Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

Devil’s Advocates: I Walked with a Zombie by Clive Dawson

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Ah, it’s been a while since I reviewed a Devil’s Advocates title. For anyone not currently in the know about this series of books: they’re each focused on an influential horror film, each book has a different author, and offers different kinds of focus and perspectives, but without fail you can expect a detailed, academic-lite study of the selected film title (and there are over fifty books in the series, to date). Clive Dawson’s book is on the seminal Val Lewton work, I Walked with a Zombie (1943). It’s a timely study: so often, IWWAZ tends to crop up in zombie film books which are en route to writing about the Romero ‘ghoul’ type of zombie, and can feel a little like a pit-stop – which is clearly unfair to such an innovative piece of cinema. Dawson redresses that here, in a five-chapter book (adding up to a little over a hundred pages). There’s an introduction, a full bibliography and, helpfully, a reference list at the end of each chapter, too. He begins the introduction by spending time cementing IWWAZ as a very important title, looking at it alongside Lewton’s other most important early work The Cat People; as these two titles appeared within months of each other, they suggested that Lewton’s groundbreaking style wasn’t simply a fluke, and they each helped to bolster his early reputation as a careful and conscientious producer.

Dawson also provides early evidence of how IWWAZ pushed narrative boundaries, at a time when narrative cinema was still in its relative infancy. However, Dawson refers to Lewton’s “modest revolution”, one not always best served by lurid publicity campaigns, even accepting that RKO were already struggling by the 1940s, grasping at straws, or else simply wrongheadedly doing what they saw as best in trying to promote their roster. Lewton’s was a modest revolution, then, because his style and approach was so often markedly different to those taken by his professional peers. However, revolutionary it certainly still was. Drawing on literary influences like Jane Eyre and Rebecca, challenging accepted attitudes to representations of race and colonialism; Dawson puts across a strong case for Lewton as a revolutionary filmmaker, and you could perhaps suggest that Dawson’s own enthusiastic but measured tone seems to echo Lewton’s own.

Chapter 1 offers some background on Lewton’s early life and how his production unit came to be. These two things are linked together: Val Lewton’s early experiences as a writer, then as a story editor and finally as a new ‘horror guy’ whose role would be to generate new styles of horror – horror to rival Universal’s own highly successful version of same – each overlap with one another. Yet it was all a big gamble for Lewton, who privately agonised about the financial insecurity of his career. Still, he took on the task – officially as a producer, albeit a very involved one, keen to push the artistic freedoms being granted, while they were still being granted. Think Covid was hard on filmmaking? Try World War II, where everything from fuel allowances to the critical presentation of anything deemed antithetical to American interests could change, or even be pulled at any point, jeopardising entire projects. And then there was the burning question: how will audiences respond to this kind of nuanced, literary horror? Dawson successfully provides a sense of the great affordances and limitations surrounding the birth of the film.

In terms of context, there’s some interesting information about the short story Lewton based the film upon, and the treatment of its author, Inez Wallace (often mistakenly identified as a male author) – albeit that her own story didn’t come out of a blue sky, and owed some debt to pre-existing authors (William Seabrook, for one). The reading public had already been tantalised with certain ideas of ‘zombies’ by the time of the film’s inception, something with which Lewton had to tread quite carefully to secure his own screenplay, and the development of the film’s script is discussed here – something which turned out to be quite a complex process. At this point, Dawson gives some consideration to the relationship between Lewton and director of IWWAZ, Jacques Tourneur, considering the notion of auteurship – but briefly, and it doesn’t shift the focus of the book. At this point (Chapter 3) there’s a detailed walk-through of the film itself, including mention of a deleted ending, and then a section on the film’s critical reception, early promotion and release (both at home in the US and, where the recorded information allows, overseas). This part of the book has a bittersweet element, noting how Lewton’s successes quickly built his reputation, but that reputation placed ever greater demands upon him and his health. He died at the tragically young age of forty-six, having suffered his first heart attack at just forty-one. But the book ends on a more positive note with an informative assessment of the film’s influence on other works, in its own decade and far beyond it.

Dawson’s book is a pleasure to read. It boasts wonderfully clear prose which unpicks a great deal of information and presents it back to us is a nicely flowing, easy to follow format. This also ensures a calm, considered and well-evidenced approach to the film, including dispelling myths and misconceptions about it wherever necessary. It’s obvious that there’s a wealth of research and knowledge at play here, though never crowding the text with dry stats or else losing focus. The book doesn’t opt for any particularly left-field or academic kinds of critique – there’s no long deviations into Deleuze, for example – but sticks closely with the film itself, discussing context as and when it springs from the film itself, rather than seeking to apply it. There are no axes to grind here. It’s a good approach, it’s a consistent approach, and all in all, this is an enjoyable, fresh and timely study of a film which clearly still rewards audiences eighty years after its inception.

To buy a copy of I Walked with a Zombie, please head direct to LUP in the UK, and to Amazon in the US.

A Wolfpack Called Ernesto (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

When you so much as glimpse the subject matter of A Wolfpack Called Ernesto (Una jauría llamada Ernesto), you may come away with certain expectations, so this review will start by explaining what Wolfpack is not. Despite being about Mexican cartel-linked violence and its impact on communities, this is not an ultraviolent, deliberately shocking, ‘hail of bullets’ treatment of street crime. It is shocking, but that shock comes on slowly, and via rather unusual means. No, this take on the documentary format hands us an unconventional and humane take on its subject, one which feels very immediate, very real and everyday: this is its key strength. It won’t be for everyone, but it absolutely deserves to be seen and evaluated on its many merits.

As the opening credits roll, and before we get a picture to accompany the sound, there seems to be a game of basketball taking place – so immediately we get a sense of an urban location, and (most likely) a young, male group of players. When we get visuals this turns out to be a correct guess, and we’re thrown straight into in medias res as we play catch-up with a group of young guys chatting about…well, we’re never really privy to the conversations taking place on screen. They fade in and out, or they’re too quiet to be heard; they’re not for us. We also have to contend with the ingenious framing device of a shoulder-mounted camera (actually iPhones), worn on a scorpion’s tail harness. This makes it feel as though we are with the film’s subjects, but held apart from them at the same time. It’s quite a strange experience at first (fans of Gaspar Noé may feel more at home with it), but it certainly feels more intimate than a standard fly-on-the-wall approach. Furthermore, we learn all we learn about the film’s various characters through the use of their voiceovers, with only one or two deviations from this throughout the film. What we are told and shown is carefully controlled and constructed.

