Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

Art for Everybody (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

If you don’t immediately recognise the name of Thomas Kinkade, then chances are you’ll recognise his work. He’s famous for painting a kind of pre-industrial utopia, all cobblestones, pristine cottage gardens and picturesque landscapes which in truth feel as far away from ordinary life for most people – if not further away – than many of his bleakest dystopian contemporaries. It’s Kinkade himself who opens Art for Everybody (2023), first narrating proceedings as a teenager living in hopes of making it as an artist, but one who “doesn’t want to end up like Van Gogh”. On first examination, it certainly looks as though he would be safe from that fate, but given some of the later inclusions in the film, it also rings a prescient note. Roll on twenty-seven years, and Kinkade has the market in the palm of his hand: at the peak of his success, his paintings hung in around one in every twenty American homes. What could possibly go wrong?

Kinkade features heavily in this film about his life and career: although his most successful decades of commercial work came just prior to the internet age, he nonetheless lived through the era of home cinema, multi-channel TV – and shopping channels, which is really significant in his history. As an example: Kinkade’s wedding was filmed; later, still at his wedding, he was being interviewed. It’s the kind of possibility for scrutiny which no doubt allowed him to present what other commentators refer to as his ‘performance art’, but also adds tremendous personal pressure; even Van Gogh was spared the constant scrutiny of the camera and the newsreel. Early on in the film, we’re made aware that there was always another side to Kinkade, the self-styled ‘painter of light’ – but it was locked away, ;literally locked away, in a vault. Locked away in a vault: there’s even something slightly twee about the otherwise dark symbolism of a locked room in a light and airy family home. It seems that Kinkade’s career, and his art, was always pulling against the kitsch and the prettified.

However, before we get to that side of him, there’s a detailed history of his career – from his limited edition print runs to the establishment of his brand (the ‘painter of light’ became the Painter of Light™); from the collectible plates – which is where I had a slightly uncanny moment of recognition – to the people’s galleries he opened in America’s malls; finally, we look at the intensely lucrative relationship which Kinkade had with the-then brand-new QVC. His was a hugely lucrative empire, with a reach way beyond any other jobbing artists of the Nineties. Whether or not this style of art is for you personally is swept aside, to a degree, by the film’s inclusion of other Kinkade works, kept from public sight until after his death. He was actually incredibly experimental, taking on everything from Impressionism to what looks almost like Symbolism. Thomas Kinkade could paint. But he had a brand to consider, and not only did he keep his other work hidden, but he used a variety of other brush names, too. At this point in the film, it really feels like his phenomenal rise was going to be accompanied by an equally tremendous crash – and so it is.

In trying to pinpoint where things went wrong, the film spends some time on the shifting art movements of the Eighties and early Nineties; Kinkade was selling his prints (mugs, plates, toys and soft furnishings) at around the same time that Tracey Emin’s ‘My Bed’ was basking in notoriety – and adulation from the art world. The critics who speak during Art for Everybody are not, broadly, on side with the purchasing public; several of them admit that, even at his height, they weren’t aware of Kinkade’s work. But Kinkade was willing to engage with the art world, calling them out for their own predilections, which now feels like an Icarus-like decision which opened him up to new levels of pressure and scrutiny. It also speaks to his pride, and perhaps he underestimated the heft and power of the art establishment, which means underestimating cultural capital in its most literal sense. For all that, one if his daughters says, “I still don’t know what happened”. Kinkade’s star started to fall. The market shifted. Tastes began to change. Anxiety and stress led him to drink (gallingly, he had never been a drinker before middle age) and, via his addiction, the anecdotes and memories – from people close to him otherwise providing a sense of a warm, hopeful man – become exasperating and upsetting, as anyone who has lived with a drinker or drank themselves will appreciate. Probably given the fact that his siblings, wife and children are so involved here, the film doesn’t linger on the unedifying. Nonetheless, it’s a sad fall from grace.

Given all of this, and based on the progression of the film as a whole, you get the sense of a yearned-for fantasy world in Kinkade’s chocolate box art: we’re led to consider that he painted this way so extensively because it represented some kind of wish fulfilment. But it was lucrative, too, and once art, self and cash form a relationship, then the situation becomes complex. Aspects of Kinkade’s persona – the one we see the most, that is – is remote, rehearsed; often, it’s the captured video footage around takes which reveals how pernicious ‘the brand’ had become for family life. Given this, it’s positive that director Miranda Yousef ends on a more consolidatory note, and that we see enough of Kinkade’s incredibly varied talents to see past the Painter of Light tragic arc.

Art for Everyone has equally interesting things to say about Kinkade’s audience, and beyond that, the popularity of his art. The critics point out that his art, from one perspective, is a reactionary, unrealistic and even whitewashed vision of America. People. however, loved it – so do these people have a duty to only love what critics declare is ‘good’? Why shouldn’t people feel safe and even cossetted by the art they hang in their own homes?

This question isn’t decisively answered and nor does it need to be. If the documentary has one flaw, it’s in the sheer number of threads which it could have followed at length; there are so many ideas in here to consider and to unpack. As it stands, this is a sensitive, well-rounded film which looks not just at art, but at the precarious nature of business and its relationship with that art. Thomas Kinkade, in many respects, encapsulates that connection.

Art for Everybody (2023) will be on theatrical release from March 24th 2025.

Sew Torn (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

I asked to review Sew Torn for a few reasons, but the biggest reason was curiosity. How, exactly, could a film be so closely themed around, of all things, seamstressing? Well, it is. It really, really is. It’s also a varied, funny crime drama which manages to incorporate elements of existential fantasy along the way, and it’s highly likely to rank as one of my favourite films of the year for its defiantly zingy, creative approach.

We get two visual symbols at the film’s start: there’s a reel of thread, and a briefcase – a briefcase which, until recently, was handcuffed to someone: there are handcuffs still attached to the handle. Keep those symbols in mind. A brief voiceover from our protagonist, seamstress Barbara (Eve Connolly) invites us to mull over what could have brought her to the chaotic point where we first meet her. It wasn’t always like this, of course. In calmer times, though not exactly happier times, i.e. before the briefcase was a thing, Barbara had been living an isolated life since her mother’s passing, trying (and failing) to keep their family seamstress business running. It seems there just isn’t enough trade for their ‘talking portraits’ speciality which bedeck both the shop and the living quarters beyond it. A tapestry image gets connected to a recording of the loved one; pull a length of thread, and you get to hear their voices again. Needless to say, Barbara has become unhealthily reliant on talking portraits of her and her mother, even though some of the voice recordings reveal the darker times which overtook them both.

