[Review] ‘Separation’ Fails to Win Custody of Effective Scares and Storytelling

As for the scares, well, none exist. The Grisly Kin and central supernatural antagonist look cool. From Bell’s imagination made realized by Hungarian artist Zsombor Huszka, the puppets and personified entities that appear throughout are well designed but fail to impact. Much of that is due to the staging. The entities often simply stand in a corner without any music stings or build-up to inject necessary tension. Despite one entity’s unsettling physicality, the creatures never bother to attack or demonstrate any real menace. It doesn’t help that many of the actors fail to look alarmed by their appearance. Jeff’s facial expression upon his first encounter with the main ghost reads as confused boredom, not fear.