Things start with some of these young men recounting memories from their childhoods, games and pastimes which began to skirt closer and closer to criminal behaviour; eventually, this meant hanging out with older boys who, alongside some family connections for some of the speakers, meant an introduction to gang life. Grooming; it’s grooming, even though that particular word isn’t used and may or may not have made the leap from the English-speaking world to the Spanish-speaking one. Other youngsters, other members of the Ernesto gang (one name which is used for several anonymous speakers) take over and introduce their own voiceovers – their tales are similar – and then, older gang members appear, to describe their experiences, too. Although there’s not so much as a raised voice at any point during the film, you can’t help but pick up a sense of alarm; something about all of this is so inescapable, and the more we begin to hear about drugs, guns, cross-border criminality and other features of gang life, talked about very casually, the more chilling it all feels. There’s a slowly building picture here, via an ongoing tally of different people and personal perspectives: poverty, poverty’s very narrow idea of ‘luxury’, crime as a means of power and death as a kind of occupational hazard; these come up again and again.

What the film reveals, and how it is done, is startling, subtle and considered. To return to the shooting style, never seeing the faces of the people associated with each voiceover takes some getting used to, as does the way that the anonymising back-of-head shot also occupies nearly all of the frame. Added to that, any other occupants of the frame are usually kept out of focus; this makes the viewer feel quite helpless, a bit reliant even, on where the film is choosing to take us: if that’s not a symbolic decision – though I am assuming it is – then the way it keeps us following blindly, with little sense of an overarching perspective, is very clever and fitting. Likewise, the film is big on the use of total darkness, with the film cutting to black as a means of punctuating between scenes and speakers, and this also has an impact along similar lines. But whether or not this is all intended to mirror the thoughts and feelings of the different speakers in the film, it is definitely a very ambitious, clever creative decision which pays off. The use of dramatic music – which often fades in and out of street music, played on radios or home stereos – is very compelling too.

What the film reveals is understated, for the most part, and a careful representation of bigger truths. A lot is said these days about the notion of ‘toxic masculinity’, and in a lot of cases, this has already turned into a rather lazy label for an ever-billowing range of traits or behaviours, but do you know what? A Wolfpack Called Ernesto shows us toxic masculinity in spades. Its culture of competitive violence and one-upmanship, where weakness is punished and the insult ‘fag’ is hurled at anyone perceived to actually be weak, is both a response to Mexico’s endemic unfairness and also the means of its perpetuation, as everyone involved suffers. The toxic repercussions of weird ideas about ‘respect’ have a lot to answer for here. But by elaborating on all of this (with only the briefest hint that there is a life for these men outside of the gang), the film humanises the key players in ways which statistics or depictions of bloodshed could not. The casual, fatalistic attitude which we encounter, as spoken, is chilling because it is so utterly normal, and so much of the film is utterly normal, too: we walk with the different characters through home interiors, markets, alleys, ride on scooters, peer over balconies. It would all be incredibly humdrum, if not for the guns, so often on screen, just out of focus but undeniably there, in people’s hands, as if they were – nothing.

You don’t get to the end of A Wolfpack Called Ernesto feeling uplifted, as though justice has been done – and that’s the point. There’s no big denouement here where someone walks off into the sunset, a sadder and a wiser man. But this is an engaging, unorthodox and gripping crime tale which leaves its mark.

A Wolfpack Called Ernesto (2023) will be released via Sovereign Films on 23rd February 2024.

Geronimo (2022)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Arcade music and flashing lights cut through the title screen which displays Geronimo, alerting us straight away that the weird world of ‘amusements’ will figure here. But, it’s a film of contrasts, and we get that straight away, too. We first meet the arcade owner Peter (Ged McKenna) navigating his way through everyday life, which many would call a quiet life, but that’s just a turn of phrase: oh my, we’ve no sooner met this character, than we’re following him to the clinic for a prostate exam. His wife Linda (Eiry Thomas) is a snorer, too, and it’s taking a toll. Here’s a man who is stressed, worried, and very, very tired. But is there more to his plight than lengthy trips to the littlest room, and a partner who snores?

It turns out that Peter gladly takes the opportunity to complain about his lot to the doctor (Paterson Joseph), just as he’s about to perform the prostate check. Perhaps needs must? Or, being about to expose himself quite literally, Peter decides to go all in? Whatever the thought process behind it, it transpires that Peter has another problem: Geronimo (Gwen Ellis). Or at least, that’s what he calls a problematic regular customer at the arcade, a woman happily gambling away the money formally belonging to her ex-husband (and lottery winner). Peter says that Geronimo wins her money back with interest by seemingly being able to select a machine – every full moon, funnily enough – then clearing it out. That would be weird enough, but he’s also plagued with dreams in which Geronimo appears at night, a little like the imp in Fuseli’s most famous painting. There’s one key difference: she always appears speaking Welsh.

Is this Welsh-speaking, lucky widow real, or simply part of a nightmare? The doc thinks not; Peter is on the fence, because after all – who really knows what Geronimo can do? If she has a sixth sense for emptying his machines of cash, then anything is possible. He even ponders momentarily if she could get through the cat flap. The doctor avers that this is simply a good old fashioned case of hypnogogic hallucination, often caused by falling asleep too quickly (fat chance, Peter seems to think), and there’s an app for that (of course there is). He recommends something called Erebus, and it’s probably best not to ruminate too long on the meaning of that name, but by all means look it up, if you like.

Peter downloads Erebus onto his phone. He’s dubious, sure: it seems tantamount to being read a bedtime story, which feels like adding insult to injury, but he sees it through and quickly falls asleep. Restful? Fat chance. Peter immediately finds himself at the arcade, which is the source of his stress in the first place, and – here she is, here’s Geronimo, striding into his business to ruin it.

This is a very colourful and aural nightmare, full of the gaudy lighting and rather overwhelming sounds of an amusement arcade, places which often feel like they’re holding out against change and modernity, or at least slowing it down considerably. Things quite quickly get unsavoury, too, with little hints or glimpses at aspects of Peter’s nightmare that he’d probably rather not discuss with a medical professional. That may turn out to be a pointless line in the sand, by the by, as the doctor is here in the dream, too, armed with a phrasebook which he uses to partly translate Geronimo’s distinctly unfriendly comments.

