An unusual but effective blend between high-colour giallo-esque stylistics and… small town Wales, Scopophobia (2024) is a surprisingly intimate and engaging crime thriller. Thanks to those giallo elements, there’s plenty of proximity to horror too, but overall, this is a surprisingly intimate character study of a group of young women who share a nasty secret.
Milton, Wales: the early part of the film centres on a small business in this small town, Milton Steel, and its staff – one of whom is shown carrying a bright red cash box (picked out sharply for us against the rest of the film). Things get dark very quickly, even if, as remarked, the cash box doesn’t look like a lot. It’s still the difference between sink and swim for that entire month, however, so when it’s the subject of an opportunistic theft shortly after we first glimpse it, it triggers a chain of events at Milton Steel which leads to an untimely, grisly death.
Moving away from all this, at least for now, we meet a young woman named Rhiannon (Catrin Jones), receiving professional care for mental health issues – but she has the support of a small but close group of friends, and after her therapy, she is heading off with them. But the trip isn’t quite as planned: it was meant to be a night out in Cardiff, but Bethany (Sam Williams Potter) takes it upon herself to suggest they head back to Milton instead. Milton is very clearly signposted as the source of Rhiannon’s anxiety, so of course she isn’t too keen, but agrees to grin and bear it as she gets reacquainted with the rest of the girls. The meeting isn’t fully positive though; we may note a few potential sources of tension between them. Back to Rhiannon, however, and it’s obvious that this is part catch-up, part intervention: clearly all of these young women have unfinished business with the town where they grew up, and a determination to finally face it, with Rhi most in need of all.
As they descend upon a deserted local pub with courageous intent – Rhiannon pausing in this to chat with an old flame, Oliver (director and writer Aled Owen) now working behind the bar – talk turns to Milton Steel, with which Rhiannon, as it turns out, has a family connection. Whatever else is true of her, she’s harbouring knowledge which she has yet to share with the other girls, but for all of them, a late-night trip to the now deserted and derelict building is on the cards. This is more than just a trip down memory lane. They discuss something which may or may not be hidden on site, and this prompts them all to recall a period of time in their younger years when they were drawn to thrill-seeking, criminal behaviour of their own; they’re far from blameless, female victims. So they head to the building late at night, and whilst this has the potential for a showdown on its own terms given their shared history, there’s more.
After exploring the old place, the girls find out that someone has locked them in. Whoever it may be is in there with them, too, stalking the girls from room to room whilst menacingly calling out warnings. This person seems to know who they are, and maybe even what they’re doing there. But this is just the start of the girls’ reckoning with their past actions.
Criminals, or at least flawed people being confined in a small space and made to confront their deeds is a fairly popular motif in film, and whilst this first section of Scopophobia is long enough to lose some of the initial wow factor, it does establish character, with a decent, natural script and performances. There is some use of flashback, as is perhaps expected, given the ways things are panning out in the present, though unusually, the actors look plausibly school age when they are shown at that age, which is something which eludes plenty of filmmakers: it shows a good eye. The film also does an effective job of turning up various red herrings, again successfully emulating its forebears in giallo cinema: from the intro titles to the music, lighting and camera shots, it wears its heart on its sleeve in terms of its influences, and it’s a surprisingly effective blend, with a number of effective, escalatingly tense scenes.
As for the representation of Wales itself – unusual enough in a film of this type – there’s certainly some use made of very Welsh concerns. The derelict steel plant is a large feature of the Welsh cultural and physical landscape at this point, and it’s both engaging and fitting to see it used as such a key location here, newly requisitioned as a place of secrets and lies, and given some status as a setting. There’s also some interesting use made of the fact that this is such a small town, with perhaps ever-limited prospects if you have big plans (or at least plans bigger than a small town such as this can handle.) Personally, the use of modern pop music feels like a bit of a mismatch with the rest of the very effective retro soundtrack, but it’s at least understandable, and likely used as a way of bridging the gap between the very recognisable genre features and the more realist, up-to-date content. Overall, Scopophobia belies its budget to bring us an unusual and ambitious crime thriller which does more than enough to hold the interest, showcasing both a love of genre and a determination to bring a fresh approach to its storytelling. Not bad for a fifteen-day shoot. Oh, and it accounts for its unusual title, too.
The longer we live with social media, the more of a subgenre of horror it’s going to generate: as such, it’s little wonder that gaming is having its turn too, whether that be through screenplays based on successful games, or screenplays about gaming itself. Really speaking, although the technology is new, these films bring us stories about real problems clashing with the unreal, often forging links to far older ideas about the supernatural. That brings us to Livescreamers (2023), which is actually a sequel, but that doesn’t matter in terms of understanding the newer film. It’s a lively, interesting spin on its subject matter, familiar in some respects, but innovative in plenty of others.
We meet a group of content creators working for a gamer channel known as Janus Games – Janus, hmm? Founded by Mitch (Ryan LaPlante), and hosted by Zelda (Anna Lin), Nemo (Michael Smallwood), Gwen (Sarah Callahan Black), Jon (Christopher Trindade), Taylor (Coby Oram), Davey and Dice (Evan Michael Pearce; Maddox Julien Slide). On the day we meet them, they are preparing for an online session where they’re going to welcome a fan of the channel onto the stream to play alongside them. This is a big deal for fan Lucy (Neoma Sanchez), who moves between enthusing about her love for Janus Games and worrying about the exact game they’ll be playing together.
This turns out to be a new horror indie, newly available – and there to be road-tested by the team. It’s called House of Souls, and you know what? The graphics which are incorporated into the film are very good indeed, as is the mock gameplay. The team sets about modding their characters, which is a quick way for the film to showcase the care and attention to detail which is on its way, and the tension starts to build as they are each invited to select one help item for use during the game. This being done, they’re in, walking into the prerequisite Old Dark House to try to decipher what’s going on, and indeed how to ‘win’ the game…
Whilst it’s possible to make a guess as to how gameplay and real life are going to cross paths here, all whilst begging a few questions as to the precise details of that crossover, Livescreamers deserves ample credit for the way it splices gamer lore, gamer sociolect, urban legend and myth. There are lots and lots of ideas, well presented and thought out. The use of split screen, in-game footage and what we can assume is an often ad-lib script all work together nicely, perhaps most closely resembling another excellent social media horror, Deadstream (2022), in its use of pace, humour and tone, but doing plenty of its own work too. There’s maybe some Panic Button (2011) in there too, which – although an older title – really did set the bar for the blend between omnipotent social media and unsavoury personal revelations.
