Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

Glue Trap (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Glue Trap (2023) opens in medias res, focusing on a sparring couple – Dan (Isaac Jay) and KJ (Brittany Bradford). At first, it seems like they’re in a therapy session; actually, it’s worse. They’re at a dinner party, and the host couple seems very happy, which only underlines their own issues. But some good comes of all the awkwardness – in a film, by the by, which specialises in awkwardness. One of the hosts, Jenn (Caroline Hertz) suggests that Dan and KJ could get away from it all by taking a break at her family’s holiday cabin in the Virginia woods. Presumably not having The Evil Dead or indeed, The Cabin in the Woods as an immediate cultural reference, they agree to give it a try. Next weekend, then: it’s a date.

Vacation, or intervention? It’s hard to say at this early point, but first impressions of the cabin itself are good, even if all the space and natural light aren’t an instant fix. There’s a minor problem – the cabin has mice – and there are glue traps dotted around to try to deal with them, which puts a dent in the atmosphere. What’s the best way to dispatch a trapped animal, after all? Hey, you may also spot a certain kind of symbolism here, too, given the film’s title. The audience can ponder this as they watch two people struggling with the pressure of simply being together, with none of the usual, welcome distractions. But we’re soon ready for something else, a further complicating factor.

We get one. Someone turns up at the cabin: a girl called Eliza (Gloria Bangiola), Jenn’s sister, who had no idea that the family place was in use and has plans to stay there herself. Well, Dan and KJ can’t exactly throw her out, given that the cabin belongs to her family; she stays around, turning the cabin retreat into a distinctly uncomfortable situation, acting a good part as an exuberant stranger very much taking the reins.

Can it get worse than this? Weirder than this? Oh, yes.

There’s a switch is style and tone during Glue Trap which momentarily feels rather abrupt, particularly after the sustained and very sensitive focus on Dan and KJ up to this point, but in hindsight, the shift-around is a brave decision. Nothing detracts from the excellent performances here, in a film with a very small cast which never feels reductive or tried-and-tested. Dan comes off as an earnest, but overgrown kid; KJ, whilst more dynamic than Dan, is way more hung up on their accumulating issues. And then there’s Eliza, a woman so overexcited that it could clearly spill into something more threatening at some point. There’s lots of gentle observational humour here, pithy in places, offering an often uneasy, well-realised look at a relationship in quiet crisis. The film is well-written, and never overwritten. These are all notable positives, particularly where indie film often seems to struggle with well-rounded and soundly-edited scripts.

Glue Trap could have used something more dynamic to conclude its story, sure, and no doubt many viewers may feel the same way, but in concluding things with the same irreverent narrative approach taken throughout its runtime, the film does maintain its focus on simply being…stuck. By the time the end credits roll, you also realise that there’s lots in here about the modern inability to disconnect, or to live without all the preoccupations which come down to us via social media. The desire for things like belonging have been superseded, to a large extent, by the desire for fame. The likes of TikTok have created a generation of people who only ever see the finished product – the high point at the end of a long process, not the hard graft it takes to get anywhere worth being. Gotta get that mini dopamine hit by any means; gotta be someone worth noticing, and that desire affects the characters here in a range of ways. There are touches of horror here, some of them brutal, but the film is at its strongest when focusing on its personal stories, and it enjoys its greatest successes during the second act, where things could go in a number of different ways. Overall, this film was a pleasant surprise, a well-written and engaging first feature which does many things very well, and has deserved confidence in its selected approach. Nice work.

Glue Trap (2023) hits digital and VOD (US) on December 17th.

WIN Speak No Evil (2022) on Blu!

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Recently remade for English-speaking audiences, we should remember that the original Danish Speak No Evil (2022) – one of my favourite horror films in the year it came out – was and is good enough and ground-breaking enough to even merit a second version. Directed by Christian Tafdrup, he escalates themes which have appeared in his other work – idealism, fantasy, family relations, masked identities – allowing them to reach unparalleled heights of horror in Speak No Evil by taking an ordinary, if somewhat fragile Danish family and inflicting a death by a thousand cuts. The film examines what happens when manners and socialisation prevent people from defending themselves, much less absenting themselves from escalating, tense situations.

