If Broken Bird (2024) begins unusually literally, then it soon becomes something far more complex and symbolic than that: its depiction of the nervy, prim Sibyl (Rebecca Calder) suggests from the earliest moments that something about this character is barely restrained, and that we will discover more anon. But in getting there – despite a few dithers and issues at the midway point – the film is increasingly brilliant and artfully tense, an uneasy piece of modern Gothic which pries away at modern attitudes to death and grief.
Sibyl, it seems, is a taxidermist: we see her working carefully on a dead bird at the very start of the film, with close macro shots showing the care and skill needed to preserve its little body. We see the bird; we don’t see the taxidermist herself very closely yet. She’s a bundle of snippets – a glimpse here and there of eyes, hair, hands. Finally, we see a little more of her, and are introduced to some of her other hobbies. She’s into composition as well as decomposition, it seems – sorry for that, but it kinda works here. Sibyl writes and performs her own poetry. However, whilst she performs at a regular open mic night, we don’t really see her interacting with anyone there. It’s all rather singular; whenever she encounters someone, she seems to either emulate them, or weave them into fantasies which stand in for whatever is really taking place.
However, when she gets a professional opportunity to take on a new role in a funeral home, this seems to suit her well. Being nervy and prim isn’t such a big deal when your clients are deceased and the affable, if traumatised Mr. Thomas (James Fleet) is glad of the help: work is all that’s keeping him going since the loss of his beloved wife. Sibyl is able to bring her past working experience to bear on her new role, and things go well – from the perspective of Mr. Thomas, anyway. The more time we spend with Sibyl, the more we see hints of some buried trauma in her own life. She responds to this by seeing connections which aren’t there – such as with museum assistant Mark (Jay Taylor) – or fantasising conversations which never even happen.
Elsewhere, we meet a woman called Emma (Sacharissa Claxton). In one of the film’s crossover moments, just as Sibyl ostensibly seems to be finding her way with her new job, Emma is losing her grasp on her own. She works for the police, but three months prior, Emma lost her young son. This loss haunts her, making it almost impossible for her to perform properly, and threatens to drive a wedge between her and her colleagues. As this all happened locally, Emma’s police force is the one charged with investigating what happened to the little boy. Two lives, two ways of dealing with grief: as we are introduced to both women, we can infer that something will unite them, but for now, we can only guess at the connection. In the meantime, we spend most of our time with Sibyl.
On reflection, the thing which makes Broken Bird finally blossom is the very same thing which, at some points during its runtime, makes that kind of connection feel unlikely. By sticking closely with Sibyl, we see the world of the film unfolding through her. At times, this means quite unexpected quirky humour, albeit framed with a kind of dour British quality, a few ‘should we laugh?’ moments in amongst everything else. Sibyl initially seems a little like Fran from Sometimes I Think About Dying, a similarly sad, complex woman given to grandiose fantasies about the kind of life – or death – she imagines for herself. Since we’re talking about films with similar themes and/or approaches, a comparison with Mayis perhaps the most obvious one to make: there are arguably even some mirrored scenes here.
But there’s a lot of complexity involved in figuring Sibyl out, arguably more so than with May, whose loneliness is clearer earlier; we can’t trust what we see with Sibyl, whilst still knowing that this is a woman who has made an artform out of concealment. We never get openly told about her motivations; we’re simply faced with her increasingly oddball behaviours, made to act like observers with no insider knowledge, and there are no internal monologues or special explanations to tell us what’s what. Add to that a run of still-mysterious, fantasised scenes accompanied with lively, even lullaby-like music and it’s hard to know what to think. The shifts in tone and Sibyl’s long, sometimes light-hearted deviations into idealised scenarios are, without a doubt, challenging in places. At around the hour mark the film is spread thinnest, with a perhaps unclear mood which may alienate some viewers. Likewise, you need to wait to pick up Emma’s storyline, which may make you wonder how things will work out.
Stick with it. What director Joanne Mitchell is doing here is making us think like Sibyl. And, once we do that – really do that – the film is able to move into an almost unbearable, if always artistic finale which grows so unendurably intense that it makes your heart feel like it’s going to shatter. The ways in which Broken Bird loops back to resolve its narrative gaps are incredibly assured, and its novel approach to storytelling is worth the wait. It’s a jigsaw puzzle this, where – once you work out what you’re actually looking at – you recoil in fascinated horror. But as for the picture itself! It’s one of the most aesthetically-pleasing films I have ever had the pleasure to see, a strangely graceful nightmare and an impressive first feature from Joanne Mitchell.
Broken Bird (2024) both received its World Premiere and opened this year’s FrightFest 2024.
Ecocriticism looks at the relationships between humankind and nature; it reinterprets our place in the natural order of things, looking at how we live, where we live and how our decisions as a species impact upon the world around us. As such, science fiction and dystopia offers a rich source of ecocritical ideas: this seems particularly true of Fede Alvarez’s recent film Alien: Romulus (2024), coming as it does midway through the timeline of Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986), in a future where Earth – now a home planet in a network of other worlds – is often conspicuous by its absence. In terms of ecocriticism, this is key: if this critical perspective encourages us to consider our place on Earth, then the potential removal of humanity from Earth recontextualises that place, asking questions which are rarely directly addressed by the Aliens timeline, but remain important. Only Alien: Resurrection (1997) ever brings the audience anywhere near the home planet, and it remains a closed book, never seen other than from orbit, and never landed; it’s just another destination at risk during the xenomorph timeline. Other than that, its status has shifted and the implication seems to be that the broader universe offers new opportunities to start again – new opportunities, at least, for some.