The use of Welsh, translated or otherwise, is interesting here: it falls into line with a fair few old stereotypes: there’s long been the idea that Welsh speakers just speak Welsh to lock out monoglot English speakers, just as Geronimo is doing here – as she’s bilingual, and readily speaks English at the counter when she needs something. Of course, this all ties in with Peter’s paranoia very nicely and – they say familiarity breeds contempt! – he’s a Scouser, too. The use of Welsh, or simply the unfolding situation leaves us to wonder how much of all this is or isn’t his delusion. Added to this, the way in which the film embeds its dialogue in bingo calls is clever, too, albeit calling to mind The League of Gentlemen’s Toddy’s Bingo to an extent. Here, Peter’s occupational anxieties turn the arcade into a very overwhelming place, using the horror staple of the full moon to escalate the nightmarish, and yes, hellish aspects further.

These nightmarish aspects suddenly give way – neatly and succinctly – to something far queasier. All the way through, we’ve had contrast between the arcade and the magnolia tones of home, or the doctor’s surgery: the bland, if familiar, workaday world. Well, the ending of Geronimo suddenly and literally darkens, giving the audience a sudden wake-up call which matches Peter’s, who wakes up disorientated and alone. Through the tail end of his bad dream, we are finally able to ascertain what has been going on here, and it closes this short film on a clever, if jarring note. It all goes to show, once more, how much can be done in just a few minutes; appearing as part of the Beacons Ffilm Cymru showcase (available on BBC iPlayer), Geronimo does a great job of balancing its elements and telling a surprisingly rich and engaging, darkly comic horror story.

Arrow Films: Sharp Shorts

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

It’s really encouraging that more and more short films are being picked up for general release of late. Hopefully gone are the days when someone’s groundbreaking project, full of blood, sweat and tears, could only ever disappear from sight after its festival run. So it’s great that Arrow – so often the benchmark for cult film, new releases and just generally what’s worth seeing – are now joining in on this, making a fresh batch of short films available via their Arrow Player service. Here’s what you can expect from three of their newest titles.

Itch

Ever heard the expression ‘an itch you can’t scratch’? Well that’s given very literal form in Itch, a film clearly reaching for a retro, exploitation feel whilst simultaneously keeping things comparatively low-key, and very stylish throughout. It’s a funny thing: like clowns, you tend to see far more nuns in (horror) cinema than you ever do out in the wild; our story as such takes place in a convent. Itch tells the story of a novice nun, Sister Jude, about to seal the deal and take her vow of chastity. However, when we see her at prayer, she’s behaving in a way which strikes the Mother Superior as rather indecorous: to put it bluntly, she’s scratching at her skin so much, she even starts raking at her thighs, lifting her skirt. During Mass! Jude tries hard to distract herself from this compulsive itch, but she cannot stop: strange, soft-focus, rather scandalous dreams trouble her, too, and before long, her skin is starting to break and bleed.

But why is this happening? As it turns out, Jude doesn’t need a psychotherapist to decode her dreams or her compulsions: the issue is lust. Jude is having uncontrollable feelings towards another of the sisters, and clearly, a crisis is approaching in terms of her wellbeing, her behaviour – and her impending vows.

Either dreamy and unreal or sharp, crisp and unsettling, there are lots of engaging visual details in Itch which focus us on its different aspect, real or imagined. And, whilst there have been plenty of nunsploitation films down through the years, things are a bit different here: the film is just not titillating, not at all, turning out instead to be a stark and troubling film which borders more on body horror than Visions of Ecstasy. The use of black and white is a bold choice, too, not negating the body horror, but presenting it in a slightly more subtle way than it might otherwise appear in colour.

Smile

By sheer coincidence I’m sure, Smile is another short film focused on the extreme loneliness and introspection of a vulnerable young woman, but this time we are planted firmly in the modern world, with its technology which both closes the distance between people, and entrenches it. Clearly a person struggling with depression – the bottles of pills in the bathroom certainly seem to point towards this – Anna (Konstantina Mantelos) is brushing her teeth, listening to a well-meaning but upsetting voicemail from her mother, who wonders aloud: whatever happened to the happy little girl she used to be? There’s no call back: Anna continues on through her day, alone, but she’s troubled by something. There’s a noise at the door of her apartment: maybe someone is trying to get in, but, who, or what?

Smile is only seven minutes long, but quickly establishes its protagonist as sympathetic whilst also deeply troubled; Anna’s pained, troubled expression does give way to something else, but that in itself is part of her nightmare, maybe of this spectre of an untroubled past coming back to haunt her. Great SFX, too, makes this a vivid and shocking few minutes, doing just enough to escalate the horror but always feeling rather hefty and introspective. This is a great calling card by director Joanna Tsanis – and horror fans will also be interested in spotting the Ashley Laurence cameo.

The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras

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..and the absolute stand-film of this collection, for me, is the super-subtle, thought-provoking and disconcerting Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras, which opens with some stellar 70s folk horror vibes, right from the text and the appealing Kodak film grain of the opening credits (which, if it turned out was for a lost film by Piers Haggard, wouldn’t feel at all amiss). But, again, The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras is bang up to date, and the more disturbing for it. This isn’t the 70s at all; a man is woken from sleep by a phone ringing, which he answers, barely speaking back, but immediately begins to get ready to leave the house. His wife clearly expects this call, though she notes that it doesn’t seem to have been long since ‘it’ needed to happen last time.

She’s not otherwise included in this, though, and her husband Gwyn (Bryn Fôn) is soon headed out, picking up what seem to him (and perhaps to us) a rather ragtag bunch of other local men who are also needed for some duty, now once more ahead of them – something to be dreaded.

To say much more is to risk spoilering the film – which would be unforgiveable – but know this: the film’s bleak intersection of clearly ancient, onerous traditions and modern concerns (there are hints that one of the small party is there, unwillingly there, for some community transgression) makes for a surprisingly involving concept, with so much to unpack. The film is not heavy on dialogue, and it is a mostly very quiet film through and through, but says and does enough to suggest a whole world beyond itself, one which rewards further consideration. It doles its questions out thoughtfully and carefully; it leaves us to ponder, but doesn’t give us the comfort of full closure, which speaks to the confidence of writer and director Craig Williams. The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras is laden with atmosphere, too, much of which comes from allowing the landscape to do the talking – it was filmed in, and pardon my bias, the most beautiful country in the world, and is also presented in the Welsh language.

This film really is testament to what short films can do, with its clear characterisation, minimal, but at times wonderfully poetic dialogue, and its world of terrible possibilities hanging in the ether, barely acknowledged or spoken of, but undeniably there in the world of the film, and threatening to recur – perhaps quicker than these men would wish.