With the 2024 remake recently thrilling and chilling in UK cinemas, Acorn Media International is pleased to announce that the release of the original is set for its Blu-ray, DVD and digital release on 2 December. And, Warped Perspective has a copy of the Blu-ray to give away, so if you want to be in with a chance, simply email the site with an email titled ‘Speak No Evil’. Your data will be stored until the competition is drawn on November 29th at 5:30PM GMT (UK readers only, sorry) and the lucky winner will be emailed shortly after the competition closes.

And in the meantime, if you ever fall in with a gregarious couple abroad, give them a false number.

Good luck!

Just One Drink (2015)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Just One Drink may have been made in 2015, but it feels like a film from 2005, not least because its star – Barbara Nedeljakova – is the star of one of the biggest horrors of 2005, namely Hostel. She’s back to her old tricks in filmmaker Andrew de Burgh’s debut short film, which is – depending on your perspective – either a boon, or a shame. If you liked life in 2005 a hell of a lot, then this short film is a love letter to the more ordeal-orientated horror which was breaking out all over the place at that time. If you want more of a nuanced conclusion, or if you feel that the whole ‘tied to things’ motif has had its day, and had probably had its day a decade ago, then this may well affect how feel about this one. In any case, feel free to check it out: it’s available to view on YouTube.

The premise is that a pair of affable stoners called Eric and Steve like to while away the hours discussing strains of cannabis and pondering the evolution of mankind. Steve, however, gets a message from a mysterious and beautiful woman (Nedeljakova) who invites him to a New Year’s Party round at hers. He shares this news with his pal, and they both decide to head over there on the big night because, despite the fact that Steve has no idea who this woman actually is, she’s hot, and that makes the whole idea worth a punt.

When they get there, they’re all alone and, having parked their common sense at the door, they glug down a glass of alcohol each which is spiked with something that causes them to instantaneously lose consciousness. Upon waking – strapped to what looks like a surgical trolley and a chair apiece – it looks like Nedeljakova has plans to dispatch them both in a series of unpleasant ways. Bit of a pity for Eric, who is, sadly, mainly collateral damage; it’s Steve Tamara knows, and Steve she wants to get. But why?

The exposition given is a bit of a big ask as (look away now) it seems that our mild-mannered stoner Steve has been a bit of a brute in the past. His reasons (and look away now if you want to see for yourselves) are that the man in question – the man which links both of our main characters – was a collaborator with Stalin, which – even if we accept that we’re going back ten years at the time of writing – is a bit of a puzzler for the timeline, and the film itself can’t possibly be set any further back, surely – the use of tech points to an early 21st Century timeframe. But the film does at least try for an abrupt volte face and tries to reframe its lead character in an interesting way, and its notion of tit for tat has some potential, even if the pieces in play are a little surprising. There are no especially complex layers here, which is to be expected in a film with a very modest seventeen minute runtime, so it just does what it does, but it’s clear to see the beginnings of a more ambitious writing approach. Really, Just One Drink is an experiment and a calling card, as so many short films are, so see for yourself what you think and, hopefully, appreciate the effort made to recast a lead character in a more ambiguous light.

Heretic (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

That’s that, then. That’s religion. It had a good run. Except, of course, if you happen to be religious, and will brush away any such declarations with the power of your faith.

In a nutshell, that’s the premise behind, and the dispute within Heretic (2024) – a film which comes off as a kind of theological Barbarian (2022), which is appropriate, because ‘barbarian’ has long been a handy epithet for a person outside the fold of Christian faith. Its horror derives from its antagonist’s determination to test that faith, recategorising religiosity as just another element of culture – probably derivative and ultimately, even trite. The two girls selected for this test are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – Mormons, to give them their usual moniker, named Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East, who funnily enough looks a bit like Sara Paxton). They never refer to one another by their first names; their bond is their sense of belonging to the Church, and their hope that today’s the day they will convert someone, baptising them into the Church and fulfilling their religious duty to evangelise. They have been raised to believe all of this, so in their defence, this is very important to them. But, based on listening to the girls’ early conversation, you get the distinct sense that they are each far from worldly – particularly Sister Paxton, whose naivety is probably written through and through her, like a stick of Brighton rock. Sister Barnes is perhaps a little more cynical, but it’s a low bar overall.