Humanity has at least partly decamped, in this version of the universe, to a number of remote, inhospitable places which can only be accessed through the technology of hypersleep – in other words, being placed in a kind of stasis for periods of years while the craft makes its way to destinations light years away. But even so, the economic system being implemented throughout the universe is eminently recognisable. The Alien universe’s big hitter, the genuine antagonist which either deliberately or inadvertently drives all the events which unfold, is the pan-planetary Weyland-Yutani Corporation, a massive organisation which unfolds recognisable practices ones which we will recognise – only at a new scale. Its ideals are now age-old: to derive profit from the exploitation of resources on different worlds via the labour of indentured workers. It relies on the efforts of settlers, miners and soldiers; this hasn’t changed in centuries. Although the settler colonies are small, the implication seems to be that there are many of them, albeit all at incredible distance from one another, and therefore unable to leave, to organise or to easily communicate. These people are weak and vulnerable, living in places ill-fitted for human life. You could argue that the proliferation of the xenomorphs through Hadley’s Hope is possible because it is such a hostile environment for the settlers; dark, inhospitable, and clearly very poorly surveyed. The settlers do the terraforming, and take all the risks.
Jackson’s Star, the setting for Alien: Romulus, is another colony with a meagre population, wracked with industrial accidents, diseases and premature deaths. We discover that protagonist Rain’s parents have died because of conditions at the colony; one of the reasons she is willing to risk an escape is to avoid sharing their fate, when she finds out that she is about to be sent underground, too. But legitimate means of escape are denied, albeit in customarily soothing, customer-facing language. The Weyland-Yutani operative at the work office denies that Rain is coming to the end of her tenure, although Rain insists that she is. The very idea is a lie; Rain’s contract is updated whilst she is stood at the desk asking (and expecting) to be released. She, like all the others, is fully indentured and will never be permitted to leave. However, the woman thanks her in rehearsed language for her hard work on behalf of the company.
It’s hideously unfair – and only the tip of the iceberg, given what Weyland are doing with at least some of their profits and power. They are, and have always been, represented as cruel, corrupt overlords, framing ‘concern’ for their colonists as being about their welfare, when it is really an entirely economic concern, at least by this point in the Weyland universe timeline.
What Weyland is mining, what it is using these resources for, and/or to whom they sell their goods remain, for the most part, a mystery. But they certainly fund clandestine scientific research, getting past any human qualms about their operations by concealing the truth, outright lying, or using their own synthetics (or androids) to do the bulk of their dirty work, programming them with prime objectives which protect the interests of the company at any cost to expendable human life. It is presumably only because synthetics are costly to manufacture and maintain that Weyland bothers with human workers at all. In a game where the Queen takes all, we also get key synthetics in the timeline, as embodied by the coldly clinical Rook and later, by the more conscientiously-programmed Bishop, but the humans are always the pawns. Romulus is also interesting in how it brings us a flawed synthetic in Andy – an end-of-line model whose glitches come across like a cognitive impairment, and whose prime objective (to do what is best for Rain) makes him function like a loving big brother. However, with an ‘upgrade’, when he connects to the mainframe computer aboard the space station, his objective changes; he is a piece of Weyland kit after all, and this can – and does – override his usual state, shedding the tics and impairments to place Andy on a level with Rook, whose programming bids him to continue with the mission, even though the station’s fleeting encounter with the xenomorph life cycle has turned it literally inside out.
The work is valuable (to Weyland) for reasons other than pure curiosity. This raises a question which has hung over the Alien series since its inception. Rook, or more accurately, Ash was originally instructed to preserve the xenomorph; perhaps, at this point, there was no clear mission attached to this, only a desire to find out more. However, by the time Aliens unfolds (albeit we now understand this to be later than the events in Romulus) the implication seems to be that the xenomorph could be useful for a military or a defence purpose – Weyland wants to sneak two embryos past military quarantine, thereafter to examine their potential. You can infer a certain purpose here. But this has always seemed strange. Surely, there could be no conventional military purpose for this lifeform, a creature which cannot be ‘taught tricks’, as claimed in Alien: Resurrection – other than to display some rudimentary learning which it then uses to escape and to kill its supposed masters. Other questions occur: what sort of enemy would require the xenomorph to fight it? How could they be controlled in terms of their population? How do you fight with a bio-weapon you can’t turn off?
In Alvarez’s screenplay, Rook suggests a more plausible reason that Weyland is so keen to control the xenomorphs and will risk anything to preserve the specimens. In stating that its intensely resilient DNA is a malleable tool which can perhaps be used to reverse-engineer the colonists, making them into better producers and workers, less susceptible to illness and injury, Weyland reveals that its motivations are, again, purely economic. And again, Rook is prepared to sacrifice anything to fulfil his mission, including the manipulation of the few humans he encounters on the space station. Why not, if experimental models present themselves? Human life, always susceptible in environments like the ones selected by Weyland to best generate profitable materials, is also fodder for scientific method, come what may.
In ecocritical terms, the xenomorphs themselves generate big questions about the relationship between species and environment. The xenomorph is a lifeform in many respects like any other lifeform: reproducing, nesting, responding to stimuli, attacking perceived threats. However, with a lifecycle which destroys its host organisms in days (or far quicker, even implausibly so, in Romulus) it would leave itself with no further means to reproduce (or presumably, feed itself either) after a comparatively short amount of time. Perhaps humans just provide particularly tantalising hosts, even if the xenomorphs are adaptable – any mammalian life seems suitable – though Romulus seems to suggest that the creature can even hibernate in space and be resurrected later. Whatever else the xenomorph is, it’s resilient and it is adaptable. It also thrives on the kinds of interplanetary travel and colonisation promoted by Weyland to find its new hosts and habitats; the corporation facilitates the proliferation of xenomorphs, whether wittingly or otherwise. But it is very telling that, whatever this organism is, whatever it does and however harmful it is, Weyland see in it a higher purpose which serves them. They are only interested in restricting the creature’s progress where it sees a reason for this – where it can be categorised, stored and examined, and then exploited, so that (we now glean) human workers may be exploited further.
Rain and her friends, with all of their flaws, their desperation and their ambitions are a foil to this higher purpose. In seeking to survive and to progress beyond the remit of Weyland’s control, seeking a planet more amenable to their own manner of existence, they fight back against the corporate control being exerted. They are individuals, working against a hostile organism and a conglomerate seeking to exploit that organism, too, to further the mistreatment of humans, though ostensibly to ‘help’ them, using obfuscation and weasel words to conceal their actions.
