Occasionally, an indie film turns up which has an interesting backstory, and The Bench is one of those. Originally filmed in 2007 or thereabouts, the film has remained in limbo for seventeen years which, to give the heavily retro-style voiceover which opens the film its due, affords it some kind of a retro feel, even if not quite matching the 70s style it goes for in places – namely, during the brief introductory voiceover, and after the halfway point, when the filming style changes. It’s also interesting that the film feels it needs to open with a warning that social attitudes and language may have changed since 2007; 2007, really? Maybe there’s one sequence which might raise an eyebrow. But whether this warning is necessary is in the eye of the beholder and could, again, reflect the film’s clear love of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and a whole raft of other, early slashers, which really do showcase archaic attitudes.
For the most part, however, The Bench is much more dour, taking rural Scotland as its setting, and focusing on a group of actors who positively scream Noughties. So, after the voiceover, we meet two characters who are only really around to establish the dangers of being lost in remote Scotland by night; this scene also establishes something the film actually does rather well, which is to showcase natural dialogue and dialect. This couple we oh-so briefly meet are shocked out of their late night bickering about whether or not to switch on the Sat Nav by the sudden presence of a girl in the road. They hit her, so the guy, Ben, gets out to investigate and gets promptly whacked by a mysterious, maniacal stranger with a blade – who then turns his attention to the female passenger.
Cards on the table time, then, so far as the film is concerned, but we shift away from the slasher-by-night mode, at least for a short while, and catch up with a group of twentysomething friends on the road, heading off on a camping trip, which people strangely persist in doing. They pass a broken down car and stop to help the driver, a lone female called Alex (Jennifer Byrne): she proudly announces that she’s also on her way to the woods, because she has recently inherited a cabin out there. Again, as with the camping thing, visiting cabins in woods is something people persist in doing, but perhaps not everyone is as acquainted with horror films as this film’s audience are likely to be. Anyway, the group of friends drop off Alex’s vehicle at a garage, because it can’t be fixed straight away, and end up taking her out to the cabin, which someone fairly opines looks more ‘like a shed’. The British Isles are far more shed-orientated than cabin-orientated. They all decide to stay there with her nonetheless, though picking up with a few more pro-camping stragglers along the way.
Obviously, this isn’t going to turn out to be a lovely time because we already know that there’s a maniac out there somewhere given to mindless killings, and so things do turn out to be rather unpleasant in The Bench – echoing and downright emulating a number of the other slashers which have preceded it. Of course, one of the snags for many film fans is that slashers replicate slashers, right down to the paper-thin plot which nearly always utilises a backstory which reveals: a wronged and embittered madman out there somewhere, given to vengeance/re-enacting his own brutal treatment/driven by significant dates, days, phases of the moon etc. Like its forebears, The Bench is more about the indignity and the violence than it is about nuanced storytelling, which is fine – it won’t be for everyone, but nor were the films which influenced it. But plot issues aside, is this project worth seeing?
Yes, on the whole, it is. It’s clearly very low budget, even by indie filmmaking standards, with a largely (at the time) inexperienced cast and crew – but they deserve credit for doing their level best with what they have. There’s some decent, naturalistic dialogue, with normal people vibes (not easy to achieve, and far costlier projects than this have made a complete mess of it). There’s also some decent acting here more generally, complete with just the right amount of self reflection – such as referring to horror tropes, without only doing that – and humour, very Scottish humour. There are probably too many minor characters introduced, which serves as a warning that these people are there as slasher collateral, but even given that you know full well bad murders are on the way, those murders are pretty effective. Yes, they’re low key, but they still land well, coming across as nasty and gnarly with plenty of attention rightly paid to sound design. There’s also a range of shots and camerawork, with good use of natural light and, elsewhere, more stylised shots. The fact that this film sat on the proverbial shelf for so many years but has finally been released also speaks to the fact that, even if it’s not quite a passion project, The Bench is at least a triumph of the bloody minded, who share a sense that the film deserves to get done and out there.
Are there issues? Of course, some minor and some more serious. Filmmakers the world over struggle with party scenes – like tattoos, they seem impossible to fake for the camera – and some sequences feel like filler, which is one of the hardships of such a simplistic kind of plotline, where it can feel like you’re simply waiting for ‘things to kick off’. There are some odd edits and non sequiturs in places, likely due to the length of time which has expired between filming and final cut, and even given the genre, the backstory could have quite easily have been more strongly delineated, even with a comparatively brief runtime of seventy minutes. But for all these little tics and foibles, slasher fans (in particular) would likely still find some pleasure in this one, and overall the film does draw you in, toeing a strange line between unexceptional – for the reasons discussed above – and commendable – ditto. Some of the over-exuberant reviews popping up on IMDb may harm rather than help the film, quite frankly, as they’re a little too glowing and promise too much, but hey: to make a more measured assessment, I’d say that, even taking into account some of the issues which have beset The Bench, it is worthy of a look, and more than enough evidence that writer/director Sean Wilkie has ideas to bring to the table.
The Bench is available now on Prime Video and Tubi.