Already struggling, then, Barbara is soon running late to the world’s worst seamstress job: altering a wedding dress which is already being worn by a deeply unpleasant bride-to-be who wastes no opportunity to berate Barbara as she works. A mishap with a button sends Barbara racing back to the shop for a replacement, though – all considered – the ways things turn out, and given the business is on its knees already, a sharper jab with the needle, or even just abandoning the dreadful woman to a buttonless fate would have been completely reasonable. However, Barbara is diligent enough and still considerate enough of her mother’s pride in her work, to do the decent thing. And, as it stands, she may still have run into an unexpected situation, out on a mountainous back road…

There’s been an accident. There are two injured men lying in the road, there are guns and – oh, hey, it’s the briefcase, and it turns out it was recently handcuffed to one of these men. What best to do?

Like Barbara says on her initial voiceover: choices, choices. The grand rule here, if there is one, is that people make decisions and those decisions initiate a chain of events. Then, these events draw in others, as they do here, because the chances of a mysterious briefcase not mattering to someone important are slim to none. In many respects, Sew Torn tackles an age-old narrative idea – the ‘wrong place, wrong time’ motif – but it does so much with it that it never feels anything but quirky, clever and bold. There’s so much to praise. Its tragicomic elements are assured. It has a strangely unsettling setting which seems to be small-town America transported to…Switzerland, full of pretty contrasts and crisp, colourful locations, making the events of the film feel like a weird blip against an almost fantasy landscape. Oh, and the script is wonderfully economical, with Connolly often enacting Barbara’s great woes without words at all. She’s great, by the way, managing to be both sympathetic and magnetic, and bouncing off a great supporting cast, with particular praise for the brilliant John Lynch and the equally effective Calum Worthy. I don’t recall a film ever quite so taken with sewing as a theme – May Canady sews, sure, but it feels more incidental than fundamental to her own journey. In Sew Torn – based on a short film, but never struggling to work as a feature – every element of the plot is linked to sewing in a way which is, let’s be honest, barking mad, but oh-so clever and compelling. It’s a film which almost makes you feel bad for owning three sewing kits and having not the faintest clue what to do with any of them.

As it moves towards its conclusion, playing with a range of outcomes and possibilities as it goes, Sew Torn does slow somewhat to allow characters to develop; this is the only slight lull in the film’s pace, but getting to know the characters works, too. It’s almost as if it’s all been meticulously sounded out and planned. Look: a film with this level of commitment to its central theme must be confident in what it’s doing, and so it turns out. Director Freddy Macdonald, born in the year 2000 (!) is clearly a young talent to watch and it will be very interesting to see where he goes next. This is quite the first feature: it promises great things, it delivers great things, but most importantly, it works incredibly well on its own terms, presenting audiences with something hugely entertaining and innovative. Curiosity satisfied, and then some.

Sew Torn is on UK and Ireland digital platforms 31 March from Vertigo Releasing.

SXSW 2025: Mermaid (2025)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Mermaid (2025) opens, perhaps deceivingly, on someone living the high life. It certainly looks like the high life at least: here’s a guy, on a yacht, sipping a chilled cocktail and listening to music. It’s textbook high life. The fact that this is a post-divorce celebration mars things slightly, but mainly that happens when a strange noise on board prompts him to investigate, armed. Armed? Expecting pirates? It’s weirder than that: what he quite literally uncovers in one of his lifeboats is a living, breathing mermaid.

We have to wait awhile to see and think about this more clearly as we get more fully into this ‘love letter to Florida’, as the film’s credits declare it. We meet our protagonist, who is emphatically not the rich guy on the boat. Doug (Johnny Pemberton) is an aquarium cleaner at a pole dancing club, or at least he is for a few minutes of screen time before he gets fired. He’s ‘weird’. People often use that adjective to describe Doug. He is, however, a gentle, pliant sort of weird, the kind of weird which enjoys necking prescription medication more than most other things; the kind of weird with no career arc and an increasingly troubled relationship with his young daughter Layla (the excellent Devyn McDowell). Oh, and he owes money to some ne’er-do-wells, who knew his equally ne’er-do-well dad. This builds and builds to what must surely be a crescendo: Doug getting tough; Doug getting out; Doug finding some kind of way forward. Well, his first plan fails – of course it fails – but he encounters the (now injured) mermaid, and decides to take her home.

Daryl Hannah, this is not (and by the way, there’s some great SFX work here by Trudie Storck and Monique McLoughlin). There are no beguiling smiles, no sense of gratitude, and thinking about mermaid tropes, there’s certainly no shell brassiere or coral jewellery (though we do see that referenced elsewhere – the film is very assured at adding little visual clues throughout its runtime). If we’re talking precedents, this mermaid much more closely resembles Medusa as imagined by Ray Harryhausen, right down to the way she drags herself forward on her hands, and she drags herself forward on her hands because she is not very friendly – not very friendly at all. This doesn’t stop Doug, who prefers all things from the sea anyway, taking her under his wing. Helping her recuperate could well be the making of him.

At a deeper level, we begin to glean that Doug’s behaviour stems from sadness and grief that he, in his willing fugue state, has never really dealt with. In this, we see that Doug’s a mess, but a modern, relatable mess, struggling to make sense of his life path whilst getting pummelled by circumstance. His choice to dose himself with Percocet is frustrating but understandable, allowing him to swan along in a state of well-meaning perplexity as life threatens from the sidelines. Pemberton does a great job with the role, looking authentically young and naïve throughout. Just as Doug uses drugs to take the edges off, so the film, too, feels like it has had its edges taken off, sanded down to a surprisingly gentle pace, edited to skip past any high action and violence for the most part and concerned more with the human aftermath. It’s a languid story which goes from the ridiculous to the sublime; it does contain moments of splattery gore and has some nastier connotations, but these are few. As much as the strange cryptid moves the story along, really this is Doug’s odyssey.