Their day’s work takes them to a pre-arranged meeting with a layman called Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant). Again, no first names, but this is a planned visit, rather than a surprise call. Mr. Reed has expressed an interest in hearing more about their religion, and they didn’t wait to be asked twice: they arrive, full of hope, carrying a Book of Mormon apiece, and ready to proselytise. Their subject is an affable-seeming gentleman of middle years, a little flustered maybe (it’s Hugh Grant after all) but agreeable; he invites them in, allaying their fears about propriety and safety by telling them his wife is also home. Here’s the first test: do they go in, despite not seeing any evidence of their agreed mark of safety? No woman, no go? Of course not; in they pop, literature at the ready. They start to converse with Mr. Reed, who explains to them that he has spent a sizable chunk of his life studying theology – looking for evidence of the one true faith, the alpha and omega of religious belief. Showing them a heavily-annotated and indexed Book of Mormon of his own, he explains that he has unfortunately come up against more barriers to religious experience than genuine possibilities. Now, in this, he is not particularly unusual, either within the film’s narrative or, in a broader sense, as a representative of modern man, but his conclusions – and the ways in which he decides to advance his knowledge – are a little more unorthodox.

The girls soon come to the (testable) assertion that they have been locked in a house which is part residence and part sophisticated trap. To stand any chance of getting to safety, they have to pass Mr. Reed’s theological tests – which both demand uncomfortable self-analysis and more practical problem-solving, which as mentioned above, turn out to be challenging for two very young girls fresh out of a very sheltered and absolutely certain moral space and place. It’s been impossible to avoid the discussion of Hugh Grant’s performance in this film, so far does it deviate from his usual, tousled, charming and awkward persona, but really he maintains that tousled, charming and awkward persona for the biggest share of the film. Sure, he gets more overtly cruel as the film rolls into its last act, but the real horror is in how this perfectly agreeable-seeming man is forcing a situation which threatens spiritual crisis, as much as it threatens physical harm, and he does this by raising some always-uncomfortable posers about religion – the ‘Big Three’ monotheistic belief systems in particular. Placing faith on a level with the worst aspects of consumerism – regarding them all as different species of ‘iteration’ – he tries to unpick the girls’ built-in systems of belief, promising them that he can show them the real essence of faith – if they can solve his puzzles. It would be a lot weaker if he did all of this by glowering with menace and trying for the sort of transformation you get with, say, Robin Williams in One Hour Photo (2002) – where an actor with a very distinct style does plump for a different mode altogether, but it fits that film very well. In Heretic, Hugh Grant remaining Hugh Grant does the job just fine.

The sets used here are astonishingly good, and the clever, snappy script, a script which is often as funny as it is dark, adds a new veneer to every otherwise familiar-feeling room or space. The gloomy corridors, statues with glittering eyes, lights which snap on and off on timers – as if the whole house is part of a board game – and of course the damp basement, are all recast as playing a part in an as-yet mystifying whole, where only one person holds the key, physically and metaphorically. But as the game goes on, the girls grow in confidence to try and reinterpret what’s in front of them. Sophie Thatcher does a great job as a young woman who clearly harbours something other than the seemingly twee received wisdom of her Church Sister; her oscillating defence of the Church’s old (and officially banned) policy of polygamy makes for a very powerful scene. However, Chloe East rises very successfully to the challenges placed before her. These are quite physical roles, too, with brief flashes of bloodshed which remain more about suggestion than splatter.

The film’s rising weirdness as the different levels of the house reveal new and appalling things (hence the Barbarian reference earlier) may take it closer and closer to fantasy, but again, its central premise is regularly and consistently steered back to the millennia of dreadful things done due to religion. It’s like a tap on the shoulder to make sure you’re still paying attention; there’s plenty weirder or worse than we’re being asked to consider, the film seems to say. And there’s no hard and fast lesson at the end either, just a solid balance of the ambiguity and the careful parcelling of details which keeps Heretic on track throughout. Sure, there are a couple of Chekhov’s Guns along the way, but always reintegrated into the narrative with skill. Heretic is a damn good job, and directors/writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods have clearly and successfully brought their wealth of writing and production experience to the table here.

