Flay (2017)

Once more unto the minefield that is the indie horror scene. Director Eric Pham brings with him a degree of cult cred due to his association with Robert Rodriguez, having worked in visual effects on a number of RR movies including Sin City and Grindhouse; and his lead actor here, Elle LaMont, is also from the RR camp (bit parts in Spy Kids 4, Machete Kills, From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series and the upcoming Alita: Battle Angel). They’ve even drafted in some bona fide horror royalty with a cameo from Phantasm’s A Michael Baldwin. So, with all these admirable associations, we might be forgiven for expecting Flay to be a cut above your average, ho-hum, run of the mill, low budget, direct to the home market schlock horror.

And we’d be dead wrong for thinking as much. Despite an initially intriguing core conceit, Flay proves to be yet another been-there, done-that mish-mash of slasher and ghost story with severely shoe-horned in attempts at a social conscience. Occasionally it threatens to get interesting, but this doesn’t last long, and we’re spiralling off into inescapable tedium in no time at all.

We open on a montage of historical footage, somewhat reminiscent of the prologue of notorious 1976 shocker Who Can Kill A Child in that a) it highlights genuine atrocities from years gone by in a somewhat History Channel-esque manner, and b) it has no bearing whatsoever on the story that follows, and only serves to offer up some pretence of being historically and socially relevant. However, Flay’s opening does establish a couple of significant plot points: there is a set of chains which some evil colonialist invaders slapped on a Native American shaman at the point of his execution (guess what, they flayed his face off). Naturally pissed off by this turn of events, the shaman put a curse on the chains themselves that would see anyone who picked up the chains suffer a fate as grisly as his own.

We cut to the present day, and are introduced to Patricia Crane (Peggy Scott), a middle-aged Texan artist, recovering addict, and evidently a bit of a hippy given that she named her daughter Moon (the aforementioned Elle LaMont) and her son River (Dalton E Gray).  As we meet Patricia, she’s visiting Billy Salcedo (Baldwin), who is… okay, I’m going to level with you, I have absolutely no idea who this guy is or what his relationship is with any of the other characters in the film. I think he’s an art dealer of some sort, although his closeness to Patricia – plus the fact that Moon later greets him as if he’s her long-lost father – suggest there’s more to it than a professional relationship. However, he’s in and out of the film so fast that we never get any sense of what his actual purpose is, other than the time-honoured truth that casting a known horror actor in even the most insignificant of bit parts will ensure the film gets more attention from the horror press. Hoorah.

Anyway, whilst snooping around Billy’s place, Patricia finds herself strangely drawn to an old set of chains, which she intends to use in her artwork. Wouldn’t you know it, she’s found dead in her workshop the very next morning under mysterious circumstances. This prompts the return of Moon, who left home some years earlier out of frustration with her mother’s substance abuse, and an extremely uneasy reunion with her adolescent brother River ensues. While they deal with their grief and struggle to piece together what happened, those curse chains just keep on calling to anyone who gets near them – and once someone has the tenacity to touch them, they soon find themselves experiencing nightmarish visions of being stalked by a big old creepy Slenderman-looking ghoul.

So why does the supernatural antagonist look like the Slenderman, when it’s Native American in origin? Beats me, beyond the fact that the Slenderman angle is also a big sales pitch. And why, when the title is Flay and the opening sequence emphasises this is what was done to brutalised Native Americans, don’t the victims of this supernatural force also get their faces flayed off? Again, beats me. And why, when the film seems to be setting itself up as another commentary on the shame of America’s origins, does it promptly veer off into cookie-cutter teen slasher territory? Once more, your guess is as good as mine; although to me it seems evident that the filmmakers were trying to toe the line between standard commercially acceptable horror and something bolder – but they woefully misjudged the balance.

Flay not only fails to present an interesting story, but also fails to deliver on most of the basic blood-and-thunder pleasures it teases. The stunningly irrelevant title implies something very gruesome, but there’s little to no gore on display; nor is there any sex or nudity, which in an odd way makes the blatant objectification of LaMont and co-star Violett Beane feel even sleazier than it would have otherwise, given its total irrelevance to proceedings.

I suppose the most undemanding of horror fans may find Flay a passable enough way to kill an hour and a half – but we really should demand more, even from disposable fare like this. Still, credit where it’s due, the film’s use of digital FX is more impressive than we typically see at this level; this, I think it’s fair to say, is the director’s real area of expertise, and on this evidence I wonder if he’d be better off sticking to that.

Flay will be available digitally in the US on 6th March, via Distribber.