Made by Tyler Cornack, director of the perhaps even more idiosyncratic Butt Boy (2019), Mermaid is a strange love letter to the sunshine state but given that state’s reputation for, shall we say, eccentricity – it works. In the seemingly perpetual sunshine, we follow a fragile, sympathetic lead faced with a bizarre situation. It’s a charming and compelling story, more bittersweet than overtly funny (though it has its moments) but at its heart, it’s a film all about finding meaning and purpose in a mean maze of a world.

Mermaid (2025) received its world premiere at SXSW.

Final Girls Berlin Fest: You’re Not Me (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Can horror teach us things? As it turns out, yes – plenty: You’re Not Me (2023) tells us, in no uncertain terms, never to turn up anywhere uninvited, even (or especially) if it’s to see your own family.

It’s Christmas Eve: the film starts at a Spanish airport, where Aitana (Roser Tapias), her partner Gabi (Yapoena Silva) and their newly-adopted son João have just arrived from Brazil to surprise Aitana’s family. Aitana is sure it’ll be a pleasant surprise; this gives them both the strange ability to ignore worrying portents like missing luggage (and escapee pig fatalities – yes, you heard that right). She rings from outside the house and has a pleasant chat with her mother, before ringing the doorbell. This is it. Surprise!

Indeed. A friend of the family comes to the door, and when the young family finally gains admission – it’s a little awkward, having to explain to a stranger that you’re the daughter of the family – there’s a strangely cold reception from everybody except Aitana’s brother Saúl (Jorge Motos). It’s quite perplexing. In fact, her father openly remonstrates with her for not checking ahead. Aitana is obviously a little nonplussed by this, but tries to mask her disappointment, still hoping for the loving reunion she’d both imagined and told Gabi all about: this is the first time Aitana’s family have either met her partner, or the baby. However, things get odder when it transpires that someone’s sleeping in Aitana’s old bed.

This young woman, Nadia (Anna Kurikka) is wearing her old nightclothes, too. Who is she? Reluctantly, Aitana’s parents explain that she is a refugee – no further details – who has recently been living at the house whilst helping to take care of Saúl. They’re strangely defensive of her, and Nadia is strangely truculent for a grateful outsider: in short, Nadia gets to keep Aitana’s bedroom, whilst Aitana, Gabi and João are dispatched to the ‘turret’, like madwomen in the attic. Gabi is a good deal more grounded than her partner, assuring her that everything is probably fine and that she’s no doubt tired, emotional and stressed, leading her to overreact. However, when Aitana sneaks down the stairs, she sees the family, her replacement and all, exchanging Christmas gifts without them. It’s bound to sting a bit, and kickstarts a desire to solve what now feels like a mystery. Why has this relatively conservative Spanish family suddenly opened its doors to a stranger? Why aren’t they more interested in Nadia’s identity? And most importantly of all, why the sullen, avoidant reception for their own flesh and blood? Keen to rebalance her relationship with her family, Aitana decides her best bet is to uncover what she can about this Nadia. But there’s more, much more to contend with – especially as a number of Christmas guests start to arrive at the house ready for a special gathering which – you’ve guessed it – wasn’t meant to include Aitana at all.

This is a film which successfully moves you around emotionally. Perhaps Aitana is on the petulant side at first, but this is a weird situation for sure, and you’re soon right on her side. The camera stays primarily with her, and we’re privy to her fretful dreams, too: surely, directors/writers Marisa Crespo and Moisés Romera intend the audience to share Aitana’s perspective. Well, yeah: however, the screenplay then introduces some other backstory elements, casting doubt on Aitana’s mindset as it fills in some important blanks. It’s carefully done, and works well. Saúl is an important character, too, and his worsening health (we understand that now uses a wheelchair all of the time) is a realistic added strain, with a good performance from Motos. You’re Not Me is also great at capturing that strange feeling of being an outsider in your old family home: your clothes have been given away, your sentimental treasures are MIA and your loved ones are showing open preference to someone else. Much of Aitana’s family’s behaviour is openly hurtful; it just happens to be focused around a cuckoo in the nest. However, there is more to come, with a different kind of storytelling waiting to move to the fore.

You’re Not Me is somewhat reminiscent of Get Out (2017) in its first act. There’s a similar sense of the vibe being off, as well as a strange gathering, an eerie feeling of displacement – and a few slivers of thinly-veiled, or unveiled racism to boot. The film also carries with it an interesting subtext around poverty, homelessness and the kind of ‘help’ people give to those who are in need, as well as exploring Aitana’s homosexuality and her parents’ sometimes passive-aggressive, sometimes aggressive-aggressive responses to her coming out of the closet (though, ironically, the closet might be the safest place to be in this household).

When the film moves into its second phase, it may feel more predictable to hardened horror fans but – because it’s built on decent foundations – you are happy to follow it wherever it’s going next. Whilst its initial eeriness gives way to something more tried-and-tested, it has the pace and self-awareness to spin things into a – dare I say it? – fun horror film, with clear generic precedents. You get the sense that a big finale is on its way, and that when it arrives, it’s going to be quite something: the film deftly takes things in this direction, and doesn’t disappoint. You’re Not Me might cover a lot of ground, but it’s an energetic, strangely enjoyable tale which successfully shifts from one genre to elements of several others (which must remain nameless, so as not to give the game away). It could even join the hallowed ranks of Christmas horror film choices, so add it to the playlist: you can watch it at the end of the year, if your Christmas visit gets off to a bad start…

You’re Not Me (2023) features at this year’s Final Girls Berlin Film Festival – now in its tenth year!

SXSW 2025: Redux Redux (2025)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Although you could easily argue that it’s been around for a very long time, multiverse horror – if we can now call it that – is immensely popular right now. As I have said elsewhere, it seems to be of especial interest to indie horror and fantasy filmmakers, for whom it affords tantalising possibilities, divesting old narrative certainties of their power whilst lining up new ideas. It may also be a deep-seated desire to skip out of this particular timeline, come to think of it. particularly during and since Covid. The McManus brothers – directors of 2020’s The Block Island Sound – have recently completed on Redux Redux (2025), making their own second horror feature a multiverse horror. In doing so, they have blended the more philosophical approach (of, say, Synchronic, or Infinitum) with the more visceral – using the chance to hop in and out of different timelines to inflict grisly violence, over and over again. It’s an ambitious project, albeit that some of its plot elements take considerable strain across its 107 minute runtime. However, by virtue of its strong production values, aesthetic values, performances and script, it avoids the kind of prevaricating which, at worst, indie cinema of this kind does.