Livescreamers has a lot to say about modern gaming, and so is clearly coming from a place of love – and frustration, too, as it talks its way through a range of well-established current annoyances, as well as more significant issues. We get commentary on the sometimes-unpalatable balancing act between integrity and making money, for example, and plenty of commentary on gender and gender/queer issues, which have been tenaciously haunting the world of gaming for years, and don’t look to be going away anytime soon, either. Yes, the use of an increasingly hostile environment to force home truths is a horror cinema staple, whether it’s in a game or not, but the blend of on-camera footage, side footage, gameplay and even analogue media playable by characters inside the game (!) showcase a good range of narrative ideas. The film worries away at character traits and faults at just the right tempo, with a series of reveals along the way. It’s also interesting that the film moves most of its purest horror scenes into the game itself, but it’s decently creepy and works well when it happens.
In terms of bigger social ideas, aside from the gender politics at play, the film also asks questions about fame and what it means, now that it is potentially so accessible to so many people – even people who, once, would have just played games with their closest friends. There are of course lots of pitfalls – actually, quite literally in the world of the game – and Livescreamers explores these in just enough detail, raising questions as well as focusing our attention on certain aspects. It also carries a sense of dark humour throughout.
The world of online gaming is huge, but nonetheless Livescreamers may find its appeal lands best with a comparatively small audience in the grander scheme of things, and that’s okay: it may be a film for one tribe in particular, but given its decent writing, authentic performances and a deft understanding of how to tell a story in ninety neat minutes, it’s a decent, enjoyable horror indie and a successful labour of love from director and writer Michelle Iannantuono.
Livescreamers (2023) is coming to VOD and Blu-ray on September 27th.
Body horror has always given us repellent answers to pertinent questions, and The Substance (2024) is a great entrant to the genre, even if it’s quite busy paying its dues to a whole host of past directors and titles. The key question under consideration here is a very familiar one: what happens to women in the public eye when they dare to grow older? But it’s not just about stardom: this is a hideous microcosm of the horrors of ageing in a patriarchal society. It’s focused on celebrity, but it runs deeper than that, so as grim as it gets, it’s coming from a recognisable place.
Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is the star of a long-running TV fitness show, and she’s a big success until – bam – she has the temerity to turn fifty. On her birthday, she overhears head honcho Harvey (a brilliantly repugnant Dennis Quaid) pondering aloud how the old bitch has even lasted this long. She’s being replaced: the channel needs someone ‘young’ and ‘hot’ instead.
Elisabeth’s day from hell continues when she leaves the studio and, momentarily distracted by a vast billboard bearing her image (the film goes a bundle on distracting, unsettling posters) she’s involved in a car accident, at which point the film rolls out the first of its waves of noise trauma, as the sounds of the impact cut through the air like shards of metal. At the hospital, Lizzy is told she’s had a lucky escape, with no major injuries. But as she prepares to leave, a handsome young doctor – who seems enamoured of her spinal column for some reason – tells her she would be a “good candidate” for…something. She finds a card and a memory stick in her coat pocket after she leaves, mentioning something simply called The Substance.
When you base your entire existence on the kind of shiftless popularity upon which LA is built, then a day like this is completely untenable. Faced with a bunch of roses with a cutting past tense message: ‘you were great!’, Lizzy plugs in the memory stick and swayed by the information she discovers, tracks down this Substance to a grotty PO box. Soon afterwards, she’s ready to create the ‘best version of herself’ using an appropriately vivid green concoction, a syringe and an array of drips. The instructions are sparse – surely we could get a few good short films out of people misinterpreting what they have to do here – but Lizzy gets through it, and…
You’ll have to see the process for yourselves. No descriptions here. My word.
Her ’best self’ turns out to be a twentysomething girl (Margaret Qualley) with little about her beyond prettiness and that kind of saccharine, unspoiled tabula rasa quality which people in the industry love: not for nothing, we can guess, does she choose the name ‘Sue’ (‘Use’). She is excited by the possibilities this creates and decides to gyrate her way back to her old job under her new guise, heading down to the studio to audition as Elisabeth Sparkle’s replacement. Sue dispenses with even notional fitness value for the new act, instead dropping a bubblegum-coloured, softcore dance act instead – which, obviously, the dunderheads in charge absolutely love (women’s bodies may shift and twist and change in this film, but all the men here are born grotesques). Whilst it’s initially quite difficult to see Lizzy and Sue as essentially one person, it beds in, clearly following in the footsteps of the likes of Dorian Gray and Dead Ringers (1998). Each incarnation begins to detest the other self, each of whom seems to deliberately goad the other, eventually attempting to break the rules of conduct expressly given by the makers of the Substance by hanging onto more time as the favoured self – which can only go one way: disaster.
While we’re on the subject of influences, this is a film which very clearly signposts a number of films and filmmakers, though The Shining (1980) is probably highest in the mix, alongside a fair few other, often very open nods (bows?) to Kubrick – this makes for a rich, interesting aesthetic mix, particularly around the use of interiors, with some direct references to killer Kubrick scenes. But there’s more: as the film progresses from a more sober, clinical body horror (the likes of Brandon Cronenberg) to a much more OTT, late 80s-style body horror (David Cronenberg; Brian Yuzna) the film manages to balance being its own beast against a clear, if occasionally hectic homage to the greats.
It does work, though. At its heart, the messaging behind The Substance is sincere, clear and devastating. We can all think of anecdotes – with different outcomes, admittedly, or hopefully – where stars, usually women, reach a certain age and are immediately sidelined. Moore, who is fantastic in this film, has probably been far closer to this cruel system during her own career, and her performance is sympathetic, even whilst showing us a woman whose entire sense of self-worth is built on sand. She’ll do anything to get the applause back, and look what happens as a result. We get Sue, a girl so hooked on that applause that she will do anything, even playing fast and loose with the rules of the substance (see also: Death Becomes Her) that she messes everything up in grand, irrevocable style. But then we only get Sue because she is, incredibly, the best version of Lizzy, a woman who, for all the money and the billboards and the designer clothes, is lonely. It’s a brittle, aimless life. Whilst The Substance is a hammer blow to the brutal vicissitudes of celebrity, it is also a distillation of wider attitudes to women. Moore – who looks great, but that’s to evaluate her against exactly the same bullshit scale as the one used in the film – really gets put through the wringer here, and so does Sue. It’s quite something to behold.