Arrow’s Sharp Shorts are available now on Arrow Player. For more details, please click here.

Dagr (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Dagr (2024) is quite clear on what it is and what it’s all about from the very opening credits: this is found footage, brought right up to date. We get some on-screen text telling us about two social media stars, Thea and Louise, who had amassed a serious following by 2021 for their particular shtick, setting the world to rights via controversial methods such as vandalism and theft. Calling their show They Deserve It (foreshadowing if ever there was foreshadowing) they had planned a spectacular heist – their term – in the summer of 2023. The fact that the on-screen text then acknowledges that this heist was their last film, and that their footage has been studied by South Wales Police as part of a homicide (homicide? Not murder?) case, rather spells out that bad things came about during this venture.

Of course, we wouldn’t be watching all of this footage, B-roll included (as the girls also refer to it) unless something dreadful had happened; few are the found footage films where everything was going well and cameras were simply, unfortunately lost along the way. It’s gratifying that, aside from filling in the audience on the police involvement here, the text also points out that a different film crew have taken responsibility for editing all of the footage together into a coherent whole – which is something you can’t help but wonder about in the vast majority of found footage cases. Who shapes the footage into a film? Here, we have an answer!

The thing with found footage is there are always a few questions left hanging around, even when (as in this case) we have a bit more know-how and consideration for plausibility; the addition of what sounds like dramatic music, for one, and – once we really pick up with the two girls – just how many cameras they have rolling at any one time, even in the car as they drive through rural Wales to their destination. They are on their way to a remote house, very much off the beaten track; beyond a couple of annoyed drivers, we never see any of the other local residents, but the sense of a time and place not really running to usual rules and values comes across nicely. Then, after spending some time with Thea (Ellie Duckles) and Louise (Riz Moritz), we’re introduced to a different filmmaking team: same destination, different perspective, different approach. This is a small group of professionals who have been tasked with making a sumptuous fashion advert; this team, headed up by Tori (Tori Butler-Hart), certainly aren’t lacking for ambition; it’s about this point in the film that its rather dark, or self-deprecating sense of humour starts to come through, as Tori begins seeking to channel Godard whilst filming two models preening with a hairbrush, and not without their artistic temperaments clashing a little bit. There’s clearly a lot of love, but also a lot of pleasure in playing with some of the more absurd sides of the filmmaking process here, something which Dagr returns to a few more times from this point.

Heading back to Thea and Louise, we find out how the two groups of people are about to meet: the girls are planning to masquerade as the advert’s catering team, giving them access to a load of expensive designer gear which they intend to steal, sell, and donate the money to food banks (whilst filming the lot for kudos, of course). So when they make it to the manor house, they’re delighted – at first – to find that there’s seemingly no one there at all. They start planning how to get the bags of expensive clothes and equipment into their car and away – but something stops them. There’s evidence of some upheaval in the house, for one; then the girls find some unattended iPads which they use to take a look at what the filmmakers had been filming, prior to apparently disappearing. They are alarmed, but assume what they’re looking at is part of some elaborate horror-tinged, avant-garde project, but then the blood and broken glass in the house makes them wonder if there may be something more to it. And, if something dreadful has taken place here, perhaps it soon could again…

A small budget is no barrier to ambition here and Dagr draws on a few titles and genres as it weaves together its own spin on its subject matter. There The Blair Witch Project, of course, and what at one point seemed like the countless titles influenced by it; there’s also the folk horror canon, though the use of folk horror here is fairly brief and minimal until we get towards the closing scenes of the film. Up until that point, what we get is fairly subtle – but it’s recognisable, out there in sunny Wales with its menhirs and old beliefs, and unseen locals handing out crow feather masks (never a good sign, frankly). There’s the recognisable and almost comfortable sensation that, the further away from urban life the two girls get, the more at risk they are from forces and folklore they don’t understand, giving a nod to that other folk horror trope: accidentally stumbling onto, or triggering, old magic. What makes Dagr rather different, however, is that it sends itself up a little more than you might expect; as much as films like The Wicker Man contain plenty of humour, other folk horror has tended to be rather po-faced – but surely, some humour is apt, given the blend of comedy and tragedy in a lot of folklore, itself often the source for folk horror. So we get some observational humour, a little knowing horror content, and some of each of these at the expense of filmmaking in general.

There are some minor issues here, firstly in terms of time management in the film: things are a little obtuse until the main set-up is revealed, with the two girls ad-libbing perhaps an implausible amount to each other/to camera about how surprising the countryside is to them; perhaps this is normal for this sort of thing, as the practice of self-filming and the sense that there’s always an audience has grown to be very normal for tens of thousands of people over the past decade or so, though this doesn’t mean that the generated content is always particularly sharp. That said, Dagr feels much more like an old-school found footage film, despite the context of there ostensibly being followers, likes and so on – because none of the coverage is actually going out live, thanks to that horror trope of No Mobile Coverage once everyone’s out at the house. As a result there’s less concern for the audience, there’s no framework of rolling comments or anything like that – just two girls (and another team in the same location) trying to piece together what’s going on. As for the horror content itself, it builds quite slowly at first, and this is the strongest aspect of Dagr: these little hints that all is not as it seems have a nicely subtle spin. The film’s denouement lands differently, whilst also feeling more familiar overall; I do wonder if a filmmaking team in charge of editing the whole thing together might not have translated the ‘voice’ which booms through some of the scenes, as this could have brought some of the plot points together; ‘Dagr’ translates fairly simply to ‘dagger’ from Welsh to English, though as for the rest, I’m not so sure.

Nonetheless, as a splice of horror genres, it does work overall, and Dagr is great at layering different perspectives and footage together to get some way towards its answers; this is the film’s strongest structural feature, showing that Fizz and Ginger Films are at their best when needing to play smart to get the most out of their cast, location and plot. Whether being self-deprecating or scary, it’s a modest but engaging feature film with enjoyable ideas.

Dagr (2024) has a limited UK cinema run starting from 7th February. It will open in the US in April 2024.

Win! Second Sight Films Limited Edition Blu-ray – Inside (2007)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

One of the most hard-hitting of the slew of New French Extremity films which slithered into being in the early Noughties, Inside (2007) is now one of the latest famous, or infamous titles to have received the Second Sight box set treatment, and we have one of these box sets to give away thanks to our friends at Aim Publicity.