We start with some of the strong aesthetics mentioned above, as well as the grisly violence: a woman looks on as a man – tied to a chair – burns to death in agony at her feet. One quick edit later, and the same woman is fighting for her life at the hands of the same man, at least momentarily, before she gains the upper hand. She dispatches him in a different way this time, but with the same, merciless brutality. The woman in question is called Irene (Michaela McManus), and the film pauses to catch its breath for a moment, offering up a few visual symbols as she explains to the man that she is ‘searching for Anna’ – her daughter. The numbered locks of hair in his possession suggest a serial killer; Irene is a grieving mother, then, using the affordances of multiverse travel to murder her daughter’s killer, again and again, as she searches for a timeline in which Anna is still alive.

There is a certain amount of anxiety as the film loops, and loops, and loops during its first twenty minutes or so – some disorientation. As these sequences unfold, different coloured mugs are used to spell out for us that Irene is stopping off at the same diner, chatting to the same waitress, but in different realities. Her daughter’s killer happens to work in this diner, so she can reliably stop off for a coffee before – well, her approach varies, but he dies every time. Sometimes she shoots him then and there. Sometimes she follows him home. Sometimes – actually, quite a lot of the time – her zeal for murdering Neville (Jeremy Holm) gets her into dangerous situations, such as the pursuit which we see in one particular timeline as she unloads on Neville just as a police officer walks into the diner. But in this case, she makes it back to a residential address, where she clambers into some kind of pod and – she’s gone. Then she’s back – sort of.

On reflection, it’s probably for the best that Redux Redux doesn’t spend an undue amount of time and effort on explaining the precise mechanisms of its multiverse travel, as much as it very carefully and steadily expands some aspects of this as the film progresses. The pod itself looks pure sci-fi – almost Giger-ish – but the film as a whole could easily have got bogged down in science fiction, a potentially hazardous place to be for any scriptwriting team, so despite the fact that a few questions (for me) linger over the narrative come the end, these wouldn’t necessarily be rectified or improved by more jargon (and nor is quantum theory particularly easy to grasp at the best of times). It’s enough to know that Irene has been driven close to madness by her rage, and has happened upon a novel way of working through this – or, perhaps not. She comes from a timeline where this kind of travel is possible, and that’s more or less that.

Things change, however, when – during another visit to another Neville – she interrupts him with a still-living victim in his bathroom. It’s not Anna. This young woman, Mia (Stella Marcus), is a feisty, streetwise kid who has a lot of baggage of her own and, when Irene releases her, she wants in on the murder plot against the guy who kidnapped her, a guy who, in this particular timeline, has just dodged Irene’s bullets and escaped.

The film switches perspective for a while here, picking up more of Mia’s story before looking at the at-first unwitting relationship which springs up between her and Irene. A kind of folie-a-deux even kicks in for a while, with each character bouncing off the other in terms of their unreasonable decision-making and risk-taking. But these are strong characters, well written and acted, with a script which is just the right amount of self-reflective. There are inevitably some puzzling additions: Redux Redux‘s seemingly endless vengeance loops – though pleasingly bloody and messy – sometimes border on inexplicable (surely you’d pick your battles carefully and wait, or jump, rather than potentially killing innocent people, or getting yourself killed in a particular timeline?). However, the interaction between Irene and Mia grows more engaging, turning the film into something else and fleshing out the film’s final act – which is particularly important, given the pure horror which comes to dominate there, and what it could signify.

Redux Redux is certainly ambitious and manages to weave together a compelling tale of grief, family and redemption with only a few rogue moments. There is indisputably tension, drama and world-building. Along the way, the film looks great: rich, crisp colouration, good use of light and dark, with a blend of moody interiors and modern Americana. It’s interesting, by the by, that the diner also plays such an important part in another recent multiverse indie, Things Will Be Different (2024) – it’s obviously the liminal space of choice, familiar but alien. I retain nagging doubts overall about the multiverse thing, but there’s certainly enough skill and nous here to hold things together, and the McManus brothers are without doubt skilled filmmakers, whose horror output so far has been eminently worthwhile.

Redux Redux received its premiere at SXSW on March 8th 2025.

Final Girls Berlin Fest: Grafted (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Somewhere in a cramped apartment block in urban China, a little girl plays as her father works. She’s carefully drawing a corpse flower; she then feeds a live mouse to their pet snake; it’s all wholesome stuff. Her father, it seems, is a scientist who has tasked himself with ‘fixing’ the presumably hereditary skin condition suffered by himself and his daughter (which really doesn’t look significant enough to merit the treatment – applying a suspiciously squelchy skin graft to his face – but he’s his own man). It is, shall we say, in the experimental stages, and after a few seconds of hope, the skin graft runs wild, covering his nose and mouth.

We next meet Wei (Joyena Sun) in young adulthood. It seems her father’s head healing over didn’t dent her scientific zeal – but she’s also on the cusp of great things, more conventional things, such as a scholarship place at a New Zealand university. To attend, she’ll be relocating and staying with her Aunt Ling (Xiao Hu), a cosmetician, and Ling’s daughter – Wei’s rather glamorous cousin – Angela (Jess Hong). Wei is a clever, but sensitive young woman whose key priority is to honour her father’s memory by perfecting his skin-healing process. In the meantime, she’s very shy of her appearance, and compares herself nervously to her fully Kiwi cousin: Angela has always dodged learning Chinese and takes no interest in Chinese culture. She’d rather hang with her friends – serious Heathers/the Veronicas vibes – Eve (Eden Hart) and the slightly less awful Jasmine (Sepi To’a). Wei is something of an embarrassment to them, even when she tries really hard to fit in. Nonetheless, she’s off to a strong start academically, and volunteers for lab work to both boost her knowledge and to work alongside her lecturer, Professor Featherstone. Working alongside a power-hungry moral vacuum in human form, desperate to break through in the competitive world of experimental cosmetics? No problems anticipated here.