Heretic (2024) is in cinemas now.

Director’s Cut (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Who’d be in a rock band these days? Not only do you have to contend with the sheer impossibility of making a living whilst you balance your social media profile against diminishing Spotify returns, but you may even find yourself in a horror film. Consider the surfeit of recent cinematic evidence – some good, some bad. Which brings us to Director’s Cut (2014), a feature about shooting a music video directed by a guy – Don Capria – who has made a couple of music videos himself. Sadly, that insider knowledge doesn’t bring anything transformative or particularly successful to this project, in which an emo-ish band called The Suicide Disease has disappeared, after posting one last Instagram photo (which is a fate which will surely happen to a lot of people; one’s always gonna be the last). We backfill a little, finding out that the band is broke and in crisis after a controversial fan death both crippled their passion for the project and mired them in controversy. Money’s tight: they have to decide whether to write more material, play live again, or go make a music video with the mysterious unknown who is offering to direct it for free, via their DMs.

Jay (Tyler Ivey), who has a lot of tattoos and so is clearly the frontman, has the final say – and we already know what he’ll choose. They seal the deal with a video call with the director, or ‘Mr. Director’ to give him his full name (Louis Lombardi). Mr. Director – who looks like he’s about to offer them a side quest in GTA – explains that he has short-term access to a cool abandoned mansion, but they have to be quick if they want the shoot. The band therefore heads to rural Pennsylvania to meet him, taking a couple of girlfriends with them. The girls, by the by, seem petulant and bored, which is a great moment of verisimilitude in an otherwise unlikely set-up.

As they make their way to their destination, they pass a few possible sources of horror: there’s the rolling, deserted road; the pick-up truck which stops, menacingly; a mysterious churchyard; some potentially dangerous locals, signposted by their cut-off shirtsleeves. Then, when they get to the mansion itself – remote, but filled with state-of-the-art surveillance cameras with an off-limits basement, things could yet go in a few different directions. It could be a home invasion of sorts, or a supernatural horror. Or, it could be a kind of ordeal horror, but that would mean that Mr. Director is as straightforwardly dubious as he seems to be, alongside his assistant, Babs (porn star Lucy Hart, whose penis is, for some mystifying reason, on screen a lot of the time).

The chosen answer, when it comes, is by far the least surprising and imaginative, as well as the one which stretches the film’s limited budget the most in terms of lighting, framing and SFX. Yep, Capria has selected the ordeal horror/slasher-ish route, and as such the same plot point unfolds for each band member in an almost interminable sequence – repetitive, and an odd fit for the time we’re still spending with Jay – Jay, with his practiced emo angst, an angst so strong that it even repels a BJ, albeit one from his angry new girlfriend, Jen (Haley Cassidy), whom we’ve already seen needlessly hammering a horn. Risk is everywhere.

Until its close – though the film’s runtime is at least modest at eighty-five minutes or thereabouts – Director’s Cut struggles with forward momentum. Things look up briefly when there purports to be a twist, but it’s not substantial enough to reinvigorate proceedings, nor to add greater depth to what we’ve witnessed up until this point. This is all compounded, unfortunately, with other snags and errors. The use of caricatures and the issues with pace, however, derive chiefly from the script, which desperately needed a re-read; whenever characters start talking about social media, there’s a risk it’ll sound peculiar and unrealistic, and that is an issue here – alongside some laboured metaphors and verb choices (surely no one ‘co-signs’ things as much as we hear about here). As such, there are a lot of issues. However, the locations are great, look good on camera, and are used well. Part of the horror, too, stems from the stresses and strains of trying to make a living from music, which to some degree excuses why the band doesn’t just leave when things start to go sour: people are desperate, maybe even desperate enough for this.

Slasher or slasher-ish fans who enjoy the set pieces and are happy enough with a loose framing device may have enough fun with this one to have a good time, and I hope so – it feels like a shame that this one doesn’t work for me, and a bit of a missed opportunity, but this may not be the case for all audiences. If you love truly independent cinema enough to overlook the issues, take a look: it’s out on VOD now following its Halloween release.