For anyone not familiar with the film, here’s the lowdown: a pregnant woman (Alysson Paradis), recently bereaved of her husband and baby’s father, is faced with another brutal ordeal when she is tracked down and threatened by a mysterious, nameless woman (the incomparable Béatrice Dalle) intent on stealing her unborn child. Directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury – this being one of the films which made their names as filmmakers who refuse to avert their eyes from the worst excesses of human nature – Inside still packs a hell of a punch for its intensely grisly and unrelenting assault on a pregnant mother, something which is still incredibly rare, even in horror. Sure, childbearing and childbirth are often made into subject matter for horror films, but like this? The way Bustillo and Maury did it, and the extremes they went to? Nah. Rare. This film was and is a game changer.

Anyway, before I get into one of my keynote monologues about how Béatrice Dalle is one of the most magnetic actresses in showbiz, here’s how you can win. It’s pretty straightforward: simply email the site using the title ‘Inside’ for your message, including your name and address (as ever, personal details are held on our server only until the competition is drawn, and then deleted.)

The competition will run until Monday, 5th Feb at 12:00pm (GMT), the release date, and will be drawn later that day. The winner’s details will then be passed to Aim, so that the prize can be sent out directly from them. We are only able to offer this prize to UK residents, sorry.

Good luck!

The Human Trap (2021)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Why would anyone go camping, ever, for supposed ‘pleasure’? It seems to be a lesson lost on South Koreans, too, if we can judge at least a little bit based on The Human Trap (2021). However, the camping aspect of the film is only a minor aspect of what the plot eventually has in store; what a shame, then, that we spend a good hour hanging around the tents before anything actually happens. It’s a film by turns spirit-level flat and incredibly garbled, restricted by the double-whammy of poor writing and reduced finances and unable to truly land its wait-and-you’ll-find-them, more intriguing aspects.

Here’s how it all starts: after a round of speed dating (speed dating, unbeknownst to the young man on the date) we end up, quite spontaneously, heading off on a camping trip (and how? His phone rings, he agrees to go when a friend asks him and, when she hears, his date Ji-ae apparently wants to go, too). We can begrudge some respect to him, by the way, for only agreeing to all this as he thinks he’s on a promise; his other motivation, that boys need to take girls with them or else camping is suspiciously gay, is more of a puzzler perhaps, but regardless, before too long we’re with a bunch of Characters, waiting for a lift into the woods because their car has broken down on the outskirts. Alongside the manager of the campsite, they head off, with no one really perturbed by the manager’s phone conversations with someone already up there with a gun to ‘shoot boar’; the audience, meanwhile, get some glimpses of what looks like a semi-feral chap padding about amongst the trees.

Forget about him for a while, though: aside from popping in on them to steal a bit of food, he doesn’t figure prominently, not at the moment. Instead, we get a hell of a lot of settling in, character development and verisimilitude about the whole camping experience, though interestingly, phone reception at the site seems highly reliable (all the phones go missing shortly after this bombshell, though, so it’s of little comfort then.) Here’s something else odd: despite fairly quickly working out that a succession of other young people may have been at the campsite before them, shedding photos, phones and jewellery as they passed through, no one seems in a particular rush to do anything about it. Now, The Human Trap (or The Trap, as it was previously known before someone thought to make things a little more overt) certainly doesn’t have much budget to play around with, and given that a lot of the Korean cinema which has reached the West has tended to be rather stylish and swish, it certainly looks different to your Park Chan-wooks and similar – but of course, Korea has a low-budget indie cinema scene just like anywhere else. Fine, though you soon start to manage your expectations in terms of what you’re actually going to see done here: there sadly isn’t some grand denouement, or some gory explosion that they’re saving everything for.

The real issue, though, is in the film’s writing and as such, its pace. Earnest, if amateurish performances can’t mask the fact that almost nothing happens until nearly the hour mark, and then a couple of film’s worth of plot gets hastily thrown in. Given that the end credits roll at 1:21, you can only imagine what that means for the film’s overall shape, development and exposition. Endless chatter pads out the film for its first two thirds, but that chatter is usually dull and undistinguished, so that even when the film begins to reframe and reconsider key scenes from different perspectives later, backfilling some aspects of the plot, it’s too late to properly build a sense of threat or some consistent idea. I’m not entirely sure that the promotional blurb for The Human Trap which claims that it is ‘in the tradition of The Evil Dead and The Cabin in the Woods‘ does anything other than set it up for a fall, either, given that it bears no resemblance to either of those films, beyond having trees in. (The blurb also omits to mention a key plot element, instead making mention of one the film’s Christian characters: this could be to avoid spoilers, but also, it suggests that Christianity will be important as a theme here, and – no such consideration from this hack – it’s not really, not with everything else going on.)

You can pick out some quite interesting subtext to this film which marks it out as belonging to a non-Western tradition, even if you can quibble on the use made of Christianity; gender and sexuality would be one aspect (poor Chae-rim is consistently characterised as being physically unattractive compared to Ji-ae, which is perplexing) but the main takeaway is in the theme of the ferocious financial issues which so often beset ordinary Koreans (the same issue which propelled the storyline of the wildly-popular Squid Game a few years ago – 2021, actually). Speaking of which, The Human Trap is a 2021 film which has likely languished somewhere for a few years before being picked up for release but, well. I don’t know what’s happened to the past few years either. It’s just a shame that a film which clearly does have ideas has distributed them so unevenly across its modest runtime, that its potential for some effective drama and scares get lost in the mix. Only go in for this one if you are of a forgiving, patient temperament.

The Human Trap (2021) is now available on Amazon Prime.

Who Goes There? (2020)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

It’s no surprise at all that frontier horror, or Wild West horror, continues to hold such great potential for new storytelling. Consider it: an uncertain, changeable point in history; the arrival of immigrants from different parts of the world, coming together as strangers in a strange land; the land itself, potentially hostile, unknown and peopled with monsters of its own folklore, some familiar-seeming, some new. There have been superb horror stories set against this background, and these continue to be made, such as in the case of Who Goes There? (2020), a brilliant short film which blends old and new supernatural beliefs, generating abundant scares and unease.

