement: Laura’s acts of locking Eva inside and forbidding her from leaving expose the relationship as child abuse and imprisonment under adult control. Laura treats Eva as her personal doll—a tool to isolate and contain her own instability.
• Eva’s pathological compliance: Despite fear, Eva cannot completely sever ties with Laura. Mirroring Stockholm Syndrome, Eva becomes dependent on her abuser’s attention and affection. Within Laura’s unstable love, she searches for the fragment of maternal affection she never received from her own mother.

🛡️ The Cycle of Abuse: When the Victim Becomes the Perpetrator

The relationship between Laura and Eva vividly portrays “The Cycle of Abuse.”

• Projection of the past: Laura’s controlling and violent behavior reflects the trauma and abuse she once suffered from her father. She unconsciously projects these experiences onto Eva, becoming the abuser she once feared, perpetuating the cycle with a new victim.
• The surrogate “family”: For Laura, Eva is not just a lover but a replacement for a controllable, idealized “family.” This pathological attempt to forcibly heal her childhood instability and familial disconnection through Eva reveals her inner desperation for belonging.

🔗 Catastrophe and Incomplete Liberation

Their relationship ultimately collapses into tragedy, but the film leaves open questions about the aftermath of their shared destruction.

• The final act of exploitation: When Laura loses everything and seeks to cling to Eva for emotional survival, Eva inflicts irreversible harm upon her. This act represents Eva’s desperate attempt to reclaim agency and break free from victimhood.
• Incomplete freedom: Though Eva escapes Laura physically, the psychological scars left behind suggest that returning to a “normal life” will be nearly impossible.

The relationship between Laura and Eva coldly exposes the raw reality of emotional exploitation and violence disguised as love. Their fatal bond serves as a dark warning about how love can amplify the deepest wounds and anxieties within the human psyche.

🎬 The Power of Performance and the Limits of Narrative

Allure is an intense and unsettling psychological thriller that tackles the disturbing yet crucial theme of psychological manipulation and abuse. Evan Rachel Wood’s haunting performance carries the film, though the uneven narrative and ambiguous handling of its subject matter leave viewers deeply disturbed, making it a film that is “difficult to feel pleasure from, even after watching.” Despite this discomfort, the film holds significance as a realistic depiction of how abusive relationships operate.

🎯 Personal Rating (Based on Preference)

💕 Intimacy Level: ♥♥
⭐ Rating: ★★