As an addendum, it was a pleasure to watch this with a non-horror crowd who’d come to see it entirely based on its lead actresses; these were people who have lived pleasant lives, with no knowledge of Society (1989) or anything like it, and then they were faced with…this. Hope they’re okay today. I hope, too, that they are with me in appreciating this well-crafted, vivid, bold piece of body horror with clever ideas, references and developments. There’s no let-up, all whilst retaining an artful, consistent visual style, a hellish soundtrack and killer performances. If Demi Moore doesn’t win an Oscar for this, then the Harveys are still, sadly, in charge.
The ‘heist gone wrong’ is a surprisingly popular motif in genre cinema lately. From Livide (2011) to Don’t Breathe (2016) through to Peppergrass (2021), to name a few, ideas about what could happen in such an unfamiliar, high stakes situation have given a fair few filmmakers food for thought, and each subsequent film uses varying blends of realism and fantasy to explore the aftermath. This brings us to Things Will Be Different (2024), a film which also uses the heist idea, but marries it to another modern genre film predilection: time travel. The resulting film has some of the almost inevitable issues which come of toying with quantum mechanics in a ninety (or a hundred) minute screenplay, but on balance, it’s still one of the more humane and intriguing riffs on the subject matter to date.
As the film begins, a phonecall between adult brother and sister Joseph (Adam David Thompson) and Sidney (Riley Dandy) tells us that these two need to go off-grid for a while – actually, for a very specific while: two weeks exactly. The reason for this is so that they can lay low following a robbery – a robbery which is of course going to change everything for them. Meeting at an ominously timeless diner, Sidney with a rifle strapped to her back (which looks seismically unsuited to laying low, all told) and Joe with a couple of bags of loot at his feet, they enjoy a last supper of sorts before heading off into the nearby woods en route to a mystery house, known to Joe, where they intend to hide. Continuing to fail at being inconspicuous, they first have to clear a carful of locals from out front (which they do by shooting at them!) but, the house is clearly key to their plans, so they go inside. The place is derelict, but there are some old pieces of furniture still around and some of these seem to be, let’s say, unusual. There’s clearly more to this place than first appears, and both siblings know it – even if Joe takes the lead. Using special know-how, they gain access to a hidden room and sit tight while the sirens slip in and out of sound range. It looks like they’re going to be okay.
It’s when they emerge that things really reveal themselves as weird. The house now appears neat and tidy; the fields outside are different. What? How long were they in there? When Joe meddled with the dial on the clock downstairs, it was clearly something more involved than just springing some secret lock or mechanism: it seems that these two have somehow taken themselves outside of conventional time, which means that they can hide their deeds and hide from the cops by hanging out in a kind of never-never land, with the house operating as a dimension of its own. Joe and Sidney decide to use their two week vacation from space-time as a good excuse to fix some bad blood and unspoken tensions, which they duly do, but it will be absolutely no surprise to anyone to discover that apparently you can’t simply opt out of the passage of time and then hop back in where you left off. Time travel, quantum worlds – these ideas essentially function as a new wave of supernaturalism in cinema, the new ‘forces you don’t mess with’ without prompting fear, disorientation and unease. In the case of this film, it turns out that there are others with more of a handle on these kinds of possibilities, and that they are watching Joe and Sidney: messages start to appear, recordings are shared. The siblings find themselves trapped in a hostile situation where they are being watched, but by whom? Who is coming, and what do they want?
Codes and signs, covert knowledge – the plot of the film takes some time to bed in, and at first feels a little like Episode Two of something, where you may have missed a few of the essentials – the whos, the whens, the wheres. The script is clearly aware of this and attempts to rectify it, with characters discussing some of the facts behind the so-called “magic house” and at some points, some aspects of the suspension of disbelief required seems to be of some concern to writer/director Michael Felker, who comes close to shrugging at some of the finer details. But in other respects, the film’s determination to only ever afford its characters (and audience) just enough understanding is played spectacularly well. Sometimes, taking its strangeness as a given allows the film to change tack very abruptly, introducing distinct horror elements – bodies, blood, watchful and seemingly omniscient ‘Others’ who retain control of an increasingly vulnerable and desperate pair of protagonists. These shifts in pace are effective. Key to all of this? Thompson and Dandy are charismatic enough to carry the close focus of their roles, bringing enough of a fractured family relationship to bear on the film to keep their characters interesting and sympathetic. High energy sequences are lower in the mix than slower, more philosophical content, but given the small cast and fixed abode, this is to be expected. The film itself is highly technically proficient, with beautiful shots of bright sunshine ceding to dust-mote-opaque interiors, summer giving way to autumn and winter, and every shot carefully lit and framed. There’s also a simple but ominous musical score which scales up the tension, even when things may at least appear calm; it really draws things together well.
Admittedly I’ll always have a sneaking suspicion that these kinds of quantum horrors add an inarguable layer of ‘science’ to otherwise familiar (and arguable) magic storylines, but there are still plenty of ideas and developments in Things Will Be Different to hold the attention, and in many respects it’s a considered and engaging film. Perhaps to add that ‘those time guys’ Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson are producers, with Benson also taking a more involved role, will ultimately tell you whether this title is for you or not – as there are some similarities with Benson & Moorhead projects to date, and director Michael Felker has also worked on several of their past films. But Things Will Be Different certainly has a lot to recommend it on its own terms too, and ultimately the ways in which its human relationships are overlaid with incredible circumstances have more than enough aplomb here for a first-time feature.
Things Will Be Different will be in UK Cinemas from 4th October and on Blu-ray and Digital Download from 18th November.
In the tradition of updating the afterlife mythos – from Beetlejuice to The Lovely Bones – directors and writers the Butler Brothers have turned their hand to the ultimate hinterland in Purgatory Jack (2023), taking for a setting the place where souls wait to be cleansed of residual sin before getting into heaven. And they’ve done some interesting work with it; The Divine Comedy this ain’t, and instead their version of Purgatory is weirdly recognisable, a little ramshackle and in many ways, original and bizarre. This all unfolds to us with some early bridging shots, getting us from Earth to afterlife – firstly with a photo of what looks like a couple’s suicide pact, some time in the mid-twentieth century. This is what does for Jack: we see him, still wearing clothes in the style of his time on Earth, hiding away, alone, in a bar-cum-residence which is filled with clocks (to remind him that time is still passing, even if it doesn’t pass the same way where he is). We also see some paramedics desperately working on a young woman; it’s left to us to work out whether their efforts are successful, because the first time we get a good look at her, she’s materialising in a strange place, watched by a group of young women – one of whom is clutching a severed arm.