It feels very much like Grafted is electively setting itself up to be rather chaotic. It’s a very sensory film, particularly aurally, oozing and suppurating with the best of ’em. Alongside this, there’s the quick edits, the petri dishes, the macros, the flashbacks, the discordant soundtrack – it has a cumulatively quite overwhelming effect, but then it isn’t all glutinous grue, either. In places this is a very prettified film – a candy-coloured nightmare, with the pastel-shades of mean girl Eve and the hot pink of the chicken feet-averse Angela clashing interestingly with gloopy blood and rotten meat. As Wei’s great work (and her battles with Professor Featherstone) intensify the desperate measures she’s willing to take, and as the film gets progressively more gruesome and macabre, it never quite stops feeling candy-coloured, which works.

Final Girls Berlin are running Grafted as part of a double bill with its big cousin The Substance; it’s a decent choice, as the lineage is clear, and some of the processes (and repercussions) hit a similar note. Perhaps Grafted is The Substance from the other side of the age bracket, because this desperate, demented wish to fit in and be adored spans a very long period of time in a woman’s life. However, other films perhaps suggest themselves as even closer relatives. There’s something of May in here, at least at the start of the film, with a similarly isolated young woman desperate enough to body-snatch to break the spell of her own isolation. Then there feels like a direct line of descent between Grafted and lesser-known Japanese body horror Naked Blood: a scientist mother and father, a bizarre experimental programme and a desperation to honour one’s family by hammering on with a clearly disastrous body-melting experimental programme. The practical FX is similar, too, and it’s worth adding that the CGI effects in Grafted are less successful than the practical ones on the whole, though they’re probably a necessity.

It feels rather insulting to call a film ‘superficial’, but it fits the bill here on the grounds that Grafted sticks (heh) to surface impressions and notions, moving along too quickly to wallow in the moral ramifications, opting for pace and an often lighter touch rather than pausing or lingering on some sage philosophical point. Whilst there are some bigger picture ideas to consider (Chinese/Western culture clashes, things lost/found in translation and the briefly-dandled idea of ancestral curses), this film dashes through its ideas on identity, consent and ambition to get us to its pretty astonishing finale, and as a result of being neither truly bloodthirsty nor truly messagey, it may struggle to satisfy some audiences. However, there’s lots to like here, and even if Grafted runs out of road to an extent, this is still an entertaining entrant to the new wave of body horror cinema, with great work from its young cast, who literally chop and change between roles as they go.

Grafted (2024) featured at this year’s Final Girls Berlin Festival. You can find out more about the festival here.

WatchAUT: Moon (Mond) (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Moon (2024) starts in a cage fighting arena: old favourite Sarah Reisinger (Florentina Holzinger) seems to have unexpectedly lost her spark. Losing the fight seems to mean losing her career, too. The whole faded fighter idea might be a recurring motif in film, but the way it’s handled in Moon is altogether more existential, using moments of terrific stillness and quiet being used to underpin the issues: where can Sarah go from here? What can she do next?

We share in the first of these moments just after the losing fight. Sarah continues training – the film often uses physical activity to represent the desire for control – but the young women she is now working with are uncomfortable with Sarah’s intrusions into their personal space. This is a problem, when you need to punch someone to do your job. She says nothing much, but you can feel Sarah begin to exude disbelief. Her sister is little help in all of this, having a young baby to look after. Sarah is clearly presented as an ill fit in this world.

Things begin to look up when she secures an online interview with a wealthy Jordanian man who’s looking for a martial arts trainer for his three sisters. Abdul (Omar AlMajali) explains that she’d be taking the role for a few months in the first instance, but all expenses would be paid, and the work sounds ideal. Sarah accepts the position, and soon afterwards arrives in Jordan. Her main residence is a luxurious hotel, but the job takes place at the family home, which is a long way outside central Amman. The house is a facsimile of wealth. It looks opulent, but frequent power cuts punctate day-to-day life and most of the house is off-limits to Sarah. This is policed by a bodyguard who clearly distrusts her, but then he seems not to trust the sisters, either. Oh, and Sarah has to sign an NDA. There’s always someone observing, always a protocol to observe.

The three girls, Shaima (Nagham Abu Baker), Nour (Andria Fateh) and Fatima (Celina Sarhan) are initially all for the new routine, but their enthusiasm soon wanes. On the first day of training, they don’t even get through the warm-up. Cue more incredulity from Sarah, for whom this kind of routine is everything; it’s clear to see that the girls live a strange, isolated existence. They are apparently home-schooled, though you’d struggle to find evidence of any tutors visiting the property. Their parents live abroad; there’s no internet and no mobile phones allowed. They like going to the mall – accompanied, of course – but there’s ultimately little for them to do. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that these young women aren’t instantly into their new hobby, but Sarah has to wonder if her presence there doesn’t have some other, as-yet undiscernible purpose. Or, if it’s not just some new sop to throw to three bright but bored teenagers. Perhaps it’s more the latter, on balance, but slowly the girls get closer to Sarah. They allow her to see some of the more unsettling details of their gilded-cage existence (something which I note has angered certain critics, who feel that it’s an unduly negative representation of Arab culture. But within the bounds of possibility, no?)

To return to other criticisms of Moon, the film’s tendency towards more oblique content which eschews conventional narrative has locked out some viewers, leading to suggestions that the film could have given us more closure – answered a few more questions. Yes, this is true, but on reflection, the gaps in the narrative really are the narrative. Its approach might not be for everyone, but the film speaks loudest when it says the least. Sure, some of the quite sudden developments towards the film’s close feel quite jarring, but they don’t ultimately shift the reality for the sisters, or for Sarah herself. Sarah is in many ways as cautious and closed-off as the sisters, especially Nour, who shows more initiative than the other girls but seems worldly enough to have more to fear. Sarah is plausibly physically fit, but in a strange culture she still comes across as vulnerable. She’s an odd figure, being shepherded through a superficially wealthy Islamic nation in her tracksuits and training gear, hair usually screwed back like it’s some sort of armour. It’s a lonely, perplexing new life, and Sarah is always strangely sympathetic as she navigates it in near silence. No one calls her; her attempts to phone home are beset by technical difficulties, or are just plain unwelcome. You could predict all sorts of likely comeuppances for her which do not come to pass, but the tension is still there on the horizon – again, much as it is for the girls themselves.