We begin as we (almost) end – with one, guttering firelight against the darkness. A man (Liam McMahon) sits at a fire, somewhere out on the prairie. He seems a little ill at ease, perhaps as anyone might, stuck out there in the remote and unfamiliar darkness – but, suddenly, he is troubled by a sound. It’s the kind of sound which should be impossible, if he’s genuinely alone – as he hears a whistle. He peers into the darkness, clearly alarmed, and – we cut to the opening credits. The man’s situation features in our story, but we move on for now, seeing the same area in daylight (somewhat gratefully: shooting at night can be tough to get right, but director Astrid Thorvaldsen and her team nail it, taking only a few minutes to bring us a genuinely unsettling, almost pitch-black scene). Now, a young woman, Ingrid (Nina Yndis) is gathering medicinal plants to take back to the tiny shack which she shares with sisters Liv (Siri Meland) and the youngest, Ada (Rikke Haughem). Ada is dangerously ill: her illness presents a little like tuberculosis, but there are other symptoms, too. Safe to say, she is in desperate need of care which she is never likely to receive, not all the way out here. It’s not immediately made clear why there are three unaccompanied young women living in this way, but you get an immediate sense of how harried and easily alarmed they are; why would they not be? They are possibly days away from any kind of help. So, when a strange man appears on the edge of their property, they are terrified.

The women’s remote, pressured existence is about to be put under further pressure: this man is the terrified man from earlier in the film, and he now appears ill, confused. When a terrified Ingrid approaches him and tries to scare him off her property, he simply asks for a drink of water before collapsing; her better nature gets the better of her, and she helps him to the porch, giving him the water he asks for. Liv is outraged; there’s now a potential threat amongst them, but when he casually mentions that he’s a travelling doctor, beset by bandits and lost on his way to his next call, it seems both plausible and tantalising; Ada really, really needs any sort of medical help she can get. But can this stranger, who has thrown himself on the mercy of these women, really be trusted?

The vulnerability of three young sisters in such a remote location could be horror enough, and Who Goes There? knows this: alongside the sisters, the audience is made to feel doubt about what is going on here, and whether very worldly, or otherworldly horror is threatening to break out. Then the film cleverly escalates the threat, building in a well-paced, simmering supernatural element. The sisters each respond differently to this, depending on the level of either their desperation, their fear, or even hope. Their code-switching between Norwegian and English is also important, highlighting that the film is set at a relatively early point in American colonial history, when immigrants held onto their native languages before more finally adopting the lingua franca of English. It neatly makes the point that the sisters are likely to be somewhat unfamiliar with their current location, even if they know enough to collect the right herbs for medical purposes. They are outsiders, faced with an outsider. And it’s impressive just how much characterisation the filmmaking team gets into this film, with only limited dialogue and, obviously, its short runtime (a little over twenty minutes). There are many feature-length films which couldn’t equal it. Performances are very strong, and the subtle layering of ideas around religious faith – around a clever, sparse script – are great, timed perfectly to introduce a new kind of paranoid discomfiture as the minutes tick by. A lot – though not all – of the visual elements are low-key subtle, too, but do more than enough to make the horror land.

All in all, this is an incredibly successful short horror film, one which knows just how much to reveal and how much to leave to the imagination. It’s of no detriment to the film that you’re left wanting to learn more as the end credits roll: Who Goes There? tantalises a blend of older horror elements and, potentially, quite new ones, as the rules simply don’t always apply out on the prairie. It gets its period details right, too, proving more evidence of a careful eye and a deft touch. A convincing timeframe, a convincing setting (the film was actually shot in Wales) and a convincingly scary story: this film really is good.

You can watch Who Goes There? now over on the Alter film channel, available on YouTube. Watch the film now by clicking here.

The Frightened Woman (1969)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

It’s a strange thing – I was prepared to write this review of The Frightened Woman as if this film is nothing more than a quirky time capsule, a pretty, picturesque piece of cinema coming from some very particular social and cultural mores. Of course, it is all of that, but its story of a wealthy philanthropist working through his frustrated misogyny on the weekends isn’t something we’ve exactly left behind us, is it? It’s too much to say that director Piero Schivazappa was some kind of seer, but he’s certainly, possibly accidentally made a film which can still resonate on some level. That, and a film which is bizarrely good fun, increasing its black comedy elements as it progresses. It’s a lurid, inventive slice of late Sixties gender paranoia, and well worth a look – if you like that kind of thing.

We are introduced to the man of the moment, thrusting executive and philanthropist Dr. Sayer (Philippe Leroy) as he’s in the process of chastising a light-fingered colleague. There’s just been a meeting to decide what to do with him; Sayer warns him that he’s lucky to only get expelled, and not given a criminal record, too. Aggrieved, our thief (who has just nicked a golden letter from a commemorative bust, just to make the point) lingers for a moment when he glimpses one of the organisation’s other employees – a young woman, Maria (Dagmar Lassander). The film is choc full of this kind of furtive watching. Maria, as it turns out, has business with Sayer too, visiting his office to ask him for some documentation which will enable her to complete a report on ‘male sterilisation in India’. How the chilly spring evenings must fly! Sayer, surprisingly and instantly hostile at the very notion of sterilising any man (I suppose if you’re philanthropically minded, this can extend to other men’s gonads) nonetheless agrees that she can have the material she needs, but she needs to collect it from his house. Safeguarding hadn’t been invented then, which is a boon for this type of cinema.

Maria goes to Sayer’s house as arranged; little does she apparently know that the working girl witnessed in the very opening scenes has a link to Sayer, too. So far as Maria goes, as they exchange a few vocal parries and as he offers her a standard-issue glass of J&B, she quickly slips out of consciousness, waking up restrained and being observed from a distance by a glowering Sayer. He begins to expound his philosophy, which seems to have been triggered by a horror of women’s desires to be self-sufficient. This cannot be; he envisages a future where males won’t be needed at all, and he’s appalled. His response is to double down on old, entrenched gender roles, resetting the clock by tormenting women, making them feel extreme fear. It just so happens that Maria is now the woman in the frame, seeing as Sayer’s original plans have come to nothing. She’s his new captive.

A series of warped domestic scenarios hereafter merge with weird and wonderful set pieces, as a rather literal battle of the sexes emerges. Sayer is clearly very practiced at this, and depends on such strictures in order to enjoy any sort of erotic interest in women; however, whatever kind of schedule he has used recently has perhaps met its match in Maria, who may make it look as though she is – begrudgingly – playing her role in Sayer’s strange set-ups, but is rather more worldly than he gives her credit. She’s watching and observing, and wants to turn things around to her favour. The film uses an often ingenious and ambitious structure where its worst, most sadistic scenes get repeated later with a different emphasis, as each key player here has a different modus operandi. It also manages to sustain a few different shifts in tone, moving from straightforwardly nasty to gently teasing and even funny, intentionally funny, even as a whole host of anxieties and nervousness are explored.