Okay. In short order, we also find out that Purgatory runs by certain rules. Blood – which turns to ashes if a person spends a long time there – is treated like a drug by older souls, which is of great peril to new arrivals, particularly if there’s still a question mark over whether they’re dead or alive, in a hinterland of their own. That seems to be the case with punk musician Viv Vacious (Alexandra Beaton), who is famous enough that the three muses sitting on the bench nearby are instantly starstruck. We also glean that body parts are interchangeable here, thanks to a black market in hacked-off limbs. Put people anywhere, living or dead, and it seems they’ll create some sort of godawful underground economy before too long. In any case, Viv is at risk and one of her fangirls tells her she needs to lay low, get off the streets: to help her to do just that, she is taken to Jack’s residence, and he’s able to fill her in on a few more relevant pieces of information.
They talk – or rather, Jack talks, Viv Vacious snarls and huffs (there are some issues with this character, who blows hot and cold at points, reverting to shouty feminist platitudes which are probably intended to make her relatable as an alt-rock pioneer, but can wind up keeping her at arm’s length). It turns out that Viv’s own mother committed suicide some twenty Earth years previously; Jack doesn’t really help himself here by pointing out that Purgatory is filled with suicides – maybe her mom is here, too. On hearing this, Viv quickly decides that she has to seek her out, talk to her one last time about what led her to leave a seven year old child behind. As a result, Jack decides he has to go along too as a kind of penance, perhaps, prompting an odyssey of sorts – which puts them both in danger, but also reveals a lot more about the machinations going on behind the scenes, and how the worlds of the living and the dead overlap.
How to define this film, in genre terms? Cyberpunk neo noir perhaps? There are definitely noir elements here, and not just because of Jack’s outfit: a flawed main character, the search for a covert truth, the use of flashback…but then, the majority of noirs weren’t hinged around ideas such as organised bloodletting and underground surgery, so the label won’t do on its own. Maybe that’s just fine. You really can’t fault the range of ideas initially at play here: the film is often funny, often thoughtful and occasionally profound. Microbudget or not, the film gets a lot out of its resources: it uses visual clues and touches to add to the strangeness; it lights and frames all of the interior shots very well, and also manages to make outside locations look suitably strange – all through relatively simple devices like the use of post-production cartoon panel colours, and/or framing things so that the place looks like the savage wasteland it should be. To come back to the idea of influences, it reminded me in places of the Clive Barker novella Mister B. Gone, which depicts hell as just a place where demons live, shop, socialise, cook, and live out almost humdrum lives, just in an extraordinary place.
The main issue with Purgatory Jack is that, after establishing an intriguing, creative take on its selected setting, it doesn’t quite have enough other surprises to carry it through an hour and forty minutes which, although by far not the longest runtime ever seen in an indie film, is long enough to need a solid narrative arc with a few questions and resolutions. Really speaking, the idea here is very simple, so once the initial impression made by this particular take on Purgatory settles, you’re left with quite a long wander through the landscape while the main characters look for someone, which can feel like it’s lagging in places. Yes, we do get some resolutions, but these are guessable to a point (alongside some other plot points which raise a few issues but don’t linger over those particulars, which can make things feel uneven by the end.) But nonetheless, the Butler Brothers’ dark humour, so prevalent in Unfriending (2023), is still here in enough measure to land with audiences, showing them to be filmmakers with plenty of ideas and promise, and happy to take on the big ideas along the way, even life and death.
Made in 1972 for Spanish TV, Antonio Mercero’s short film La Cabina (The Phone Booth) didn’t appear on British television for around a decade after that, but it was a case of once seen, never forgotten for those people who first saw it in the early Eighties, appearing as part of a suite of programmes on the-then new terrestrial arts channel, Channel 4. Now, in a post-analogue world which has, funnily enough, more or less dispensed with phone booths, it can be seen via YouTube – and it definitely should be seen.
Before reading the article, do yourselves a favour and check it out now, if you haven’t already done so. The article may contain spoilers.
First impressions reveal an oddity of a film which now functions as an interesting time capsule but, like so many other hitherto lost oddities, it’s so much more than that. It’s not just about the brief snapshot of 1970s Spain which it offers, or its now archaic technology. It leads the audience from one faintly silly, slapstick-adjacent situation into a barely understood, but frightening alternate reality where, just behind the scenes, strange forces are at work, able to act with impunity as life rolls merrily on around them. There is great cruelty here, rising to a dismal crescendo which suggests far, far more is at play. La Cabina is a masterclass in what can be achieved with the short film format -actually, thirty-five minutes here – given that, still, hundreds of brilliant short films are deprived a wider audience due to so little space being made for these films, in either television or cinema programming.
The film starts simply enough, capturing a brief and unremarkable moment in the everyday reality of the 70s: as the world is waking up, some men arrive with a flatbed truck to install a flashy new phone booth in a town square. Once done, they depart, and we meet a father and a young son: the father, a nameless businessman (and this is important) sees his son onto the school bus before hopping into the phone booth to make a quick call.
Flashy and new it may be, but the phone isn’t actually working. By the time the man (José Luis López Vázquez) realises this, the door has gently closed shut behind him – and it’s stuck. He tries and tries to get the door back open, but to no avail. As passers-by begin to take notice of his frankly daft predicament, they start trying to help: their efforts attract more people, and before too long there’s a minor stir in the town square, with people gathering to observe what’s going on. Attracted to the hustle and bustle, lottery ticket sellers and people carrying snacks arrive. An old lady is helped to prime position and given a chair. Meanwhile, inside the booth, the man cycles through a range of emotions, from annoyance to embarrassment, even displaying some awareness that yes, this is all a little ridiculous.