It is interesting that Rain’s escape is symbolised by the simple idea of watching the sun rise. The desire to ‘see the sun’ is a key driver behind her risky, almost fatal attempts to escape. Arguably, given the human requirement for exposure to the sun to remain healthy (such as through the manufacture of Vitamin D) the planet which hosts Jackson’s Star is wholly inappropriate for human life. This doesn’t deter Weyland-Yutani. Rain is prepared to risk everything to see the sun; she wishes to travel to a remote world where the sun does rise. She doesn’t expect to be free from labour when she gets there; she just harbours this simple wish, one which has a long literary precedent as a symbol of really ‘seeing’, or engaging with nature, as Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests when he says “most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child” (1). The sun – a sun – maybe any sun – represents natural order, natural rhythm, normality and beauty – even if, as is totally possible in Rain’s case, she has never experienced that natural order as part of her own life.
But she is human after all; she has been encultured to believe in this natural order and in how beautiful it is – finally seeing a tantalising glimpse of this sun when she first travels in the ersatz mining vessel to a point above the atmosphere. It has a key emotional impact on her, staying with her throughout the narrative arc, even if – thanks to the sci-fi framework of the film – she will be looking at a different sun, if she finally reaches her destination. Other characters, too, share her motivation. It’s poignant in its simplicity, and shows what they lack (and what we, as an audience, perhaps fail to appreciate). There is much within Alien: Romulus which, fantastical or not, seems cautionary, with its continuing story of over-powerful corporations which devalue people and worlds, but at the end of the film, we may hope that Rain finally gets her wish to see the sun rise every day, and perhaps we may see our own circumstances – and our own place on our planet – in a different way, too.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature,” in The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: Random House, 1968), 6.
Getting a new Aliens film? Great, but after a few misfires (you can decide which were misfires, but I bet you think there were some) it can feel like a mixed blessing, perhaps. Wars have very nearly been fought over these movies, because the first two instalments set the bar so extraordinarily high; if the xenomorphs are ‘perfect organisms’, then so are the films which introduced us to them. Arguably, there have been diminishing returns since Aliens (1986) and for the remainder of the Ripley story arc, before different writers and directors took us through some offshoots and prequels to the main story.
Alien: Romulus (2024) positions itself between the events of Alien (1979) and Aliens, i.e. between the fate of the Nostromo and then the fate of the colony at Hadley’s Hope, and those sent to investigate. Ripley herself is never named in Romulus; she’s in deep space somewhere, yet to share her knowledge of the singular new organism which is of such interest to the pan-planetary corporation, Weyland-Yutani. Instead, in a mining colony called Jackson’s Star, we meet Rain (played by the very Elite Dangerous-sounding Cailee Spaeny). Rain is a worker, living a thankless life where – thanks to planetary environmental conditions – the sun never shines. She hangs onto the simple dream of seeing a sunrise – but gaining access to a planet where she stands a chance of getting her wish is impossible to come by. The company won’t release her from her contract; in fact, her life is set to get darker and more dangerous, as they want to send her into the mines, a deathtrap of lung damage and disease and an almost certain ticket to an early, sunless grave.
Alongside her ‘brother’ Andy – actually a defective end-of-line synthetic rescued by her late father – she agrees to participate in a scheme hatched by a group of her friends. They have detected an abandoned Weyland vessel, floating in orbit above their heads: if it has hypersleep pods, as they suspect, then they stand a chance of escape, sleeping the nine years it will take to get to a world called Yvaga (meaning ‘paradise’ – heh). To do it, they need Andy: he’s a piece of Weyland tech, and will be able to grant them access through the various security systems and doors. Reluctantly, but desperate to escape the mines which killed her parents, Rain agrees, and Andy agrees because his prime objective is to do what’s best for her. They take off in the small mining vessel they have (somehow) occupied for themselves, finding not just an abandoned ship, but an entire space station, now rolling perilously close to the frozen planetary rings.
Rescuing expensive, complex and company-owned hypersleep technology from a derelict space station before it wrecks itself on these rings is one thing, but there’s an even bigger problem, one which only the audience understands – for now. Just as the opening credits rolled, we saw a team of people picking through the wreckage of the Nostromo, ostensibly for salvage – but they were particularly interested in what looked like a fossilised lifeform, which they excitedly hauled aboard. Uh-oh. So where are those people now? And what exactly might they have done with the strange salvage they went to such great pains to capture?
What ensues is – with a few minor and a couple of major peeves regarding plot expediency – a tightly-wrought nightmare, which feels eerily familiar, but yet different enough to demand attention, with a few brilliant, blood-curdling flourishes. There are also some unexpected boons in terms of explaining just what Weyland-Yutani actually want with the xenomorphs; it certainly makes more theoretical sense than the idea, vaunted in Aliens, that these creatures could ever really be useful to the military. Director Fede Alvarez – who has cut his teeth on some of the best horror films of the past decade – really brings his horror experience to bear here, albeit without sacrificing the high-action feel of Aliens. It’s midway between Alien and Aliens in the timeline; it’s very much between those two films in terms of atmosphere and plot, too, with a lot of character-focused, slow burn trauma balanced against much faster paced, bloodier exploits. There’s plenty of darkness, peril and panic: it’s grisly, but also unnerving in turn. It’s a good balance overall. Additionally, the aesthetics are bang on, wholly in keeping with the timeline for Alien/Aliens and there is so, so much love for H.R. Giger here: the practical sets and SFX are key.
But the film’s greatest strength, and where it excels where some entrants in the franchise have floundered (can you genuinely name a single person from Alien: Covenant without looking them up?) is in its characterisation. For starters, inserting a young female character into a timeline which has had Ellen Ripley in it, and which we know has her still, is bold – and risky. Overplaying the dialogue with an unwieldly ‘please give a shit about me’ backstory would have been the wrong way to go; Alvarez, alongside his co-writers Rodo Sayagues know how to pare it down (Dan O’Bannon is also, very fairly, credited). They trust the audience: isn’t that a nice feeling? You see enough of Rain to sense the desperation and pain she feels, and she plays it well, with a plausible verve and drive to survive the horrors which unfold. Rain also embodies our erring human instincts, our distrust, our issues with hard logic, but most of all our frustration with corporate agendas which override the interests of the little people, repositioning money and power as new kings with new, unwitting armies.
