We start Pins and Needles (2024) in the same brisk, grisly manner which remains consistent throughout the film. The first quick lesson we learn is that blood is hard to shift, even when you’re scrubbing it away as hard as you can. We get this message before the title screen even appears, mind; this is not a film here to waste time, and it’s great to see.
However, this is just a brief shock before we move elsewhere, first getting a sense of scale – via shots of wide, open spaces – then zooming in on the strange minutiae of nature, its insects and invertebrates, squirming in jars. This is because our protagonist Max (Chelsea Clark) is an environmental science grad student doing field work, out collecting specimens. She’s heading off early though, getting a ride from her friend Harold (Daniel Gravelle) – a nice guy, if a little misguided, who has arranged to pick up a friend-of-a-friend on the way who’s pretty obviously a small time drug dealer. This bad call is partly responsible for a chain of events: a near-miss police stop, a hasty detour and an unplanned pitstop.
Fortunately – although the ominous soundtrack does anything but signpost this as ‘fortunate’ – their vehicle has gotten a flat right outside a surprisingly state-of-the-art house, right out there in the middle of nowhere: surely the people who live there can help? Max heads off to investigate – and so it begins, with Max, a Type 1 diabetic, at the mercy of her depleting insulin supplies, as well as everything else which begins to escalate once they’ve encountered the owners of the house. But as it soon turns out, only the house itself can offer any hope for finding the means to get the hell out of there and to safety, leading to a kind of double jeopardy for Max, who has to get inside to get outside. What she discovers inside is grotesque, alluding to the right amounts of rumour and urban myth about the super rich whilst turning it into a tense, gruesome game of survival.
Whilst later in the film director/writer James Villeneuve – who also directed the superb Vicious Fun – permits more and more slivers of dark humour to creep in, the set-up in Pins and Needles really isn’t comedic; from the outset, it has an artfully awry vibe, a feeling of something being ‘off’. It’s hard to pin it down. It could be because of the oppressive soundscape; maybe it’s the lush-looking, but disjointed early scenes; it could be the feeling of being in medias res right from the start, or even just the expert use of handheld cameras to keep us feeling like we’re stuck on Max’s level, enduring horrible surprise after horrible surprise alongside her. Whatever it is – probably all of this and more besides – it does its job, spinning a visually strong, atmospheric experience which is sustained.
Whilst our first up-close introduction to affluent homeowners Frank (Ryan McDonald) and Emily (Kate Corbett) feels like the film’s first big gear shift, with their casual cruelty being presented through some overblown dialogue, it does begin the process of adding in that dark humour whilst also resembling a lot of the most effusive claptrap spoken by the world’s very real super rich, whose words and performances are no kin together. This is a Canadian film, but the way Pins and Needles combines its wide open spaces, slick modern interiors, arrogant affluence and have-more cruelty feels very American. That could just be a personal perception thing. Hints given as to the source of all this wealth surpass land borders, anyway.
Whilst you may recognise some of the elements in this film, because there are a lot of familiar plot points from other, older horrors, there’s never a sense of Pins and Needles feeling simply derivative. It hasn’t set out to emulate anything, anyway: it just has a sense of what has come before it and ideas on how it can do its own thing with some of those central ideas. Furthermore, it retains a taut, crisp structure throughout, with an engrossing lead performance and a growing sense of confidence which serves it well. In some respects, despite the differences in plot, it reminds me of Apartment 1BR: it shares the earlier film’s dedication to getting the core elements right, understanding the importance of a strong lead role and avoiding the temptation to let things balloon to an overly-long runtime. It’s clearly been edited right down to the bone, and it absolutely works to the film’s credit. This is one sharp, economical horror, great at sustaining tension and a genuine pleasure (?) to watch.
Pins and Needles (2024) is available now from Filmhub.