Finally, the police and fire service arrive: there’s a sense, when first watching the film, that this will be the clincher – the powers-that-be will be able to do something because that’s what they do, and it’s intriguing to be walked through that expectation at this point and then walked straight out the other side, because things don’t come to pass that way. Things take an unexpected turn when the same company – is it a company? – arrives and puts the booth on the back of the flatbed, trapped man and all. They look like they know what they’re doing. That’s more than the police or fire service did. The crowd cheers, then goes back to whatever it was that they were doing before the morning’s entertainment; Mercero has created an H G Wells-worthy crowd scene here, guilty of bystander apathy at best, or boorish, clueless and mean at worst. The film also plays with society’s tendency to just trust that ‘things will get sorted out’ somehow. The people who arrive in overalls with a suitable vehicle must surely be legitimate and organised, and perhaps they are, in a sense. But what looks like help, isn’t help at all; it’s a continuation of a pre-planned ordeal. Meanwhile, the man – who is completely ignored by the drivers, like a piece of cargo – gets transported out of the city, through an otherwise timeless and picturesque rural Spain. Beautiful, sure, but remote, unfamiliar and certainly not somewhere you’d associate with a quick fix or a specialist team of mechanics there to deal with this inconvenience. More to the point: they’re not stopping. The journey goes on.
Steadily, hopes for an expected resolution are being removed. You can feel the film’s firm foundations being eroded. Mercero does this oh-so artfully, but one moment, relatively early in the film’s runtime, is key, suggesting very briefly that elsewhere, this same farce has been taking place. Our protagonist glimpses another man, a man just like him, a businessman in a suit, also being transported somewhere. They are briefly able to lock eyes: the other man is already more downtrodden, but our protagonist is not far behind him, and this sequence is more intriguing for the way it raises new possibilities. So, is this a farce at all, then? It’s starting to seem otherwise. What is actually going on remains to be seen…
And, arguably, is never revealed. The rising horror of the film’s end sequences are so memorable because we are made to acknowledge a strange, organised process, the upshot of which remains ultimately mysterious to us. What we can say is that someone, somewhere clearly has a lot invested in what now appears to be a process of trapping and transporting lone men to a vast, remote plant of some kind. The clearest aspect of this horror is revealed in reverse: we see a number of empty booths, lined up and being cleansed by other workers. Then, where our journey finally comes to a stop, we see a large number of booths which are still occupied – by other businessmen, or rather: dead or dying businessmen.
These deaths serve no clear purpose. This isn’t Soylent Green (1973) – we don’t see anything like that process taking place, and this isn’t Phantasm (1979) either – there’s no supernaturalism or science fiction being suggested here. So why has this happened? Why have these men been killed by neglect; why are the booths being cleaned and reused, presumably to secure more people to kill in the same way? What is this all for?
From the moment we glimpse the second man who is being transported at the same time as our protagonist, we can glean that there may be something significant in two almost identical men being taken in this way. By the time the film ends, we can be confident, at least, that this is a factor. Apparel, age, sex and class: the men are more or less identikit. Much has been made of this, right down to interpreting the film as a coded critique of the last days of Franco’s Spain, but perhaps victimising a typically powerful and prestige group in this way – businessmen are more often villains than victims in the horror genre – is a reminder that everyone can be vulnerable, even the comparatively powerful.
It’s also possible to say that the man’s plight is seen as humorous by the watching crowd in ways which would not be the case if a little girl or a young woman with children were trapped in that booth. In fact, at first the businessman’s ordeal becomes a kind of alpha male contest, where passing males start to get competitive about who’s going to free this poor, helpless desk-job sap sweating uselessly in the phone booth, clearly unable to free himself. Is the film suggesting that these kinds of men are expendable? Replaceable? It certainly does suggest that, if so many of these men are disappearing, that society is continuing to function without them, but by focusing on one individual, La Cabina does not just become a simple or generalised commentary on the fate of the missing, or even a treatise about sex or class.
The man’s last clear remembrance of his now former life is a memory of his son, whom he loves: a child that he passes on the road, innocent to what is going on, waves to him as he passes. Perhaps it’s then that our businessman realises nothing about this situation is likely to be rectified in normal ways, and he seems to be genuinely sad and fearful here, not simply annoyed as previously. In some respects, the man is going through the stages of grief, grieving for himself and his loved ones. In many respects, the absence of dialogue enables this progression and enables us to follow it: it’s implied that the booths are soundproof, so the man’s only communication for the most part of the film is non-verbal. When it finally dawns on him that he will never escape, then the stages are complete, and he has also become an Everyman, suffering silently to the end.
Throughout this wordless journey, Mercero adds powerful visual symbols which underline and underpin the development of the narrative. From the knitting women reminiscent of les Tricoteuses, the women who calmly knitted as guillotined heads hit the baskets during the French Revolution, to the glass-sided coffin which mirrors the booth as it passes, death imagery dominates the film, though again, sometimes these pieces fall into place after the fact, as you find yourself emulating the businessman by casting your eye back over events so far, looking for clues, anything to justify what’s going on. There is also a strange parity drawn between the tragicomic elements in the film and the inclusion of circus performers at the film’s midpoint, with a group pausing their practice to observe the vehicle and the man as they pass. Finally, the film features an unconventional noose in the form of a strangulating phone cable; a man in a nearby booth, with his own untold story, has opted to end his own life. It’s one of the last things which our protagonist sees, and one last way in which Mercero equates the world of the booth, with its harried users, business calls and urgent matters to attend, with something horrifying and inescapable: it’s a particularly vicious, then-modern and everyday update on a timeless symbol. And this would be a particularly hideous place to end the film, but there’s more.
The film turns out to be cyclical, which in itself contributes to the eddying, unspoken darkness which dominates by the end credits. As things draw to a close, we see the process repeat: a pair of the equally faceless, unknown men are back, installing another phone booth in the square. Devoid of any real understanding, left adrift without answers, all we see clearly is that life apparently continues in everyday, modern urban Spain, where individuals can apparently be quickly forgotten and where equally faceless organisations veer between feckless and malign. They can be taken for granted and overlooked by the easily distracted masses; in the case of the people who remove the phone booth, this is what enables them.