Most of all, though, The Frightened Woman is a swirling, heady study of sexual neuroses as they were on the brink of the 1970s, as the feminist movement grew and women did seem, to some, to be edging towards being sinisterly self-sufficient (another film which sprang to mind whilst watching this one was Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973), which took a similar stance towards the perils of sexually licentious women, albeit with some light-touch sci-fi at its own core). And, as much as The Frightened Woman creates a bit of a pastiche of these men who would now probably refer (to themselves, only ever to themselves) as Alphas, there’s some real-world context pressing in at the edges, and such shifts in sexual or gender roles did, and do, generate a lot of unease. The film plays quite liberally with this.

We also see other thoroughly modern predilections in the film, perhaps most notably psychoanalysis: many exploitation films of the era find time and space to include the talking cure, though perhaps Schivazappa and his design department go one better by building an entire vagina dentata sculpture to emasculate its men. The push/pull between modernising tastes and reactionary retreat leads to a fascinating interplay in this film, as in others of the same era; in terms of comparison with some of those other films, The Frightened Woman isn’t especially gratuitous, nor is it grisly, but it’s heavy on the psychological warfare, a careful and often clever film with a strong aesthetic sense (that house!) and strong production values. This Blu-ray release makes the film look incredibly fresh and surprisingly modern, too, for all of its late Sixties trappings and fashions. It makes for a good visual balance overall.

With extras including two roughly thirty-minute interviews with Schivazappa and with Dagmar Lassander, and a frankly display-worthy new cover design, Shameless Films release this Blu on January 8th 2024. This is good work from them, as always, and an unusual, weirdly inventive piece of 60s cinema for your collections.

Infinity Pool (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Brandon Cronenberg may not have the most extensive filmography on the block – as of yet – but, based on the films he has brought us so far, you could suggest that selfhood and the performance of self are important themes. Infinity Pool (2023) is certainly no exception, but as Cronenberg continues to grow his own style and approaches, adding in bigger and bigger worlds for his alienated protagonists to play around in, a few issues or kinks – make of that term what you will – have perhaps crept in. But, despite a few minor glitches, it’s nonetheless a visually arresting film, with some punishing, magnetic performances and plenty to puzzle over. Whatever you may think or feel about his work, you can’t deny that it always leaves some sort of indelible mark, and Infinity Pool is no exception.

We move from bold colour, blaring opening credits (paging Gaspar Noé) into full blackout; a young couple in bed, which turns out to be Em (Cleopatra Coleman) and husband James (Alexander Skarsgård), pondering some cryptic phrase just spoken by James, though Em debates whether he was asleep or awake – it gets harder for her to tell, it seems. James also appears disenchanted, asking ‘Where am I?’ It turns out they’re in an exclusive resort, located somewhere called La Tolqa – a fictional somewhere and nowhere, albeit a place with its own alphabet and a curious, complex legal and jurisdictive culture (more anon). The way in which the opening camera shots wheel upside down, spinning and taking us queasily with them (page him again) makes the point that this place is detached from reality, and so are its inmates. It’s the end of the tourist season: only a few wealthy, nothing-to-do couples remain. James, a failing author, is reinvigorated briefly when he encounters a fan of his first, and so far only, book: the woman, Gabi (Mia Goth running at 100% Mia Goth) invites James and Em to dine with her and husband Alban (Jalil Lespert) that evening. James’ vanity holds sway: he agrees.

They do say that you should write about what you know: I’m talking about Cronenberg here. It turns out that this is a very artsy crowd, albeit with some issues. Gabi is an actor, Alban a former architect, James an author and Em springs from a moneyed publishing house (hence, she jokes, her father’s aversion to writers and by extension, to James). But all of these people are in some kind of stasis – they’ve moved on, or failed to move on, or they have found a way to make an artform of failure. Exasperatingly, they’re all still at this no doubt exclusive resort, finding ways to afford it; could there, possibly, be some needle here from the director towards the kinds of inert, inexplicably wealthy people he may have encountered? In any case, the dinner passes with only momentary discomforts, and the Fosters agree to leave the resort on the following day – an ill-advised action – for an excursion with Gabi and Alban. The barely-there flirtation between Gabi and James turns into something very much there during their time at the beach, but that’s not the key issue at this particular time.

On the way home, with James offering to drive, he accidentally hits and kills a pedestrian. A moment of panic ensues, but Gabi is adamant that they mustn’t call it in. La Tolqa, she points out, is an authoritarian state, and we’ve already seen that the locals have a clear aversion to tourists. Reluctantly, they try to re-enter the resort after their hit and run, but it turns out to be a pointless attempt to escape the consequences; early the next morning, police arrive, taking James and Em to the local station and charging James with manslaughter. Lots of crimes attract the death penalty in La Tolqa, and this is one of them. Gabi, Alban and Em, too, have already pointed the finger of blame at James. The die is cast.

Except…La Tolqa has a different means of ensuring justice is meted out, but that one of its wealthy visitors is not killed in the process. James has the option, for a fee of course, to be copied – his double, who will be fully culpable because he will have all of the same memories, will be killed by the family of the victim in his place. Part of the ritual insists that he has to bear witness to the execution – after which point, everything is sorted. James can go back to his own life, debt to society paid.

Now, for many directors, probably for most directors, this plot development would likely be the high point of the narrative, a grand culmination of the bubbling absurdity and unease which have already been established. For Brandon Cronenberg, it is instead a kind of interesting bump in the road, a means of establishing that the wealthy of this place can buy themselves out of any situation, regardless of the deed. All that is important is that justice is seen to be done, even if the mile-high loophole La Tolqa has in place is really only available to people of means. People like James for instance, although like many writers he is diligent about spending other people’s money, so that he can purchase his ‘research time’ by proxy. And, after witnessing ‘his’ execution, it seems that James has entered a closed community of seasoned holiday-goers who have themselves undergone this same process for their own misdemeanours in the past, developing a kind of devil-may-care attitude like no other now that they have seen themselves, effectively, die. This includes Gabi and Alban, but James is not an easy fit for their group, and we begin to focus closely on his burgeoning crisis of identity.