But the real tour de force in this film is Andy (David Jonsson). He’s one of the most fascinating characters in the franchise to date: the idea of a synthetic which is flawed, obsolete, but beloved of a human family unit, which takes him in and works with those flaws? That in itself speaks volumes on the kinds of questions which we authentically have, and have now, about A.I: we’re a lot closer to this now than we were in ’79 or ’86. Andy is initially played like a human being with a cognitive impairment; this makes him a perfect target for the abused, downtrodden people who like to kick downwards, or who blame all synths for their very human tales of loss (and one scene which deals with this kind of abuse made me cry; not ashamed to say it). And yet, Andy is a Weyland synth after all; he can patch in to their systems, interact with their key objectives. The anxiety that technology now answers to different masters is dealt with highly effectively in Romulus, and Jonsson is more than equal to it: in fact, he’s fantastic. Not human, but humane, turning in an assured, varied, engrossing performance.
The only issue, really, is that filmmakers struggle to end Aliens films. Having introduced a lifeform which can even hibernate in the void of space, how do you get rid of them? Like, ever? The answer to that question is a little limited by setting, means and that strange obligation to pay respect to previous films by repeating key plot points (I will always argue that there’s no need to pay fan service; a good Aliens film is the fan service, and better than even brief do-overs and forced nods to old lines and set pieces). The film also plays fast and loose with getting us to a point where – voila – we are overrun with xenomorphs, despite knowing what we know (or thought we did) about their life cycle. But this isn’t enough of an issue to spoil the film, not for this reviewer at least, and no one can argue with that horrific twist and denouement in terms of spectacle, which is certainly a big step up even from, ahem, something similar which has also occurred in a previous film. There are familiar game pieces, sure, but Alien: Romulus has strong acting, strong visuals and enough deeply repellent ideas to still add something fresh to the franchise. It’s an eminently worthwhile addition.
In 1814, a group of French soldiers fighting for Napoleon are lost in bleak Serbian territory. Exhausted, starving and on unfamiliar ground, matters are looking desperate for them until they encounter a local woman who offers them a tasty looking horse. The soldiers have no plans to lead it to water in order to make it drink; all they want is to make it their dinner. Unfortunately, their planned evening of alfresco Cordon Bleu cuisine is curtailed drastically when the horse unexpectedly goes kablooey.
Fast forward to the modern day, where the area is apparently free from de-atomising dressage contestants but now plays host to an exploratory fracking operation, overseen by the no-nonsense Emily (Toby Poser). In addition to fellow Americans John (John Adams) and Emily’s nephew Teddy (Max Portman), a group of locals is on hand to assist with the drilling operation and to provide security. To satisfy any ecological concerns, environmentalists/academics Nikola (Alexsandar Trmčić) and Sofija (Olivera Peruničić) are also along for the ride.
When the initial test finds something a lot weirder than a gas pocket, and with bad weather hindering the group’s escape, the ill-matched workmates find themselves in an on-site face off with a parasitic presence that is looking for the ideal host. Yes, it’s an updated version of Auf Wiedersehen Pet meets The Thing as the Adams Family turn their attention to the monster movie, and it’s every bit as wild and distinctive as I hoped it would be.
This time out, it’s less of a family affair, with no Zelda Adams to be found and Lulu Adams on co-writing duties only. Shot far, far away from their usual stomping ground, that feeling of Toby and John stepping into an unfamiliar arena in which their usual filmmaking compadres have been replaced by strangers translates fascinatingly from the production to the onscreen action, with all of the awkwardness, cultural differences and communication issues that kind of project can bring, along with an ultimate need to pull together to resolve the larger problems afoot.
For anyone who thought Where The Devil Roams was a little too oblique and grisly, I can assure you that Hell Hole has a huge amount of fun with its premise and there are plentiful laughs to be enjoyed. Yes, some of the humour is of the type marked “I’m really not sure I should be finding this amusing” and the workplace comedy is downplayed to the point that most mumblecore flicks wish they were that deadpan. However, take a couple of minutes to tap into the vibe and you’ll be chuckling at weird office banter one moment and guffawing at the most dreadful things the next.
Of course, it’s not just gross out body horror and running gags about tagine. Within the confines of an increasingly splattery creature pic, the screenplay makes sharp observations and opens up discussions about big themes: bodily autonomy; American involvement in the affairs of foreign countries; profiteering from an increasingly unstable planet; and, because we’re talking The Thing – and, by extension, Alien – the male fear of pregnancy. As is the case with previous films from the Adams stable, the subtext is not that of the finger wagging lecture variety, it’s just a little extra to chew on which you wouldn’t normally find in a film about a many-tentacled varmint causing unfortunate folks to explode in gorehound-pleasing showers of blood and guts.
Considering the limited budget, the creature work by Masters FX Inc. is impressive, with the monster’s appearance riding the line between disgusting and hilarious, especially when it’s slobbering over its next target. For me, the digital effects from regular collaborator Trey Lindsay don’t quite match up to the practical stuff, but I grew up watching 1980s horror on VHS so maybe I’m showing my bias. Having said that, there’s still something undeniably gross about seeing an animated feeler emerging from a character’s eye.
With a slightly larger set of characters on which to focus, the Serbian drilling team, each one clad in orange overalls, gets a little lost in the shuffle. Their members, although not interchangeable cast offs, are more often than not ushered in as critter fodder but there’s a sneaky through line in the story which suggests, in this particular situation, the local employees are the ones which will be chucked in front of the threat first. And they are.
Poser and Adams are on reliably good form here, the former’s reluctant den mother also coming to terms with an ethical 180 in her career after her solar power business failed, the latter’s laid back cool coming under severe – and, it has to be said, comedic – stress. Trmčić’s and Peruničić’s characters entertain in diverting supporting roles as haughty intellectual and smart/klutzy science babe respectively, which allows them – and the script – to take at least some time out from the entrail spilling to consider the moral and scientific issues. This also gives the audience a breather or two before the next poor sod finds themselves either forcefully entered by a determined, parasitic presence or blasted into bloody chunks. Or both.