MadS (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

As MadS (2024) opens, the camera pans back from what turns out to be an image of a woman’s agonised face; you could call it foreshadowing, or perhaps it’s just an incidental feature, an arty poster on the wall of an apartment being used for a drug deal, as a young man called Romain (Milton Riche) does more than a few lines before heading out into the cold light of day. He rapidly enters a state of Peak Bravado before hopping into his dad’s vintage Mustang and heading off to join his sometime girlfriend and their other friends for an evening soiree. The evening already has ‘interesting’ written all over it. He’s off his tits. What could go wrong?

The film’s first shock is when, as Romain pulls up to inspect the car’s leatherwork after he drops his cigarette, a young woman comes out of nowhere and approaches his vehicle. She can’t speak, but she’s clearly distressed and he, for obvious reasons, doesn’t really want the police involved. He decides he’s going to take her to the nearest hospital, but she grows ever more agitated, clearly fearful of being followed, and handily for the plot, she’s also clutching a tape recorder which relays some very concerning information about where she’s been and what’s been done to her (which goes straight over Romain’s head at first, it seems, but at least we can listen). Bereft of sane ideas, he changes tack and drives the woman back to his place and, well, if he was worried about his seat leather before, then it’s safe to say things get rapidly worse. We’re faced with a young man used to a life of ease and comfort, high on drugs, and trying to balance all of the mundane details which continue to unfold around him with a bizarre situation he would clearly rather forget.

Like the very best of the New French Extremity titles – one of which, Ils (2006), was directed by the director of MadS, David Moreau – this film makes a hell of an entrance, all whilst whisking us along with its slick production values and carefully curated sensory overload; the film is a visual and aural feat. It also aims to run as one long, unflinching take and invests a lot of time and care into this sustaining this idea, which really helps to capture something of the strangeness of the unfolding situation, and the plight of each protagonist in turn. Starting with Romain, it’s clear that he and his friends are careless people, blasé, a little antagonistic and patently unsuited to any kind of crisis. These are party people, and it turns out that partying is far from the ideal environment for what is about to happen. But off Romain goes: is his behaviour due to a bad trip, or something else? Oh, and just to add insult to injury, it’s his birthday, too.

It’s hard not to take on some of Romain’s headspace as the film unfolds, so much time do we first spend with this character, and it’s also worth saying that many films have done more than enough with the whole bad trip idea to make a decent film, without the addition of any other plot points: the bad trip here is particularly immersive. However, MadS continues to broaden in scope, in ambitious and brutal ways. Like Martyrs (2008) – probably the last true line in the sand for New French Extremity titles – there’s the same sense of a bigger picture, an ‘intellectually curious’ organisation with a vested interest in experimentation.

But unlike Martyrs, MadS doesn’t decide to narrow its focus onto one individual and their plight, and instead scans around, picking up the same story through the experiences of others. The fact that you can pick up on a few sets of influences doesn’t mean that this film feels samey or particularly derivative, either: it feels fresh and exciting. Things tick along quickly, and the film never fully dehumanises its key characters, so that you are always left wondering how much of them is still there. Full exposition isn’t the film’s thing, but that’s because of its unerring focus on its people, who have to ask the same questions as we do. MadS is another great calling card for Shudder, a streaming service with a growing and impressive roster of original titles, and an entertaining, bold, well-made film.

MadS (2024) is available to stream now.

The Devil’s Bath (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

1750, Austria: any film based on ‘historical records’ which starts as devastatingly as The Devil’s Bath does, at least, place its cards on the table. This richly beautiful, if always stark film examines the lives of women, and as much as it focuses on one woman, it allows us to pause long enough to extrapolate, thinking about the generations of women who must have felt the same miseries, only never entering the record. Hundreds, thousands probably, for every one whose sad fate was ever written down. It’s a devastating watch, and it keeps this up throughout its runtime.