Ultimately, Moon is about the illusion of power. Its illusory nature allows director and writer Kurdwin Ayub to skirt around the idea of the ‘white saviour’ who arrives in a foreign place and makes waves; really, no one here is as empowered as they like to believe: not Sarah, not even Abdul, who at least initially seems to be cool, calm and in control. Sarah seems to hold fast to her ability to make a difference, however, even when bitter experience should have given her pause for thought, but the film wisely leaves that idea with us, not showing us how it plays out. All in all, this is a subtle, often uncomfortable piece of storytelling. It’s a film about secrecy, silence and image management, and it doesn’t need to wrap things up to point out that stories and journeys are often as imprecise as they are profound.

Moon (2024) will feature as part of this year’s WatchAUT Film Festival in London.

WatchAUT: Peacock (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Peacock (2024) opens with a scene both oddly quaint and chaotic, and as such gives us an early, handy symbol for what is to follow: there’s a lot of quaint chaos here. In a rolling, sunlit golf course, we see a burning golf buggy. This attracts the attention of a young couple who come to the rescue, putting out the fire before enthusiastically embracing. They seem to be enjoying the positive attention they gain after just the right amount of manageable peril. Okay – this seems strange. But we move from playing golf to listening to classical music, and there’s the same, altruistic boyfriend again. This is Matthias (Albrecht Schuch), now cast in the role of cultured partner, saying all of the right things about the very exclusive performance at hand for a wholly different woman. He seems like the sort of person you could take anywhere, and it seems lots of people like to do just that.

Matthias works for a very exclusive agency called My Companion. It’s emphatically non-sexual; he provides his services to anyone who books them, be they man, woman or child. The purpose of the service, if we can sum it up, seems to be to bolster the social standing of the client. Pretend artsy boyfriend, cool dad, dutiful son – you name it. Matthias is great at his job, but around the edges of his job, he’s trying to fit in an authentic life of his own. He has a partner called Sophia (Julia Franz Richter) and they have been together long enough to pose for an arty black and white portrait together, which hangs proudly on the bedroom wall. Their apartment is gorgeous and their lives appear easy, inexplicably moneyed and contented (not dissimilar, actually, to the people in another WatchAUT 2025 title, Veni Vidi Vici). And yet, there’s some sort of strain there, manifesting largely through random purchases. When the going gets tough, buy a Great Dane, apparently. Sophia, for her part, complains that Matthias doesn’t feel real anymore. She may have a point.

As his own life grows increasingly fraught, Matthias is left to figure out who he is and where he’s going – all whilst continuing to excel at his profession. A profession which almost necessitates a continued blurring at the edges…of course, something’s gotta give.

This story could have played out in a nightmarish fashion, and lots of drama, horror and even sci-fi has taken this approach to the whole loss-of-self motif. Here, inasmuch as there are definitely some poignant moments, Peacock is much gentler than that. It has a wide-ranging approach to humour without deliberately foregrounding that comedy, never yelling at the audience to notice it and to respond accordingly. There’s dry wit throughout, observational humour in places and silly physical humour in others – not to mention a few pitch-black moments. Schuch is a great choice for this role: young, handsome and plausible, but also somehow blank, ready to be overwritten. It’s only very gradually that you start to see more in there, beyond the good looks. His own emotions can be gleaned then, but with some effort: for the most part, Matthias is quite tough to read, but worth the effort, and he grows as a character throughout. The film is edited in such a way as to provide snapshots of Matthias’s life, leaving us to work out what has been happening in the interim. He’s a bewildered, strangely sympathetic and flawed Everyman of his time, and you must find yourself on his side.

The central conceit of Peacock makes for an interesting update to a time-old conceit. Paying someone to pretend to like you is as old as society itself, but this is a little different. In these deeply alienated times, the illusion of companionship is more tricky, more intricate and more nuanced. The film feels bang up to date in how it riffs on this, and again, all without hammering that theme home. People spend so much time now seeing brief flashes of end points; they see people crossing the line, raising the cup or getting the diploma, refracted through social media platforms which can’t accommodate all of the hard work and effort which gets people to that point. As a result, people just see other people seemingly winning. Perhaps they resent that they can’t also be at that point. Well, yes they can – vicariously! Matthias and his company are there to weave these illusions. Subtly, the script alludes to consumerism, influencers, online reviews and other new routes towards ‘keeping up appearances’; even in its world of muted lighting, airy apartments and exclusive restaurants, we see a world which is also competitive, cynical and superficial.

Peacock is a really enjoyable, engaging, light-touch comedy of manners which also manages a good balance of more profound points. Well acted and well made, it eschews the nightmarish to both poke fun at our modern-day obsessions, and to suggest that there is something better out there, if you will just let yourself grasp it. As the first feature-length film from director and writer Bernhard Wenger, it proves that he’s had no issues whatsoever scaling up from the short film projects which he has made to date. Peacock is a delight.

Peacock (2024) will feature at this year’s WatchAUT Film Festival. For more information, click here. It will also receive its UK premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival.

Interview: Hayden Hewitt, director of Cara (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

A lot of independent films find their way to Warped Perspective, and now and again, one arrives which makes a bigger impact than many of the others – be that for its originality, its ambition, or its earnest levels of nastiness. Cara is one such film, noteworthy for the way it’s steeped in a deeply unrelenting bleakness (and, given the website as a whole frequently sees its share of bleak content, that’s quite the accolade). Reminiscent of the underrated British serial killer film Tony (2009) and in some respects, Possum (2018), Cara is an urban horror story of a person living on the periphery of functional society, fantasising about seizing personal autonomy. Almost needless to say, this isn’t a straightforward, or an especially uplifting journey, and when I reviewed the film just ahead of its FrightFest premiere last year, it struck me as one of those films which leave you with certain questions. Now, just ahead of its release on a range of digital platforms on February 17th, I grabbed the chance to have a quick chat with director Hayden Hewitt, who is currently working on his next project (more anon) to find out some more about this, his first feature-length film. Take a look, and do remember to pop along and take a look at the exclusive trailer over at Rue Morgue magazine.

Please note: the last two questions I ask contain potential mild spoilers. Be forewarned!

WP: Thanks for speaking to Warped Perspective! Firstly – why this screenplay for your first feature-length project? What appealed about this particular subject matter?