The score is great, too, with Adams’ chunky, fuzzy guitar blasts sometimes acting as the heartbeat of the increasingly frazzled protagonists as they creep or blunder around, wondering what’s around the next corner, sometimes serving as an exclamation point to the latest pile of rank-looking viscera or the realisation that the ongoing plight has somehow turned even more grim. It’s the perfect accompaniment to the family’s skewed, punk rock approach to familiar subgenres.
So, given the differing production circumstances of this latest opus and taking the plot synopsis at face value, is Hell Hole a glimpse of the Adams family embracing the mainstream? Absolutely not. Even with the drastic change of scenery, the overall feel remains satisfyingly offbeat and the European settings are imbued with the same sense of foreboding as their previous American counterparts, whether it’s the shabby, towering, industrial complex or the surrounding forests, where everyone can hear you scream but finds they’re not in much shape to do anything about it.
The overriding ethos of getting maximum bang for the buck is still firmly in place. Some of the narrative decisions made along the way would only be found in an Adams Family movie. If you were worrying that this was somehow going to degenerate into something more akin to a gun for hire job, worry not. Hell Hole is different yet – in terms of style, wit and regular ventures into the oddest of territories – it’s more of the strangely comforting same. Fans will miss Lulu and Zelda, no doubt, but there’s still so much to savour. The tale may be as old as time (or it’s at least clocked up a couple of centuries in this case) but there’s an uncommon freshness to the way it’s related here. Hell Hole? Hell, yes!
Hell Hole (2024) will be released on Shudder on August 23rd.
Before getting into this review of Duchess (2024), I’d like to draw attention to the film’s poster art. Tell you what, let’s have a look at it now.
Does that look right to you?
The proportions are all off; at first glance it looks passable, but then perhaps something catches your eye and you notice that a woman’s shoulder can’t be there, far less her bust. Her arms can’t be there either. The poster makes no sense, but it does all it needs to do: it showcases Charlotte Kirk, showing that this project is all about her. As such, the poster’s honest, even if it’s totally warped and in dire need of sorting out. It functions nicely as a microcosm for the film itself: it doesn’t sit right, it doesn’t bear close examination, but it’ll do.
The film begins as no doubt the entire project began: with an idea about getting Kirk in lingerie, and then some notion of filling in around that with a story. She’s in lingerie because she has somehow set up a honey trap for a gangster type who has wronged her; the use of a voiceover and freeze frames (as per Guy Ritchie) tell is that this is payback. We then zip back in time to examine how we got to this point, and what it’s payback for: again as per Guy Ritchie, we begin with the film’s habit of displaying a large number of character names on screen, but because we have barely anything to do with most of these people, you will forget them. Turns out that Scarlett starts out as a pickpocket working in nightclubs (though wearing the sorts of slinky dresses which presumably make it very hard to conceal what you’ve stolen) – whilst doing this, she’s spotted by a charming American called Rob (Philip Winchester) and there’s a big manly fight over Scarlett, because of course! Rob takes a shine to her and tracks her down to her boxing club (!) where she breaks off from a practice to dismiss him utterly. Some time passes, but he persists, rescuing her shortly after a vicious beating at the hands of the boyfriend from the club which, as is now traditional, apparently breaks her bones, but leaves her with nothing more disfiguring than a few dabs of blood on her face, and broken ribs which magically heal just prior to getting shagged by Rob, otherwise all that getting slammed against a wardrobe door would really hurt.
So they fall in love: it turns out he’s a diamond dealer (albeit one who is under the impression that people mine them from ditches) and, as the diamond trade is full of wrong ‘uns, some stuff goes down, including a cameo from Stephanie Beacham as a gangland doyenne, who has been tasked with the most awkward swearing ever committed to film. It’s slow, slow, slow, but we get to the point where plenty of double dealing takes place, Scarlett gets the exorbitant nickname ‘Duchess’ (though at least she doesn’t pick it herself, as it has that ring to it) and then eventually it all turns into a vengeance epic, with ‘Duchess’ aiming to set up on her own.
Never certain if it’s sending itself up or pushing the envelope in terms of gritty crime fare, Duchess fluctuates between the two until the last half an hour or so, when it finally opts for the latter. To give it some credit, it’s not a bad looking film at all: there’s money coming from somewhere, regardless of the audience responses to Marshall-Kirk projects to date, and this means a budget for locations, interiors, lighting, framing and the incidental music, which does a reasonable job of weaving things together. Sean Pertwee, though cast very much in a supporting role, is a welcome addition, and though Beacham is given short shrift from the script, it’s always good to see her.
But once again, Neil Marshall and Charlotte Kirk have taken it upon themselves to write the script together, and once again, it’s disastrous. Is it as bad as The Lair (2022)? Well, we’re not taking any ridiculous shortcuts like announcing the lead character has a photographic memory in order to justify an equally ridiculous plot point, but nonetheless we’re stuck with the same casual biases, logical gaps, weird puffery, childish ideas, non-sequiturs and as mentioned above, amateur swearing. The swearing is an important point, actually: it’s a bit like asking someone if they know the price of a pint of milk to find out whether they understand what life is like for most people. Don’t know where and how someone would swear in a sentence? Then leave it out: get it wrong and it’s a massive shibboleth which gives you away as immensely naïve and out of touch, which is bad news when you’re trying to spin a yarn about gang warfare. Equally, purloining so many elements from Guy Ritchie is an error not just because it’s lazy, but because the cockney accent and dialect used by his characters in the 90s is on its way out now: someone born in 1995, as ‘Duchess’ is, would in all likelihood be using MLE, or Estuary. Attention to detail.
But the accent thing…that’s one thing. The real problem with this film is its treatment of Kirk. It’s that which really marks it out as a thinly-plotted game of Dolly Dress Up, and endless yammering about whether or not Duchess has ‘balls’, or needs ‘balls’, or can kick men in the balls, doesn’t create the gloss of feminism which the film apparently believes it does. In fact, let’s go further: the strong and uncomfortable sense that these films begin with storyboards of Kirk in various sexy outfits, which are then used as the basis for stringing the outfits together with a plot. That is the cardinal sin of the film. How a once-renowned director like Neil Marshall could be so wrapped up in his personal life as to traduce his own reputation like this is bizarre, and who knows? One day, it might all feel like a bizarre fever dream. It’s actually heartening to see that Kirk is working with other directors and other writers on upcoming projects at the moment: I hope they can bear to push her a bit more, because as much as she has benefitted by being elevated to leading lady status by dint of her relationship status, she may have reached the top of that learning curve. And she’s no script writer, but the blame is not hers alone, is it?
