Lavender is not dissimilar to the also Canadian-made Cadence (2016), which played at the same festival. Both feature strange happenings and nightmare visions on a family farm. Both films also arrive at endings that reveal much of what is going on is a fugue state where the heroine has blocked off memory of a violent incident in the past and created an elaborate fantasy and imaginary characters in its place. (Lavender also manages to have its cake and eat it too by being both a fugue state film and a ghost story).

Lavender is technically well made and contains some very nice photography of the Ontario countryside. The actors cast all play with a reasonable conviction in their parts. The main problem with Lavender is that it feels as though it is well-rehearsed and a technically polished film but one where everything is delivered by automatic without much involvement. Ed Gass-Donnelly delivers a few scares but they are so tepid as to be instantly forgettable.

Everything wheels around to deliver a big M. Night Shyamalan twist involving one of the ridiculously contrived psychological fugue states that have been popularised by films such as Abandon (2002), Identity (2003), Secret Window (2004), Black Swan (2010), Shutter Island (2010), The Ward (2010), Dream House (2011), Goodnight Mommy (2014) and bear no resemblance whatsoever to any psychological state observed in real life. You sort of realise as the end of writing this that if you are reduced to complimenting the photography and calling it a technically well made film then Lavender doesn’t have a whole lot else going on.
 

Trailer here:-