HH: The core idea for Cara had been rolling around in my head for years. I was even going to attempt a version during the time DSLR cameras became available to consumers without pots of cash to burn. I think it never left me, because I was fascinated with the idea of a seemingly simple concept (revenge) where I could play with the questionable reality of it through the eyes of a pretty unreliable narrator. The more time I spent on it, the more I wanted to tell the story.

WP: You already had some short film projects under your belt before making Cara: it may seem an odd question, but is there any lineage between those short films and this, your first feature?

HH: They were mostly a test bed, giving Black Octopus [the production company] some kind of established history, learning my chops, and making contacts. I think perhaps Unseen might be within a shout of having a connection, given the social commentary angle but beyond that they’re all stand alone stories – Elbows being such an absurd idea and Lips being a love letter to Tales of the Unexpected.

WP: Who is Cara for, do you think? By which I mean – what sort of film fan would you anticipate really getting on board with it?

HH: I’m not sure if it’s pretentious or conceited, but I never really considered that and thinking about it now, I’m not sure I have any clue. Horror is a very broad church, but there doesn’t seem to be a massively common thread between those who have enjoyed it so far, or at least been positive about it. “Enjoy” seems to be a word people use then try to explain how they didn’t but did but…

WP: On a similar note – how would you describe Cara in terms of its genre? This is another very broad church genre-wise, but is Cara an exploitation film, in your view?

HH: I certainly didn’t set out to make an exploitation film. Are there elements in there? I can see where some people might see it that way I guess, but the intention certainly wasn’t present. I settled on ‘psychological horror’ because that seemed to fit as well as anything else. It’s certainly a fine line when dealing with these topics and with a character like Cara, I really didn’t want her to be a final girl/swivel eyed psycho or black widow. At the same time I didn’t want to make her a stereotypical victim, either. A lot of the success of that obviously comes from Elle’s performance [Elle O’Hara] and the work she put in with me prior to shooting.

WP: Was there anything you wanted to do with Cara, or anywhere you wanted to go which, for any reason, didn’t come to pass? Or was there anything about shooting the film which changed the course of the film as you initially planned it?

HH: I think there are always things you’d like to do but can’t. Budget and time limitations will always get in the way to some extent. Time is the enemy of filmmaking! The final third contained some elements we simply couldn’t afford in an early draft: I did make a version of the film that wasn’t quite as gruesome as it could have been. Some effects I took out, because it became apparent they were crowd pleasers rather than integral parts of the story, and it felt wrong to keep them in.

I did change something very near the end of the film on set just before we shot it. The choice seemed more sympathetic to the characters and story, although it did make it slightly less brutal to some degree. Overall though, I’m as happy as I think I could be, even if when it’s your film all you see are the ‘faults’ for a while.

WP: Have you had – good or bad – any particularly noteworthy responses to the film?

HH: Mostly it’s been very positive so far. Comments like “I really liked it but feel like I need a shower now” are quite wonderful and being asked at festivals what happened to certain characters or people sharing their interpretations of the film are beautiful things, too. Naturally there are some negative comments and reviews, some hilariously so, but that’s the nature of the game, isn’t it? One great compliment was from an actress who received the script, and was so incensed by something she thought it represented that she shared it with some other unknown film producers. This small group then proceeded to tell people not to work with us, or they’d never work with them. I don’t know who these people are, nor will I try to find out, but I hope they’re choking on their non-dairy lattes come release time.

WP: Cara begins with the titular character operating on the periphery of some very dark websites and online content; she’s a camgirl, but on a very niche website with, shall we say, niche clientele. Why did you decide to place her in this world?

HH: I have a lot of history with the darker side of the Internet [Hayden was the founder of the website LiveLeak]. Though that doesn’t encompass the porn side, the fascination has always been there. I think one experience in the dawn of cam streaming shaped a lot of that. Someone I knew passed me a link and it was a livestream. A woman was sat naked on a bed: she looked utterly miserable, genuinely just worn out. The text chat box next to the video player was just full of seemingly angry men doing their best to be as awful as possible in their demands and insults. Nobody seemed to be enjoying themselves really and I couldn’t figure out what people got from it, beyond one side making a few dollars and the other getting to humiliate someone without consequences, even though it didn’t seem to make them happy.

As with everything else in the film, I’ve tried to avoid being too judgemental, because I do wholeheartedly believe that consenting adults should pretty much be allowed to anything they damn well want. I think the thing is that if I believed humans have a soul – and I don’t – I’d believe every touch of that world would take a piece of it. Then again, some people seem quite happy, so I guess that’s a me problem…

WP: Finally, and this is something I’ve found myself wondering: at the end of the film: does Cara actually get the redemption which she so clearly craves?

For me, if she does, it’s a fleeting and hollow moment. Nobody in Cara gets what they think they want and only one person gets close. That person might well not be Cara, though…

Many thanks to Hayden for his time! If you’re an Apple TV subscriber, then you can check out this link now to find details on how to view. For the rest of you, look out for more details on how to see the film from 17th February 2025.

WatchAUT: Veni Vidi Vici (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

A cyclist making his way up a winding Austrian hill is first paused, then stopped forever by a sniper’s bullet before two surprisingly languid-looking hunters step out of the undergrowth, seizing his pushbike in the name of ‘recycling’. That’s about as dramatic as we ever get in Veni Vidi Vici (2024), a film which spends most of its time presenting the audience with an indolent, privileged world, occasionally pointing at something darker, but retreating into its indolence instead. We are left in no doubt, even very early on, that we’re looking at a very moneyed existence: the big clue, for me, is the classical music playing over a slow-mo game of polo. Just call it intuition. In fact, this is the film in a nutshell: it’s no subtle social commentary, though at times it seems to believe that it is. Elsewhere, however, it’s content to luxuriate in the pretty world at its core, and your tolerance for this will largely dictate how much you enjoy the film and its glib treatment of power, status and wealth disparity.