Duchess (2024) is yet another exercise in frustration, a film with money and means which nonetheless scuppers all potential with its daft decision-making and blinkered priorities. Same as the historical horror, same as the sci-fi, and now a crime movie. How long can this go on? Realistically? Do audiences matter? Who are these films even for?
To some extent, Párvulos suffers by its promotional material, which seems to promise something mysterious and dark, swirling ominously in the washed-out, arthouse colour palette which we saw in the first stills. In truth, and beyond that muted colour palette, the film is nothing like that. In fact, arthouse, in terms of theme and approach – is one thing which the film leaves out. Its influences, whilst no doubt selected with love and care by horror fan and director Isaac Ezban, jumble together rather awkwardly, because there’s just so much in there, as if this is the sole chance to honour them all. This leads to an overly long, tonally awkward grab-bag of horror types, tropes and plot points which don’t blend well. It’s a shame, and although all of this doesn’t completely detract from the fine set of performances from the young actors in the film, it does dilute the overall impact.
The film starts as it means to go on, blending lofty truisms about nature and the importance of ‘family’ (nota bene) as a natural constant, with an introduction to how three apparently parentless brothers are living in a post-apocalyptic setting – ickily, that’s how. Remember the saying that little boys are made of ‘slugs and snails and puppy dog tails’? That’s not far off here. I mean, why catch fish with the copious amount of worms you have, when you can make a worm (and honey!) smoothie instead? Why wouldn’t you eat a pet frog? Skin a dog? And so on; you get the picture.
The boys, with eldest brother Salvador (Farid Escalante Correa) keeping them all in check, are eking out an existence, apparently waiting for their parents to come home. As if all of this wasn’t strange enough, there’s something in the cellar which is being kept a secret from the baby of the family, Benjamin (Mateo Ortega Casillas) – something, or can we say someone, which the other brothers go down to feed. This secret is kept from the audience too for a little while, but after spending some more time watching the boys foraging for the absolute worst food you can imagine, making mistakes out in the wild, and noting some eyebrow-raising, post-pandemic inspired reveals about what brought the world to this state, we discover what’s down there. Little Benjamin is very surprised; some, shall we say, more jaded viewers may not be.
So, by around forty minutes in, we may be wondering where we go from here, given the film runs to two hours altogether. We know what’s in the basement, why the boys are providing food, what’s happened in the world outside, and why things are so complicated. The film has been, thus far, grotty, grimy and unpleasant, just as all post-apocalyptic films are; there’s always someone holed up in a house not their own, hoping for the powers-that-be to come through whilst hiding from the worst dregs of humanity who are always, inevitably, out there somehow. It could have carried on along these lines; countless films have, and some very successfully.
However, the film’s sudden lurch into a much lighter, even comedic tone is a genuine surprise, calling to mind different titles in the grab bag, particularly Braindead (Dead Alive), as some of the scenes and gags are similar. But unless this is going to turn into (and look away now if you don’t want to know the nature of the monsters being mentioned) My Pet Zombie, then what?
As it turns out, the arrival of an outsider – ah! – complicates things, even if briefly, and this means dropping the comedic tone quite sharply in order to turn the film instead into a much gorier, and once more, a much darker one. Leaving aside quibbles about the way in which the outsider character gets treated in the script – the inclusion of sex in the film definitely raises an eyebrow, too – here we can see Day of the Dead rising highest in the mix, melding together the same ‘zombies who remember’ idea with an almost identical gore scene, one which has long seemed irresistible to indie horror filmmakers – yes, that one. But then again, we’re still focused on some kids surviving against steep odds – the film’s title literally means ‘toddlers’ – and the ‘plucky kid’ interludes feel like a difficult sell now, too, especially when we’ve moved onto people getting literally splattered with guts. This level of disaster didn’t even happen in Lord of the Flies (another likely influence). Again – where do we go next?
It’s not until the last fifteen minutes or so that the film tries hard to resolve these questions and issues, but in so doing, it has to briefly introduce other, ideological ideas which cannot by this point be granted the time to really develop, meaning some rather squashed final exposition (even if replete with an appearance by the fierce Noé Hernández). Essentially, things change, change, and change again here, but always feel overly familiar as they do, even if these familiar aspects wouldn’t ordinarily occur in one project.
At its weakest moments, Párvulos feels sadly scatty, diffuse and derivative. It’s just so giddy with ambition that it suffers for it, and it pains me to come away feeling quite as frustrated by the film as I do, but hey, thus far I’m in the minority: other reviewers have praised its vision and ethos, and had no issues with its tone or content at all. See it and decide for yourselves; it’s certainly worth that.
Párvulos (2024) appeared as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.
A viewing of Black Eyed Susan (2024) will, if you have any stomach to get through its blisteringly unpleasant quandaries and implications, leave you with many questions. However, for all of that, the one resounding question for this reviewer is: are we ten years away from this kind of scenario, or five?
Let me explain. Whilst it’s impossible to really call the film subtle, it comes from that popular, new style of science fiction and/or dystopia which eschews flashy SFX in order to ponder the philosophical ramifications of its world-building. Black Eyed Susan emphatically won’t be for everyone: some viewers will be blinded by the basic plotline, or repelled by the language used, or just unable to see past the most obvious and unpleasant aspects, which are there from the outset. But unpleasant or otherwise, this is a hell of a film: unseemly and uncanny, yet familiar and just realistic enough to get under one’s skin. It dares to question where modern moral lines are drawn, whilst providing a perhaps surprisingly intimate character study of a regular man – even an Everyman? – who finds himself in an unprecedented situation, with his own moral lines to ponder.
