F.C. Rabbath’s ‘The Waiting’ (2020) Movie Review

While I’m not a fan of modern day paranormal cinema, I am a fan of storytelling that uses ghosts in creative ways to tell a unique idea. One of my favorites is Guillermo Del Toro’s Crimson Peak, a Gothic horror/drama that uses ghosts to help a young woman solve mysteries. I’ve recently discovered a new favorite to add to the list. That film is F.C. Rabbath’s The Waiting, which is about a young man getting a job at a hotel that happens to be haunted and falling for the ghostly resident in Room 101.

The Waiting is the latest film from F.C. Rabbath (A Brilliant Monster 2018). The film stars Nick Leali, Molly Ratermann, Laura Altair, Michelle Feliciano, Bob Myers, and Mark A. Marple.

The Waiting is about a young man named Eric Brady who is eager to start a new job at a older hotel. Eric soon finds out one of rooms is haunted and is affecting the reputation and sales of the hotel. In his attempt to help save his new job, he gathers the courage to attempt removing the ghost. But then both the ghost and Eric realized that there was something deeper connecting both of them.

Going into The Waiting, I had no clue what to expect. I wasn’t given a synopsis or a trailer to look at, just the poster art. I was pleasantly surprised by the film. The film follows Eric, a young man who is a bit of a slacker. His fiance has dumped him, and he’s in desperate need of a job. His mother gets him a job at a local hotel, one with a dark history that Eric will find out soon enough. Years ago, a young woman named Elizabeth committed suicide there. She is said to haunt Room 101. If you spend more than 60 seconds in the room, she appears. Eric tests this and finds it to be very true. The young man finds himself drawn to the room for selfish, career-advancing reasons, but what he wasn’t counting on is falling for Elizabeth and her reciprocating his feelings. As they form a bond, they find that the hotel will soon be shut down, and Eric races to find a way to save the hotel and the woman he loves.

I absolutely love the characters in The Waiting. As someone in my mid-thirties who has experienced a fair share of heartbreak and has no clue what he’s doing with his life, I found Eric to be incredibly relatable. Nick Leali does a great job portraying Eric, a man who is trying to find his way in the world and desperately wants to be loved. Molly Ratterman does a wonderful job as Elizabeth, the hotel’s resident spirit. When we first meet Elizabeth, she is pretty creepy, but the more Eric comes around and they connect, the more normal-looking she gets. Ratterman does excellent job of conveying her character’s emotions through body language and facial expression, as she has no dialogue for the majority of the film. She is also able to show us Elisabeth’s sense of humor. Nick Leali and Molly Ratterman have great chemistry together. Elizabeth and Eric are kindred spirits separated by the land of the living and the land of the dead.

I should also mention Laura Altair and Michelle Feliciano, who play the housekeepers Sally and Michelle, bringing a welcome sense of humor to their roles as the coworkers who befriend Eric.

I love the story of the film. Nothing quite played out the way I expected, and there was a twist I didn’t see coming, yet the film managed to have an overall hopeful and happy ending,

Final Thoughts

I didn’t know what to expect when I went into The Waiting, but I was pleasantly surprised by the film, which tells a sweet love story between two kindred spirits who are worlds apart. It features excellent performances and an ending that had me smiling. If you like supernatural love stories, I highly recommend The Waiting.