Centred throughout – as if we’re likely to forget – is a simple phone booth: today the phone booth is a bit of an anachronism, true, but at the time it was an everyday, even humdrum facility, and part of normal life. To repurpose something so ordinary and overlooked (only the man’s son bothers to remark that the phone booth looks ‘new’) to make it one facet of an inscrutable, mysterious and harmful agency is the prime destabilising act of the film, however extreme and mysterious the outcome remains. We might like to wonder about equivalents today, or debate whether our increasingly connected and surveilled society has different, newer horrors of its own. But in any case, La Cabina, with its simple premise and execution, feels very timeless. It’s ultimately a sad, inexplicable story which allows us to witness our protagonist’s plight but not to make any further sense of it, although it tantalises that someone – someone powerful – could explain. The film has just enough of the strange, and just enough of the familiar, to ensure it still packs a genuine punch.
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.
“Everything I have said and done has been in the hands of God”: a young woman, lying on her bed, intones this sentence over and over, like a mantra, as Saint Clare (2024) begins. This is apparently a Joan of Arc quotation, but it’s hopefully no spoiler to point that Joan figures but little in this film. Instead, Saint Clare comes off like a piece of young adult fiction brought to the screen (okay), but it is blended rather unconvincingly with a much darker subtext, even if largely through implication and suggestion. The tone is off. The film is more of a mystery than a horror, so the horror content which does feature may feel a little thin or derivative for the majority of viewers. It’s a visually very impressive film, but there are issues at hand.
The bedroom mantra-chanter is in fact our ‘Saint’ Clare (Belle Thorne), who has recently moved towns to live with her hippy grandma (a criminally-underused Rebecca De Mornay) after some recent personal tragedies sent her into a cycle of moving house, sofa hopping and boarding schools. But she has recently arrived in town, and seems to be settling well at what I think is also meant to be another school, despite Ms. Thorne herself being nearly 27. Or, hey, maybe it’s college. Whatever, the American tradition of casting older adults as young adults (or even children) is a long, noble one by this point – even with an Italian director. The setting is what counts.
But wherever Clare is being educated, all is not well with her. As she sits and waits for a bus after school/college one afternoon, she is intercepted by a clearly creepy man in a car who comes out with a daft excuse for her to get into his vehicle. If it seems a little strange that this clearly savvy girl, who asks him all the right questions, does in fact decide to get in is explained shortly afterwards, when she attacks and kills him. She is – and this is never particularly explored – a kind of vigilante, who gets visions of wrong ‘uns, and knows to dispatch them for the greater good.
Another facet of Clare’s strangeness is her occasional interaction with the ghost of a man who, although not a sex criminal – as in inferred in the other cases – did die as a result of an interaction with Clare: this would be Bob (Frank Whaley), who was once a mailman, and he appears here and there to either act as Clare’s conscience, or to offer plot-expedient details which move things along. All of this would be strange enough, but successfully killing criminals and sometimes chatting to a dead mailman probably wouldn’t make for a narrative arc, so we need something else: this comes in the form of a discovery.
It turns out that the man she recently killed was not acting alone, which could mean that Clare is at risk from those people who worked with him, if they find out who she is. The case also prompts an investigation, with police interviews taking place. Along the way, as Clare takes it more and more upon herself to find out what’s been going on in this town, she finds concrete evidence of a misogynistic conspiracy, reaching back for years. Now it’s her destiny to solve the mystery, putting herself at renewed risk as she does.
So there is some kind of movement and development here, but Saint Clare remains a simple story. It glosses over some of its potentially finer plot points – such as fully accounting for Clare’s supernatural abilities – and its determination to keep the camera fixed on Thorne at all costs means that it but rarely scans around for anything else to consider. Other characters are left resolutely one-dimensional, and male characters aren’t exactly characters at all: in places, they’re little more than caricatures, and Saint Clare‘s universe is certainly not kind to men more generally.
But for balance, let’s consider its treatment of its key protagonist: that’s not rich or detailed, either. People tell Clare that she is ‘hot’ and ‘pretty’, if ‘weird’: fair enough, but things don’t get much deeper than that. Clare is pretty but weird; no one tells her she’s complex. She gets through a series of unfortunate events with a pout-scowl and a monotone drawl which don’t really reflect the peril she’s meant to be in. Elsewhere, her peers provide some light relief, bringing the teen girl drama and petty rivalries (though it’s not abundantly clear whether we are meant to be laughing at them, or with them). Light relief dissipates by the time of the final act, though in its place comes frustration that the narrative gets increasingly scrappy, dodging clear answers. No one is strongly drawn enough to get us fully invested.
Nonetheless, there are strengths, and lots of the film’s key strengths relate to its strong production values and visuals. It’s an aesthetically very bold film, which highlights peril through its roving camerawork, close shots and choppy edits. The ‘fade to red’ motif is a simple, but appealing addition; director Mitzi Peirone goes quite heavy on the flashback and backfill, which, whilst not always adding that complexity, does nonetheless make for a more varied viewing experience, with artistic shot composition and a great accompanying soundtrack. To sum up, for some viewers this reasonably light-touch mystery will do enough to entertain, thanks to its star appeal and an aesthetic flair which carries well across (nearly) ninety minutes. For others, this reviewer included, the film alludes too much and explores too little, namechecking the notion of whole, complex, liberated female film characters but teasing us by not really including any.
Saint Clare (2024) received its UK Premiere at FrightFest 2024 and will be released on digital from 101 Films (date TBC).
How far can a person be pushed before they finally, irrevocably snap? It’s a question horror cinema has seemingly enjoyed mulling over for as long as it’s existed, pushing for ever more disturbing conclusions as the decades pass. And, as the intense focus on distressed and vulnerable individuals has increased, so the resolutions themselves have become more shocking, often drawing upon dream states, psychosis and burgeoning violence before drawing to a close. Recent films which have done just this include Saint Maud, Stopmotion and Censor – female-focused stories where the desire to just get on, to live, soon curdles into something unreasonable and unstoppable. But yet, in all of these stories, the female protagonist at least has a brief moment in the sun – a reason to hope – before things come crashing down. A new career, a new creative pursuit – something. There’s some worthy attempt to escape one’s demons, even if ultimately, this fails.
Cara (2024) in many respects belongs to the above group, but with an important proviso: from the first moments we meet Cara (Elle O’Hara) it’s clear that the ground beneath her feet has already started to slip, if she ever held any purchase on it whatsoever. The world she’s managed to build for herself is either dismissive of her, or openly hostile; she has little worth, or is barely understood. The big crisis – and the film feels full of emerging crises, long before they become clearer – already feels like it’s on its way, even by the time the opening credits roll; all we can do is observe what happens. Doomed to repeat old cycles, any grab for agency on Cara’s part is – in the true sense of the world – problematic. But Cara is, in many respects, agreeable and likeable – you want her to thrive, to have something good in her life. She’s no sacrificial lamb; this isn’t that type of film. As a result, Cara is singularly hard-hitting, and the more you think over its core elements (and you will), the bleaker and crueller it all seems.