We start in a sparse, rural location with a woman carrying a crying baby into the nearby forest, putting her own rosary around its neck before matter-of-factly hurling the child off a waterfall. This being done, she calmly walks to a nearby town and confesses her crime. But the film doesn’t then backfill her story, instead picking up with another local woman: Agnes (Anja Plashg) is about to marry, but she’s still young enough and naïve enough to measure and mark her height against a barn beam at the family farm before she gets ready – a final childish indulgence, perhaps, before she heads for the more laborious strictures of adult life. Certainly, despite the celebrations, this marriage feels transactional, as much about heaving the marriage goods to church, then swapping a floral crown for a cap and pinafore, as about anything to do with ‘love’ per se.

Agnes has been raised properly, and desires to be a ‘good wife’ to her husband Wolf (David Scheid), a man who remains ambiguous, by the by, rather than overtly cruel or dismissive. The film would be the poorer for it, were he written as a villain, and the film looks more at the whole societal structure of Agnes’s life than at individuals. Likewise, Agnes’s new mother-in-law (Maria Hofstätter) is more aggressively disappointed in her new daughter than aggressive per se, as much as her gruff instructions on how to run the household are hard to bear. It’s soon clear that Agnes’s life will not turn out as she imagined. Her marriage is colourless, perfunctory – and unconsummated, putting paid to her simple dream of having children of her own. The environment is harsh, the work (as a fishwife) is exhausting, and her new community is tough through circumstance, with little time to accommodate a newcomer, especially one with a tendency to stubbornly hang on to youthful affectations. Agnes is alternately chivvied and overlooked; the days begin to roll sadly forward.

Women for whom the daily grind proved untenable had few options open to them. Hey, in many places in the world, that’s still the case, which is always at the back of your mind as you watch this story unfold. Agnes becomes ill; we’d call it depression, but in her century it was called melancholia, or more colloquially ‘the devil’s bath’, a tendency to self-flagellate or even attempt suicide due to one’s state of mind. By this point in time, melancholia was deemed to be treatable – albeit in a horrendous blend of folk wisdom, religious penance and bodily harm kind of a way, which we see inflicted upon an already brittle Agnes by her concerned new family. Of course, not only women feel this misery, and Agnes has already witnessed the aftermath of a suicide near her new home, and the disposal of the man’s remains amongst the cattle corpses and unburied bones, given the religious edict ‘gainst self-slaughter. The often-absent priest speaks to the congregation of the dead man’s great sin, recalling that a local woman who recently murdered her child could at least confess before her execution. Agnes has already stumbled on the woman’s remains, preserved nearby as a caution to others – her severed head preserved in a cage for, presumably, longevity (the tableau would lack something if animals carried off the head). Does any of this help Agnes? No, but in her fevered state, it seems to offer some kind of warped solace. She understands something, and begins to act accordingly.

The Devil’s Bath falls midway on a timeline between The Witch (2015) and Lady Macbeth (2016) and whilst it lacks the occult aspects of the one and the more straightforwardly rebellious instincts of the other, it nonetheless retains the same issues of moral rectitude, isolation and the impact upon young women of being bereft the trappings of respectable life: marriage and children, a sense of belonging, a community, or any legitimate support. It resembles The Witch in its use of natural light and candle/firelight too; yes, other films using natural light are available, but it still feels as though The Witch sets the bar for that shooting style in recent years, although The Devil’s Bath blends in more variety, even arguably pathetic fallacy, moving from warm sunlight to gloom, mist and what feels like an abundance of darkness.

Although some of the film’s visual symbols are quite straightforward – not hard codes to crack – they still fit subtly and seamlessly into the drear substance of everyday life. It’s a wonderfully shot film. Group shots are reminiscent of Brueghel, probably because the lives of the European peasant class barely changed in the interim between the painter’s lifespan and that of Agnes Schicken – again, a real person, a person on the record. The film is perfectly cast, with plausible and real seeming people and it’s a small point, but the absence of anachronistic veneers and fillers in this group of actors really helps sustain the illusion. These are hardworking, God-fearing people, even if God only pops up on the periphery; that is, until people decide to take themselves closer to Him. Agnes is sympathetic throughout, finely written and finely acted with no superfluous dialogue. Everything spoken is meaningful, and even at her most desperate, we can understand her terror.