From all its charming, bizarre little touches – which start early, with its mawkish masks, the same waiter appearing in different restaurants, the invented setting altogether – Infinity Pool still feels like it has the most recognisable, even workaday beginning of any of Cronenberg’s films so far. You’re jerked out of normality very hard and very early in Antiviral (2012) and particularly in Possessor (2020), but a dreamy holiday resort, a strange couple? It feels, at least at first, more normal – a term to use under advisement here. But the film tightens its grip steadily, expanding its vision as it does: this fictional country has its own forms of policing, law and justice which soon collide with the type of body horror Cronenberg Jr favours. It tantalises interesting technology and indulges in a few neon-trippy scenes as the copying process takes place – putting Skarsgård through the wringer as it goes – but really, it uses this motif to get at its big questions about values and morals, and then moves on to look at wealth and the inexplicably wealthy, monsters with no fear of death for their deeds. It’s good, by the by, to see the doppelganger making such an engaging return to the horror/sci-fi genres here. It’s developed engagingly, too, becoming a scapegoat as much as a conventional, accusatory symbol of failure and wrongdoing.

If the film has one key issue, it’s perhaps in how it groans under the weight of all this subtext, some of which feels a little overfamiliar in places, for all the neat developments and stylistic tics along the way. It’s not fair to suggest that Infinity Pool was made to be analysed rather than enjoyed – despite the current ‘fan gap’ between critics’ reviews and audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes – but it repetitively leans on its eat the rich vibes in places, across two hours mind you, sometimes with some clunky dialogue which loses the slick humour of a close parallel such as (and I’m ready to argue this) Society (1989). There is doubtlessly some humour to be found in here though – James’s final straw being made to hear a bad review of his book, for instance! – and the cast is great, with Mia Goth in particular revealing why she is something of a genre cinema darling these days. All in all, this is still a lush, queasy, interesting film, despite not being an unequivocal triumph like the extraordinary Possessor.

Ferrari (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

It’s not just a big action biopic. That’s probably the first thing to get straight about Ferrari (2023), a film which could well just be a fairly straightforward story of making fast cars, racing fast cars and occasionally filling us on on the human drama unfolding nearby – always within reason, of course. Rather, Michael Mann’s take on the history of the legendary car manufacturer at a critical point in its timeline opts for an often oblique approach, a social and personal history which gradually comes together to tell a more orthodox story. It won’t be for everyone and petrolheads will probably feel cheated, but there’s a great deal to recommend this ambitious and complex narrative. Stick with it.

We start with a brief introduction to the legendary firm first established by Enzo and Laura Ferrari post-WWII, spliced with some newsreel-style footage – some contemporary, some edited to include lead actor Adam Driver as Enzo (one of the film’s only genuinely weak sequences, actually) racing his early vehicles. But then we skip ahead a decade; whether or not Enzo chooses to drive his respectable family car as if he’s still racing, he’s retired from the sport and his company is struggling (as were a lot of the other big names at the time). Essentially, whether or not Ferrari survives is down to its success in the racing world, which is presented to us as an oddly surreptitious pursuit, with messages being phoned in hither and yon, drivers arriving, drivers departing – there’s a lot going on. Enzo, now middle aged, is presented as a sullen, changeable soul, but gradually, we see sound reasons for this. He has been bereaved of his son, Alfredo, and he has a fractious relationship with his wife Laura (so, not the woman we see him waking up with at the start of the film. That’s his long term mistress, Lina). If the film makes one thing clear, as it gradually unfurls its various plot points and characters, it’s that we start our narrative in a place of turmoil – though maybe with some new beginnings, or else more and more irrevocable endings.

There’s certainly a new beginning on the cards for hopeful newcomer De Portago (Gabriel Leone), when an accident deprives Ferrari of one of his best vehicles and star drivers (there were no seatbelts then, which seems like one of the most bizarrely slow learning curves in human history). Ferrari needs him; he begins to see that, without racing glory, the factory will soon be finished. Laura also owns half the firm, and she’s less and less in the mood for compromise.

Whilst there are, naturally, some high-octane racing scenes as inevitably pushed forward by the trailer, and there is a bit of car lingo for car people (this reviewer is perfectly happy to drive a car with only a notional idea of how they work), this isn’t The Fast and the Furious with a period setting. Ferrari is a very careful, low key film for the most part, creating engaging characters who are clearly flawed without this being spelled out for us in simplistic terms. The way in which the film opens almost in medias res, with the audience playing catch-up to determine what is actually going on, works very well; it captures the chaotic, rather desperate state Ferrari was in at the end of the 1950s. And if Enzo himself is often unknowable – to us, and to people in his life – then his counterbalance is the mesmerising Penelope Cruz as Laura, in what must be one of her best performances. Laura is a parade of explosive or suppressed emotions by turns, alert to every slight and secret as only a deeply hurt woman could be, a fierce custodian of her own dignity. She dominates every scene she’s in, a deeply sympathetic character who can communicate just as much with a smile fading into tears as she can with her note-perfect takedowns.

There are a lot of other ways in which Ferrari creates depth and complexity, one of which is in its completely plausible frame. A film needs some serious budget to really – really – do a period setting, something which I wish even the most ambitious indie filmmakers could appreciate, as it’s fertile terrain to just trash the entire premise. Here, the post-War Italy created on film is very convincing, looks wonderful and is – aside from that opening newsreel sequence – fully consistent. Mann and writers Troy Kennedy Martin and Brock Yates play around with humour, too, which feels welcome, and often comes at the expense of religion, or at least is linked with religion (such as the men timing racing laps during Mass; the priest who avers that, had Jesus been born in 20th Century Modena, he would have made cars). But as part of a picture of a modernising, but struggling Italy, of course the Church is important. This is a country dreaming of carving its own path, of being self sufficient – hence Ferrari’s reluctance to take outsider backing, American money, to keep his factory running. It was a risky kind of pride, given Italy’s economic state at the time. Necessity is the mother of invention here, but accompanied by very human stories of loss, jealousy and desperation.

All of this elevates the races themselves, as we see how much is riding on them: Enzo develops a kind of monomania, but not out of nowhere, and the film explores this confidently. Ferrari does feature, without question, some phenomenal race scenes, though doled out carefully – thanks God, because much more of that balletic carnage would have shredded the nerves (and incidentally, the film makes good use of opera, too, either by including operatic music and performances, or by itself turning into a bit of an opera. It makes sense). Some of the accented English spoken in the film – whilst the decision is appreciable – can make the dialogue difficult to parse at times, but it’s not a continual concern. This is overall an impressive, sensitive, unorthodox exploration of the Ferrari story, and its decisions pay off.

Ferrari (2023) is in cinemas now.