Next, we get better acquainted with the family, of whom so far we’ve met one sniper and one cheating polo player. These are, respectively, father Amon Maynard (Laurence Rupp) and his eldest daughter, Paula (Olivia Goschler). There’s also mother Viktoria (Ursina Lardi) and younger siblings, Coco and Bella. Viktoria is trying for a pregnancy, despite it being a regular tussle with Mother Nature, given her advancing years. Paula, our occasional narrator, adds an interesting, rather detached voice to proceedings, sometimes seemingly inside the family group and sometimes outside it. When dad isn’t shooting people, a hobby he enjoys with seeming impunity, he’s working on requisitioning part of the local countryside to use for a brand-new battery factory, lobbying local politicians to do so. However, the presence of a sniper in the local area is a complicating factor: the powers-that-be wonder if it’s something to do with Maynard, or someone in his circle, deliberately meddling in law and order for his own ends (it did seem for a moment there that this would be the case, in a kind of Dream Home (2010) way, but this possible plot development never fully gets off the ground).

Perhaps where the film begins to lose some goodwill is in the way it quickly dwindles into inaction, despite seemingly positioning itself as about to explore some potentially dynamic ideas. There’s never an upsurge in action here, nor any real surprises. There’s a lot of talking though, including by Volter (Dominik Warta), a down-at-heel investigative journalist (signified by his knackered leather jacket and unshaven face). Volter is onto Maynard. There’s also a witness called Alois, who seems determined to get the police to listen to him. But if anything, the lives of the Maynards grow even more charmed, despite these incursions.

There’s a very shallow narrative arc in Veni Vidi Vici, and an uncharitable opinion would be that this film is all set-up, no pay-off. It’s a defensible take. This film is immersive rather than instructive, destructive or dramatic. Where it does excel is in its depiction of modern torpor, in a world where wealth and cruelty seem to go remarkably, consistently unchallenged by the people most harmed by it. When Maynard asks, “Where’s the uprising?”, the line lands, despite being a simple encapsulation of an often complex, recognisable puzzler. There’s a gentle, but familiar feeling of exasperation hovering here. The film also affords itself a few moments of whimsical humour. It’s all somehow oddly compelling.

The film looks extraordinarily lovely, too. It all unfolds against that recognisable kind of minimalist luxury, the bare concrete and stone floors which signify real wealth. It’s odd how, nowadays, the really rich people like to live in structures which look like empty warehouses. Elsewhere, the film snaps into a different mode, revelling in soft fabrics, block pastels and a Cath Kidston world of florals, prettily-wrapped gifts, balloons and glitter. Ah, the gorgeous, sunlit uplands of having fuck all to do. These are easeful lives, lived by objectionable people. Things never get weirder or more momentous than that, even though the film tantalises a few things. Does it suggest that compulsive behaviour will catch up with anyone, in time? Or that attempts to tackle inequality will always fall flat, where people at large have spent long enough perfecting deliberate ignorance? A little of the latter, sure, but this isn’t a film with any cathartic moves to make, and this may well be the whole point, even if it means a rather hollow-feeling film overall.

Veni Vidi Vici (2024) will feature at both the Glasgow Film Festival (UK Premiere) and watchAUT (London Premiere) in March 2025.

The Mire (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The Mire (2023) opens with video footage of a man named Joseph (Antony Knight), leader of an organisation called The Canon. It’s soon clear that it’s a cult by any other name, with shades and aspects of very real cults, past and present. The video states that ‘the day is coming’, and we all know what that means: there are clear references to Heaven’s Gate here, as Joseph talks us through the Canon’s key beliefs in an existence beyond Earth, out amongst the stars. There’s a planned mass suicide, and it’s imminent: in fact, when we first meet Joseph away from the broadcast, we discover that it’s scheduled for the very next morning.

Ordinarily, we might ask if the congregation is fully on board with this idea: past cult suicides have taught us that this has not always been the case, with panic and chaos breaking out when the hour is finally nigh. The Mire dispenses with that idea, however: here, it’s Joseph who’s having second thoughts, and when two Canon members arrive at the church building because they have some concerns about him, it turns out that he’s just about headed out of the door with an overnight bag. In one of the film’s occasional, but pithy moments of humour, it’s made abundantly clear by these Canon members – Hannah and Marshall – that an overnight bag is a fairly odd thing to be carrying, given that one’s life is due to end in a few hours. However, Hannah (Holly McLachlan) and Marshall (Joseph Adelakun) are true believers; they’re still looking to Joseph for guidance. And they’re not about to let him leave.

By turns, the film then takes us through the individual stories of each of these followers (with on-screen chapters, obviously), exploring why and how they ever came under Joseph’s control. These flashbacks are intercut with the real-time narrative unfolding, providing some understanding of each of these otherwise taciturn – if needy – figures, still so ready to listen to Joseph’s word. Joseph himself is shown to be a shrewd man, there to offer structure and succour to the most needy people who cross his path; his success in recruiting Hannah and Marshall now presents him with a big problem, though, as they are so convinced by his teachings that they see his imminent desertion as – just maybe – part of a test of faith. That’s something which The Mire presents very clearly: once people have developed such beliefs, even those that seem to outsiders to be wildly fantastical beliefs, and once they are invested in all the trappings and parlance of that, then it becomes impossible to simply, suddenly step away. As such, Hannah and Marshall still want to proceed with the ‘prophecy’ – which refers to the suicide, of course – whilst Joseph must use all of his reserves of wit and manipulation to try and talk his away out of this mess. Each faction argues for their own way, struggling for clarity and power as they do so.

It’s funny: in some respects, The Mire feels like a strange inversion of recent horror hit Heretic, which is one of those strange, but strangely common coincidences which crop up in film, and we should remember that The Mire precedes Heretic. In both films, however, we see people arguing for their respective world views, and having these views put under increasingly uncomfortably scrutiny, particularly around the little hypocrisies which they have concealed in order to go all in on their respective religious outlooks. Here, though, it’s the visitors who create the scrutiny, leaving the host to fight back. Similarities end there, though: The Mire isn’t a horror, it’s a slow burn human drama with horrifying possibilities. It spills barely a drop of blood on camera, by the by. At around the one hour mark, it begins to feel as though things are running out of steam to an extent, but it is setting something up which comes to fruition in the final act (with some very clever writing and direction by Adam Nelson and Chris Watt).

This, then, is a film which rewards your patience, and it’s quietly devastating – watching people having everything unravelled, and seeing the time-old impulses to greed, selfishness and lies battle their way to the fore. The Mire has a very small cast and does most of its storytelling in a very limited setting, but it has plenty to say and shows plenty of skill. The ending, by the way, is a well-handled gut punch which leaves you wondering…

You can watch The Mire on Amazon Prime Video.