Of course, two hours of a story like this is not going to be for everyone; this is not a horror in a conventional sense either, more a character study and a devastatingly fleshed-out history lesson. For this reviewer however, it is a note perfect, quiet but compelling reckoning with a real-life past tragedy. Is it a folk horror? Sort of; it’s more a horror about folk, and that distinction is important. That all in mind, The Devil’s Bath comes wholeheartedly recommended.

The Devil’s Bath (2024) is available now on Shudder.

The Final Pact (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The Final Pact starts with a Suspiria-lit house and a fleeing priest; we’ll be here again, you catch yourself thinking, but it’s not quite how you’d imagine. Rather than a tried-and-tested religious horror, this is much more of a psychological drama, albeit one which draws on supernatural elements to get where it needs to be. As such, we move away from the solo fleeing, terrified priest, to a sunlit suburb and a gathering of young deacons (not yet priests) attending their last day at the seminary. We meet three of them in much closer detail: these are John (Charlie Prince), Mark (Sam Sneary) and Paul (Austin Freeman), the latter being quickly signposted to the audience as someone with demons of conscience. But there’s more: the priest in charge of the seminary drops a surprise: there will be, he reveals, one more exam before graduation, as part of a secretive tradition at St. Edwards which has yet to be revealed, other than adding that it has already begun.

A little rattled, our three ponder whether this might be some kind of a ruse, and decide to celebrate the end of their training anyhow while they wait to find out what the ‘test’ actually is. It’s an opportunity for them to discuss what has brought them to this point, too. They each have their reasons for electing to join the priesthood, with Paul in particular riven by doubts as to his calling. Perhaps inevitably, faith has to be tested in films of this nature. There’s a problem at hand first: as they drive to a bar, they encounter a woman, broken down at the side of the road. They stop to assist and she pleads for them to drive her home to her daughter, who is sick and needs her. In fact, she’s sick and needs them: her ailment is of a spiritual nature. The phrase ‘demonic possession’ is soon mentioned, and where most people would baulk at this and/or simply make their excuses, it’s a tempting quandary for a group of young priests, it seems. They drive her home. Ah, there’s the house from earlier…

Here, the film could have simply introduced a bendy-backed pre-pubescent with a potty mouth and it probably would have settled into a fine, if samey religious horror, the likes of which have popped up semi-regularly since the Seventies, and usually following the same story arc. Happily, The Final Pact plumps for a more ambiguous approach. There is a young woman at the house, but there’s no pea soup or gravel-throated jibing, only a normal – adult – woman who seems both baffled and amused by the arrival of three nervous men brandishing crucifixes. But that’s not it. She does seem strangely knowledgeable, and it becomes clear to the visitors that this set-up may be part of the mysterious test which was mentioned earlier; although they leave of their own accord, they regroup and decide to re-enter the house, to try and decipher the woman’s coded words.

As soon as they do so, the house morphs into a range of surreal set pieces, loosely themed around the Nine Circles of Hell (which led me to wonder how we were going to get through nine circles in eighty minutes – but as stated, it’s loosely done). On a very modest budget, the film is nonetheless very visually impressive, offering up warped…perspectives, vivid colours and chiaroscuro, all in the service of representing the surreal, and unreal elements now unfolding. The idea that these men each need to navigate the different circles in order to ‘pass’ the test is an interesting one, too, and one which doesn’t really need to avail itself of much in the way of overt horror. It’s more about suggestion and symbolism, with each room arranged, lit and shot differently to reflect the different sin present in each. More and more, the focus is Paul, and the backstory which has given him a unique range of references and issues when it comes to negotiating an exit.

As engaging an idea as this is, The Final Pact has one or two issues with tone, shifting from the dark night of the soul to the comedic in places in ways which feel somewhat jarring; there are also a couple of harried and/or stilted encounters with members of the public which are intended to look at how members of the clergy are regarded in everyday life, or to boost the sensation of oddness, as per the film’s requirements. However, it’s hard to fault the sheer ambition on display here, especially where it means disrupting many (or most) of the expectations around on-screen ‘exorcism’ and all that this entails. The performances from the leads are very good, too, and if there are a couple of additions or twists which aren’t perfect during the course of the film, then this doesn’t derail the whole. Written, directed and edited by F. C. Rabbath (whose work I have reviewed before), here’s more evidence of his commitment to indie cinema and what can be achieved by doing things differently.