The film opens in medias res, midway through a conversation between a man, Alan (Scott Fowler) and a young, as-yet unnamed woman. She seems unusually fearless, even though Alan is clearly agitated; she even starts to goad him, belittling his brittle masculinity until he starts to physically assault her. Every blow he lands, she deems pathetic. As this scenario unfolds, he becomes increasingly aroused by the abuse he’s inflicting on her, but things shift when it becomes apparent that someone else is watching them. Voyeurism in this film is multi-layered, and always repackaged as having some neutral, exploratory purpose. So we’re watching them, also being watched by as-yet unseen and unknown others.
If, from the opening seconds, this situation feels unsavoury, as if we are spying on abuse, it becomes differently unsavoury when it’s revealed that this is in fact a kind of training session. The young woman isn’t a woman – she’s a state-of-the-art sex doll, designed for men who like a dash of domestic abuse with their sex lives. Alan is a tester, working on behalf of tech start-up guru Gil (Marc Romeo). Whatever he does to the doll, helps it to learn – which makes it not just okay, but important work. Gil, who has made an artform out of his detachment from any potential ethical concerns involved with this work, comes to speak to Alan and invites him to admire the realistic bruising – although getting a black eye ‘right’ is something they’re still working on. But he feels they might get better results if Alan agrees to test the doll in a non-lab environment: perhaps he’d like to borrow Gil’s second home in upstate New York?
Three months later, there’s been a death. Alan is no more. What can have happened in the interim? We aren’t explicitly told, but at the memorial, Gil runs into an old mutual friend, Derek (Damian Maffei). They discuss Alan, but talk soon turns to the gritty realities of modern life: money, work, prospects. Derek is down on his luck at present, so it’s roundly unsurprising that Gil asks if he’d consider taking Alan’s place as a tester/trainer. He sells it to him not just by proudly talking him through his doll’s ultra-real physical traits, but by making claims that these dolls will function as pressure valves for stressed men. In effect, these dolls are deemed necessary: Derek will be helping to perfect the technology by training the device, mordantly nicknamed Black Eyed Susan by the team.
It’s not immediately clear whether or not Derek accepts Gil’s claims about the doll’s purpose, and when he gets started, he struggles with the idea of striking the doll, but he gets through the first session. He also agrees to go forward with the role, as much as he’s uncomfortable that everything he does with (and to) Susan is being recorded – by Gil, and by the film’s only other – sorry, only tangible female character, the unseen team member, Amanda, who can see what he does through Susan’s own eyes. It’s decided pretty early on that the project might benefit from some field testing. Perhaps Alan would like to borrow Gil’s second home in upstate New York?
We’ve heard this before, so at this point the audience diverges from Derek, who agrees to take Susan to the house. As he spends time with her, she starts to mirror his expectations and desires: he shows little inclination for abuse, and as such, she begins to behave like a loving, sympathetic woman who doesn’t want to be beaten. Susan has capacities which even Gil and Amanda never realised, but this is nonetheless a complicated situation where, over time, Derek’s own emotional connections begin to act as a complicating factor. Just as Susan is being trained by what she is asked, so is Derek: Susan is teaching him. It’s the extent of these lessons, based on their interactions, which ultimately grants the film its darkest aspects.
The murk and bile seeping from this film’s earliest scenes are hideous, true, but the meticulous, bold, careful construction behind the murk displays incredible prowess. There’s an art to generating discomfort, and whilst people may opt out, dismissing all of this as deliberately vile and nothing more, there’s so much more going on here. Forget about its violence for a moment (which, by the by, only turns into ultraviolence in a handful of seconds). Its use of language, for example, where wearisome, pornographic epithets like ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ clash with occupational lexis from the world of business, with words like ‘intermediary’, ‘the device’, ‘the mechanism’ and the disconcerting ‘arousal history’. Susan isn’t just talked about, she’s written on, with ideas about how to modify her appearance actually scrawled onto her skin. This is modern life, folks – dysphemism, euphemism, problems with talking clearly and openly. Derek tries to get to that point, but he is hamstrung by the fact that his selected confidant is a ‘device’ programmed to be a ‘slut’. He’s clearly lonely, and what he really wants – there’s that Everyman thing again – is love, companionship. His material and emotional hardship is exploited by Gil, but that’s not the only exploitation Gil has in mind, as the film gets steadily more and more challenging.
And, as Derek’s story progresses, we’re invited to consider the same things he’s made to consider. Where do our morals come from, and are they immoveable? The film itself – director and writer Scooter McCrae has opted for Super 16mm – is ideal for this kind of soul-searching. The film’s deep darks and heavy grain, which edge into chiaroscuro in places, are perfect for this demi-monde and its struggling, unshaved, rootless men. If the film appears to warm up as it goes, with more of a conventional, conventionally-lit domestic setting, then it’s worth contrasting this with Yvonne Emilie Thälker’s pitch-perfect performance as Susan. She successfully enacts the aspects of fantasy associated with Susan, but seems to have a mysterious, chilly inner life somehow. It’s intriguing. The camera has her naked body in shot for a great deal of the time here, which must have made for a challenging experience as a first-time actor, but nonetheless, she always seems to be in control somehow. We need to remember that we are looking at a ‘device’ which is also a conduit for the observations of an unseen woman, Amanda. That’s a big ask for an actor, but Thälker does it. It’s helpful that she has such a good script to work with, one which skirts just the right, uncomfortable amount around conversational norms. It seems at times like Susan has ‘learned’ to be empathic, but then she, or it, shows that this isn’t the case. Some of her lines are even kinda funny. Then there’s the wraparound soundtrack by none other than Fabio Frizzi, whose work always lends a strange ambience to the films in question.
Black Eyed Susan may be discomfiting, but my god, it’s worthwhile. Ten years away? Five years away? Ethically impossible? Ultimately, whether near or far, it confronts the viewer with a rich and unsettling array of questions which burn themselves into your psyche. It’s not easily forgotten, and deserves the queasy, rapt attention which it must surely generate.
Black Eyed Susan received its World Premiere as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.
How do you solve a problem like the Oieans? Dune-like, The Silent Planet (2024) opens with a proverb being spoken in an alien tongue: Earth is now host to an alien species called the Oieans, though they are not the straightforward, superior civilisation which we might expect. Rather, they have arrived to Earth seeking help (and receiving mistreatment). It seems that intergalactic opportunities also bring new social problems. The situation on Earth, however, quickly recedes into being largely contextual. Our focus is elsewhere.
