By Keri O’Shea
The first thing we find out about James (Patrick McFadden) is that he’s a guy who wears a cheap work suit like it’s doing horrible violence to him. He’s stressed, miserable, and what’s more, he’s not in good health either: suffering from double vision, numbness in his hands, and other symptoms which are a cause – or symptom – of his general disengagement from the 9-5. He attempts a career change from white-collar to blue-collar, but it’s to no avail and soon afterwards some bad news compels him to make an even bigger shift in his life. Essentially, James feels compelled to pack it all in, leaving the city altogether. He decides to head into the wilderness at the heart of British Columbia, with no evident plan beyond camping, contemplating, and waiting. This might not seem like the most sensible course of action but then, the life he’s leaving behind isn’t all that great either.
Life in the back of beyond is…different. It’s quiet, lonely and (probably) all the things James expected, even if it’s as lacking in home comforts as he – and we – might have guessed. But when he sees someone else in the vicinity, it spooks him, seriously shattering his calm. There’s evidence that other people have been there recently. Worse, he begins to hear things at night, and suspects that someone is deliberately targeting him – items move, his tent gets sabotaged, and everything points to some malice which he doesn’t understand…
The Interior got off on something of a wrong footing for me, all told. Looking back at the film overall, this is largely because director/writer Trevor Juras attempts to include wry humour in his early scene-setting and characterisation, which I felt didn’t work particularly well with the tone of the film overall. I can see why it was done. I can see that there are elements of the Absurd here, where a contrast is struck between the asinine and the profound. However, it takes a brave, or a lucky writer to be able to land jokes from the get-go and few can – really – achieve it, so the attempts to turn James into an everyman slacker figure are somewhat scattergun, even a bit juvenile, whilst the screen-time devoted to James’s flights of fancy took me out of his predicament rather than providing anything particularly enlightening about him. Anyway, this risky opening venture lasts for a whole thirty minutes, at which point the urban disaffection preamble finally cedes to the title screen.
It’s from here on in that James’s situation gets a lot more intriguing. And to be fair, Patrick McFadden – negotiating his way through a pretty hefty tonal shift whilst remaining on-screen for the vast majority of the time – acquits himself very well throughout. He certainly held my interest and, once he has made his journey into the wilderness, he achieves a great deal via almost no speech at all, relying on body language and facial expression to do the work for him. The fact that all of this takes place in the woods is significant. Sylvan horror is a big favourite of mine; there’s something primordial about woodland which does much of the work for a filmmaker by its very nature, but by no means all – and so The Interior looks beautiful on screen whilst also showcasing its formidable location, one which dwarfs James and denies him the solace he needs. What the film does somewhat differently (although by making use of some tried-and-tested elements along the way) is to turn the woods into a metaphor, in a manner I haven’t quite seen done like this before.
This took some getting used to, granted, and veteran viewers may spot the twist in events fairly early, but my god: whether you can guess at what’s going on or not, the ratcheting paranoia, unease and fear which this film rolls out in an overwhelmingly simple sequence of scenes is damn effective. All of this is achieved with no jump cuts whatsoever, and several scenes actually made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. The combination of the darkness, the unfamiliarity, the low-key terror of the protagonist and the slow, deliberate actions of whatever it is which James is seeing – this is unsettling, unnerving stuff. Some viewers might reject the film’s take on mood over action, but personally, I was engrossed by it, because it was done very well indeed.
So – I was all set, based on the first half hour, to write off The Interior as a bit of a crass attempt at comedy. Having watched the whole, I’m far more inclined to commend a film which may take some gambles, but manages to effectively encapsulate an existential type of dread within a horror setting which still has much to give. That’s a rare beast indeed. Neat endings don’t happen in The Interior, but there is ample appeal here for those who enjoy the very bleakest atmosphere indie cinema can offer.
The Interior just screened at Toronto After Dark – our thanks to them for granting us access to an advance screener.