Cults, Crooks, Creeps – and a New Mythos Here and There…Keri’s Top Ten Films of 2014 (Part 2 of 2)

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By Keri O’Shea

(For the first part of Keri’s Top Ten list, please click here.)

4 – Cold in July

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I’ve been a big fan of Michael C. Hall since his work in Dexter – particularly the early series – so it’s testament to his skill as an actor that here, in the dark and stylish Cold in July, I barely recognised him. Dexter was pathologically cool; Richard Dane, the family man Hall plays here, is a kind of nervy, mistake-prone Everyman, someone who shoots and kills an intruder at his home – before, in a mere moment, realising that the man he was alleged to have killed was not the man he found at his place at all. A sequence of cover-ups and mysteries unfold, drawing Dane into a murky and dangerous world, peopled with crooks and villains – and under the superb guidance of director Jim Mickle (one of my absolute favourite working directors) it is in negotiating this treacherous liminal space that Dane develops into a fully-rounded, self-aware man. As crime dramas go, this really is second to none. Whilst I watched and enjoyed Mickle’s riff on We Are What We Are this year, Cold in July really nails it for me in terms of craftsmanship and originality. What an absolute pleasure to see Don Johnson doing such a blackly comic turn here, too. You can check out my full review of Cold in July here.

3 – Under The Skin

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A film which is underpinned by myriad unanswered questions; a film with next to no dialogue, with much of what is spoken unscripted and spontaneous, via men who have no idea they are even being filmed – and a film which still baffles me now, months after I saw it. And yet, of all the films I’ve watched this year, Under The Skin must surely be the one which continues to engage and intrigue me most. My opinion of it has steadily developed and changed, moving from utter frustration at its strange structure and refusal to follow even the barest conventions of plot development, through to respect and now, coming full circle, into a staunch defender of the film; I’d even go so far as to say that I think it’s one of the most original science fiction films I’ve seen. It takes courage and hard work to make a film which can settle into your consciousness like that, let alone alter your ideas towards it months after the fact, but director Jonathan Glazer has done it, electing to let the strange story play out in incredibly suitable, eclectic fashion. Vital to all of this, of course, is Scarlett Johansson as the nameless female alien; she seems to have become the go-to gal for beautiful, emotionally detached alien characters since performing this role, but she really is perfect here, looking amazing but also chillingly inhuman; the beach scene in this film, for example, is genuinely disturbing and upsetting, and her utter inability to interpret what she is seeing as tragedy really underlines just how far she needs to travel to develop even a thread of the humanity she – eventually – seems to crave. Me and Ben discussed the film after we’d seen it earlier this year; as you can see, the jury was much more out at the time. If asked now, I’d say that Under The Skin is completely mesmeric – an odd yarn, but a fascinating one.

2 – Oculus

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When you happen to be someone that enjoys supernatural horror, you often find yourself chasing after it, always looking for the good stuff. You get incredibly picky; a scene here or a dissatisfying conclusion there, and you’ll tend to write off the whole. Or is that just me? Anyway, I know that many people disagree with me on Oculus (our own Steph was a bit more guarded in her response) but to me, this is an excellent example of supernatural horror. Mike Flanagan had already shown himself a capable horror director in Absentia; in Oculus, he made my skin crawl, which is the biggest compliment I can pay it.

It starts from a reasonably standard premise – a haunted object, in this case a mirror – and then veers off into its own domain, creating a back story which doesn’t give up all of its secrets, and establishing, in the hinterland between these secrets and the very new technology which siblings Kaylie and Tim are using, something deeply malevolent. You are never really given an indication of why the mirror does what it does: any moralising on the film’s behalf would very likely have weakened the overall impact, and certainly reduced the creep factor. We just have to accept that the haunting takes place, whilst also, via the very effective use of flashback, bear witness to a happy family being destroyed. But by what? It’s some time before there’s any indication that anything happened in the family home at all, beyond marital disharmony and children’s overactive imaginations. By the time you have any sort of certainty about the nature of what happened, you feel as bewildered and traumatised as the key players here. Mirrors have long held a place in horror tradition, too, and the artifact itself here is used to excellent effect.

1 – Spring

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Back in 2012, Resolution – the debut feature by filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead – made my end of year list, and they’ve gone and done it again with their second feature, Spring. Resolution was a highly original development on the ‘found footage’ genre and absolutely teeming with ideas, all of which were all pinned on a very risky end sequence, which gave lots of us pause for thought at the time; this isn’t an issue with Spring, although there is plenty of ambiguity to be had in the end sequence here, too. We don’t know what will befall the characters at the end of it all in Spring, but it ties in pleasingly with the film as a whole – a film bold enough to do the unthinkable for many filmmakers. It successfully establishes its own mythos. And what’s more, it works brilliantly. How often does an entirely new cinematic creature come around in this way? One of the real joys of following indie filmmaking is seeing inventiveness of this kind, and Spring is rife with pleasant surprises.

Add to this a genuine, believable array of characters, gorgeous locations, well-chosen moments of humour and a razor-sharp script, and there you have it – my film of the year, and I’m very excited to see what these guys do with the Aleister Crowley project they announced recently. You can check out my complete review here, and UK viewers – be sure to track this film down on its official release next year.