Me, Myself & the Void (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Right, cards on the table at the start of this review: I think we need a moratorium on the kinds of time- and space-bending which are so beloved of independent filmmakers right now. Where big budget offerings have opted to take a flashier route with the likes of high action time travel, explosions, robots and wars, you know, the big stuff, indie cinema – which is curtailed by lack of money and to a large extent, the influence of its peers – has Gone Philosophical. A cynic might say that breaking the fourth wall of space and time is so appealing because it allows a kind of ‘anything goes’ approach to narrative development, which at its worst tends towards complacency, leaving questions unanswered because if physics is out the window, then so are all the other rules, and don’t you dare challenge it. It’s about the character journey, stupid. Now, whilst Me, Myself & the Void (2023) avoids the worst pitfalls of its kind, it nonetheless has a few of its own. Its cardinal sin is that once you strip away all of the fantasy elements, it’s another indulgent exercise in Main Character Syndrome, and do we really need to indulge another main character in this way – or any other way, come to think of it?

Gentle piano music opens the film as we’re taken through the life of Jack (Jack De Sena) from birth to date, via a loving childhood and a jovial adulthood, watching as he starts his career as a stand-up comedian (here based on De Sena, or DeSena’s real career). As Jack takes to the stage for the first time in the film, we slot into standard audience mode just in time to curl our toes as he recounts a recent messy break-up from the stage, a decision which doesn’t get him many laughs…

So he metaphorically dies up there; this soon translates to what looks like a literal death on the floor of his bathroom, but wait: Jack is by now standing outside himself, looking down at himself, all from the perspective of a de facto version of his apartment, now blended with the stage where he just did the gig. This is the ‘void’, a strange place where Jack can pore over all of the decisions and events which may have led to him lying unconscious on his bathroom floor. Alongside him is a projected version of best friend Chris (Chris W. Smith), there to help in this process. It’s a little like a Clerks spin on the first chapter of Pandemonium, red door and all, but what seems clear – somehow – is that time is limited. If these two can’t deduce what has led to Jack’s collapse, then he might die for real.

So what ensues is all Jack – Jack who can’t remember anything, but together, the two men piece together events on the night in question. A lot of the film takes place in the void itself, a Beckett style, semi-real environment which operates outside pesky norms. However, the film also blends memory, fantasy and skit – said skits being in the mumblecore tradition, though with a few fixations: drugs, the weird roommate, and women. It’s funny, the film openly addresses the issues around calling women ‘crazy’, but can’t really help itself in depicting women as unreasonable and at times, brittle. But these are all just trials sent to test Jack, who segues in and out of flashbacks and cycles, albeit the edits are nice and smooth throughout.

Of course, a lot hinges on how likeable you find this character, given that the entire focus of the film is this guy’s wellbeing, and it seems likely that director/co-writer Tim Hautekiet intended Jack to be a kind of modern-day Everyman: flawed, vulnerable, but trying his best. But this broke, money-borrowing, weed-smoking, Xanax-eating guy can’t be for everyone, and what the film can’t quite do is make him genuinely sympathetic, despite his flaws. Without that engagement, the journey becomes a slog, another facet of therapy, therapy, therapy in a world full of therapy. The film becomes an elaborate riff on ‘taking control’ and ‘knowing thyself’. Quantum therapy, if you will.

Looking at other reviews after my own viewing – and excepting the slew of highly suspicious, glowing IMDb/RT reviews from accounts with only one review apiece (oh, come on) – it seems I’m in the minority on not loving this one. But as above, without feeling that draw towards Jack, his Pilgrim’s Progress towards a more enlightened life simply can’t land. That all being said, it’s appreciable that the team has wrung a lot from a little here, with some moments of ingenuity and the intention to jazz up the indie staples of a limited set and small cast. But tearing a hole in spacetime purely to indulge a narcissist is bound to be divisive, and so it turns out to be.

Me, Myself & the Void was released to VOD on October 1st 2024.

Scopophobia (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

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.

Livescreamers (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

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.