The film opens with an array of pixelated male faces and certain close shots of our lead which quickly reveal that she is a cam girl, but not for your standard turn-up-and-stare channels; things are darker here, as she broadcasts on a site called RedRoomFans which demands a bit more – specialist entertainment for its punters, shall we say. Both Cara and her flatmate Ash (Michaela Longden) work in this potentially rather shady trade, but Ash doesn’t participate in the more niche stuff. That being said, neither of them are exactly rolling in money through their endeavours. Ash refers to it as “a marathon, not a sprint”: it’s just another version of hard graft, and just as thankless. Outside of her online sessions, Cara is in therapy: all of her reality seems to be refracted through technology, laptop or phone, but in that she’s not so unusual, and she is working hard to compartmentalise her life – therapy sessions, cam sessions – all by interacting with her mobile or computer. Overshadowing all of this is her shaky ‘recovery’, and her certainty that she is about to be returned to hospital. We can insinuate that she means a mental hospital; is her fear of this triggering her current mindset?
We see Cara begin to disassociate from reality rather frequently, hearing people say things about her which clearly reflect her deepest feelings of shame and revulsion; they’re not really saying it, but again, there’s that sense of slipping down, down, down. Demands on her time by a client from the website, who apparently has enough knowledge about her to intimidate and bully her, push her further. So, when a fellow recovery group member casually mentions that he’d have once used violence on the therapy group leader for her belittling language towards him, it’s as if Cara grabs onto that possibility – of using violence to reset the balance. As the steady, certain erosion of hope continues around her, she begins to channel her hopelessness into defiance, forging ahead with a bizarre plan which she believes will change all the equations.
Cara takes place on the fringes of the everyday world, but it’s nonetheless a recognisable place, one where women are not seen as fully human beings. We know it goes on; we may see it for ourselves; here it feels particularly brutal, though, because Cara is a vulnerable woman struggling so hard to get control, but she’s already reduced in the eyes of many by her sexuality – and she feels, or has felt, that she has little option but to operate in that world, too – the spectre of abuse is never far away here. With a limited hand to play, one coloured by her past and her experiences, she has thrown in her lot with people and situations which could only ever do her harm in the long run. Her dawning awareness of this, and her determination to fight back, are understandable, even if her methods are – shall we say, questionable? But because Cara is a character with real depth, the film avoids playing her as a pawn, and clearly never sets out to do so: it would be a real mistake to fail to see past the film’s more horrifying or exploitative context, because it has some real clout in how it explores its key bigger-picture themes: power and powerlessness. Its array of nasty or damaged people, grim places and transactional relationships all point towards the balance of power, and how limited power in society is carved up and distributed.
The chief style of horror in Cara – despite a few shocking, appalling moments of bloodshed – is psychological, interweaving fantasy, dreams and persecution mania into its story. It’s a singularly unpleasant experience, but a strangely mesmerising one, with a sharp British script (and plenty of British invective) plus a cast giving high quality, invested performances throughout. There’s even the odd moment of dark humour – but don’t get your hopes up. You’re not lifted out of the hideousness of human cruelty and hypocrisy for very long. In fact, the more I think about Cara, the more I’m impressed that a film with a limited budget, small cast and on first pass, seemingly recognisable plot elements could combine into something so monumentally unpleasant and unsparing. Some time after my initial viewing, I’m still pondering what I’ve seen: is anything as it seems? Nothing is true; everything is permitted?
Audiences will differ, and this is also to the film’s credit. Cara leaves you with a sense of deep unease, and it sticks around, too, kicking up the odd moment of crushing realisation, or the answer to a question you wish you’d never asked.
Cara (2024) received its premiere at this year’s FrightFest. The film now has a release date of 3rd Feb 2025 from Reel 2 Reel Films.
A wonderfully desolate beach and the surrounding countryside clash with a ramshackle nearby house and its sole occupant (Nick Searcy), whom we see frantically writing – against the clock, as some kind of supernatural phenomena seems to be goading him, making him hallucinate, fear for his sanity. So who is this letter for? We get a brief gap in the timeline, but we can quickly infer that it’s for the man’s son Tom (Tyler Q Rosen), who receives a call late at night to tell him the worst (though given the remoteness of his father’s house, who knows who makes the call; oh, wait. Is this part and parcel of the strange circumstances which ensue?)
Thus begins a troubled quest for knowledge which, it seems, Tom always knew was coming. But it’s not a straight path to get to this point: along the way, we pick up a few more characters. There’s counsellor Jess (Adriana Isabel), Tom’s sister-in-law, first seen facing down an angry ex-con who doesn’t buy into self reflection, sharing his feelings or the meditation prescribed as part of his probation. In fact, he hates it so much, he can barely restrain himself from launching at Jess, whether she has just decided to share her own story or otherwise. Jess is, by her own admission, damaged; she also has the double jeopardy of a bit of a doofus at home, her husband Mark (Oscar Wilson). Mark spends a lot of the screenplay pondering the functionality of his smartphone: it’s not a winning trait, especially when he and Jess end up taking his distraught sister Kathy (Sara Fletcher) to the lake house in pursuit of Tom, who headed there to clear up his father’s affairs and – hasn’t been heard of since. This is a worry, and not just because Marks’ phone won’t work out there…
We know that Tom received his father’s letter, and that it contained a fairly standard mea culpa about the breakdown in their relationship – but also more, information which is carefully withheld from the audience. It’s enough to precipitate some very erratic behaviour from Tom, though, which his family see when they track him down. He is angry they’re there, telling them they need to leave – the lake, he avows, is a strange and dangerous place, which calls to him.
In essentials, the plot here is familiar: there’s a dark, dangerous and supernatural generational burden, and to know it is to suffer it. However, the ways in which The Dæmon brings this to the screen is effective and in places, innovative. Tom, the first focus of this unfolding strangeness, is portrayed well as a man enduring a dark, lonely ordeal. There are no long speeches from him and no super-convenient backstory, save for a brutal and unexpected flashback, counterbalanced by increasingly unpleasant and bizarre pay-offs in the here and now: what we get is a man genuinely grieving for the life he wishes he could have lived.
The focus shifts and moves, however, with each member of the group undergoing their own lonely ordeal, or else suffering because of the loneliness they each brought with them. The film shifts from intense, questing and lingering long shots of each individual, to evocative shots of the nature around them: it’s an intriguing blend, and beautifully shot throughout. Scrub any notion of supernaturalism from the film, and you would still be left with a sense of forces older and stronger than us – the environment, the water itself. But of course, there is more going on here: as this comes to the fore, the film can boast some unsettling effects, a little hamstrung by the CGI used perhaps, but still effective. There’s no argument with the accompanying soundtrack, however, which builds and maintains a thrumming, uneasy level of tension throughout; lighting and framing are excellent, too.
If there’s one main issue with The Dæmon – which, come to think of it, is a mysterious and unexplored title – it’s that the eventual payoff is strongly reminiscent of…the work of a certain, seminal horror author, and were I to name him, it would likely give the game away (if you aren’t already guessing about what possible supernatural horrors could be lurking beneath the depths of the lake). That’s all fine, except it rather invites audiences familiar with this particular storyteller (most of us, at a guess) to fill the gaps for themselves, taking that honour away from directors/writers Matt Devino and David Michael Yohe, who are content to leave us to it after providing a couple of clear signposts. However, even allowing for this, this is an engaging and often creepy, disconcerting film which generally provides a colder, grimmer spin on its brand of cosmic horror – albeit with some incredible, contrasting flashes of colour, and a nerve strong enough to leave us with some manner of ambiguity.
The Dæmon (2024) features as part of this year’s Pigeon Shrine FrightFest.
If Broken Bird (2024) begins unusually literally, then it soon becomes something far more complex and symbolic than that: its depiction of the nervy, prim Sibyl (Rebecca Calder) suggests from the earliest moments that something about this character is barely restrained, and that we will discover more anon. But in getting there – despite a few dithers and issues at the midway point – the film is increasingly brilliant and artfully tense, an uneasy piece of modern Gothic which pries away at modern attitudes to death and grief.
Sibyl, it seems, is a taxidermist: we see her working carefully on a dead bird at the very start of the film, with close macro shots showing the care and skill needed to preserve its little body. We see the bird; we don’t see the taxidermist herself very closely yet. She’s a bundle of snippets – a glimpse here and there of eyes, hair, hands. Finally, we see a little more of her, and are introduced to some of her other hobbies. She’s into composition as well as decomposition, it seems – sorry for that, but it kinda works here. Sibyl writes and performs her own poetry. However, whilst she performs at a regular open mic night, we don’t really see her interacting with anyone there. It’s all rather singular; whenever she encounters someone, she seems to either emulate them, or weave them into fantasies which stand in for whatever is really taking place.
However, when she gets a professional opportunity to take on a new role in a funeral home, this seems to suit her well. Being nervy and prim isn’t such a big deal when your clients are deceased and the affable, if traumatised Mr. Thomas (James Fleet) is glad of the help: work is all that’s keeping him going since the loss of his beloved wife. Sibyl is able to bring her past working experience to bear on her new role, and things go well – from the perspective of Mr. Thomas, anyway. The more time we spend with Sibyl, the more we see hints of some buried trauma in her own life. She responds to this by seeing connections which aren’t there – such as with museum assistant Mark (Jay Taylor) – or fantasising conversations which never even happen.
Elsewhere, we meet a woman called Emma (Sacharissa Claxton). In one of the film’s crossover moments, just as Sibyl ostensibly seems to be finding her way with her new job, Emma is losing her grasp on her own. She works for the police, but three months prior, Emma lost her young son. This loss haunts her, making it almost impossible for her to perform properly, and threatens to drive a wedge between her and her colleagues. As this all happened locally, Emma’s police force is the one charged with investigating what happened to the little boy. Two lives, two ways of dealing with grief: as we are introduced to both women, we can infer that something will unite them, but for now, we can only guess at the connection. In the meantime, we spend most of our time with Sibyl.
On reflection, the thing which makes Broken Bird finally blossom is the very same thing which, at some points during its runtime, makes that kind of connection feel unlikely. By sticking closely with Sibyl, we see the world of the film unfolding through her. At times, this means quite unexpected quirky humour, albeit framed with a kind of dour British quality, a few ‘should we laugh?’ moments in amongst everything else. Sibyl initially seems a little like Fran from Sometimes I Think About Dying, a similarly sad, complex woman given to grandiose fantasies about the kind of life – or death – she imagines for herself. Since we’re talking about films with similar themes and/or approaches, a comparison with Mayis perhaps the most obvious one to make: there are arguably even some mirrored scenes here.
But there’s a lot of complexity involved in figuring Sibyl out, arguably more so than with May, whose loneliness is clearer earlier; we can’t trust what we see with Sibyl, whilst still knowing that this is a woman who has made an artform out of concealment. We never get openly told about her motivations; we’re simply faced with her increasingly oddball behaviours, made to act like observers with no insider knowledge, and there are no internal monologues or special explanations to tell us what’s what. Add to that a run of still-mysterious, fantasised scenes accompanied with lively, even lullaby-like music and it’s hard to know what to think. The shifts in tone and Sibyl’s long, sometimes light-hearted deviations into idealised scenarios are, without a doubt, challenging in places. At around the hour mark the film is spread thinnest, with a perhaps unclear mood which may alienate some viewers. Likewise, you need to wait to pick up Emma’s storyline, which may make you wonder how things will work out.
Stick with it. What director Joanne Mitchell is doing here is making us think like Sibyl. And, once we do that – really do that – the film is able to move into an almost unbearable, if always artistic finale which grows so unendurably intense that it makes your heart feel like it’s going to shatter. The ways in which Broken Bird loops back to resolve its narrative gaps are incredibly assured, and its novel approach to storytelling is worth the wait. It’s a jigsaw puzzle this, where – once you work out what you’re actually looking at – you recoil in fascinated horror. But as for the picture itself! It’s one of the most aesthetically-pleasing films I have ever had the pleasure to see, a strangely graceful nightmare and an impressive first feature from Joanne Mitchell.
Broken Bird (2024) both received its World Premiere and opened this year’s FrightFest 2024.