On penal planet #384, Earth issues are seemingly lost on the lone prisoner there, who is required to spend his time mining for a certain ore, which he then transports to an orbiting craft. To cope with his isolation, he spends his time talking to his wife, Mona. He doesn’t do this literally; he has no access to any sort of device which could facilitate this, it seems. But he dreams of her, and he imagines that he’s conversing with her. It’s his only escape from the enforced rigmarole of his days, and we also see the escalating impact of loneliness; we’re led to believe that he has been here for a number of years for some as-yet unspecified, if serious, crime.
Things change when a young woman – whom we have briefly already met – arrives on the planet with a living pod of her own, charged with offences relating to her connections with the Oieans on Earth. This blindsides the as-yet nameless man: he assumes she must be there to harm him, especially given his recent tampering with some of his prisoner kit. We soon find out more about the woman – Niyya (Briana Middleton) – who has actually been sent here under the false belief that her predecessor is in fact already dead (a penal colony of one seems strange, perhaps, but presumably the powers that be have plenty of room to do it). When the two meet theirs is initially a difficult relationship, even needlessly difficult perhaps, though this provides an opportunity for the man, now giving his name as Theodore (Elias Koteas), to develop as a character. He’s fretful and vulnerable, whereas she’s initially taciturn and much, much tougher.
But they bond, and as they do, it reveals that Theodore is clearly deeply affected by the presence of someone else after so long. This introduces us to the film’s key themes – selfhood and memory – as this new, unexpected connection kicks up a lot of dirt regarding the past for both Theodore and Niyya, all taking place under the strange influence of the planet itself.
Budgetary constraints are somewhat evident here, but for the most part The Silent Planet offers more of the modern, low key sci-fi which is popular today, and it’s here that the film plays to its greatest strengths. There are some flashier effects – some spacecraft, briefly, some planetary views and some brief depictions of the Oieans themselves, though these aspects are the film’s weaker moments aesthetically. The CGI here even occasionally risks taking the viewer out of the real story being told. However, the vistas of the penal planet (filmed in Newfoundland) look good, and the film’s finer details, such as the interiors, are more visually consistent, forming a a decent backdrop for the close focus on the cast of two, and a space where most of the film’s plot exposition and development occurs. Along the way there are some neat surprises, and excellent acting throughout.
However, the film can’t do all it perhaps strives to do, and a depleted final act means that we lose sight of some of the bigger/biggest questions and ideas. Some overreliance on flashbacks and some patchy plot points are an issue here – but perhaps most of all, the film’s clear points of comparison to Duncan Jones’s Moon (2009) reduce some of its impact. The same isolation, the loss of self, the combative relationship with a newly-arrived Other, the presence of Janey, which is an awful lot like GERTY; there’s even a fairly similar mining project taking place in both films. That’s to the detriment of the newer film, purely because Moon is so successful and – pardon the pun – so ground-breaking.
For all that, though, The Silent Ocean is still an engaging entrant into the sci-fi genre. It’s a film which has plenty to recommend it but most of all, it’s the formidable, intensely watchable performances from Middleton and Koteas which really elevate it.
The Silent Planet (2024) received its world premiere at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.
Whatever you think you’re watching, you aren’t. What you think is going on, isn’t. That’s an early lesson to take away from In Our Blood (2024), a film which uses everything at its disposal – including its shooting style – to disorientate and surprise its audience. The film opens on an upset, afraid young woman, Emily (Brittany O’Grady): whatever is troubling her, she seems to be done with it, but before we get too comfortable here, it’s revealed that this is filmed footage: it suddenly zips into rewind, showing us instantly that someone has ownership over all of this. It’s a risky strategy, beginning with what seems like the end (or more usually, about 90% of the way along), and lesser films have gone instantly astray with this approach. In Our Blood keeps a firm hold on its storytelling, however, showing itself as more than equal to this decision.
We encounter Emily again at some point before all of this, now accompanied by boyfriend and filmmaker Danny (E.J. Bonilla) and on a road trip to Las Cruces, NM. These two are making a documentary, though the subject matter is unusual: Emily is reuniting with her estranged mother Sam (Alanna Ubach), and has chosen – with Sam’s go-ahead – to make a film about it. Emily asserts that the film will be an important document, helping her to heal old wounds, but found footage fans may also note the double-distance being offered by the camera. Like The Blair Witch Project a generation before, filming offers a way of negotiating with a tough reality: it’s safer, looking down a viewfinder.
They arrive at Sam’s house – Sam, never ‘mom’ – and it turns out that they’re there for Thanksgiving. The dinner itself is given little screentime, as Emily and Danny are keen to get on with more of an interview set-up, although Sam is not instantly comfortable with this – accidentally fidgeting with her microphone, not quite knowing where to look, and so on. But she begins to explain what has driven her to contact her daughter after so long. She recently lost a friend to violence, and it led to an awakening conscience about all the things she had done wrong in her life, including her treatment of Emily. Sam openly discusses her previous issues with addiction – something which seriously impacted upon Emily’s earlier life, too – and is keen to tell Emily that she has beaten her problem, with a new job and a new outlook. Trying to head off Emily’s rising anger about their shared past, Sam suggests that she and Danny could visit the clinic where she works on the following day, as evidence that she has now made good.
However, when Emily and Danny arrive the following morning, Sam hasn’t turned up. The clinic supervisor, Ana (Krisha Fairchild) doesn’t know where she is, though she provides them with some B-roll footage for their film, just by explaining what they do there. They also get to speak to some of the addicted and homeless people who live, semi-rough, in the clinic’s vicinity. But Emily begins to fear a relapse, so they begin to try to trace Sam’s last steps. She’s not at home either, but they begin to notice strange changes to her place (which they’re able to corroborate by looking at their footage from the previous night). The more they find out, the more they begin to get the sense that they’re not welcome in Las Cruces – are they getting followed? Targeted? The film – ours, and theirs – begins to take a series of threatening, strange turns, gradually opening up a bizarre story, hidden in plain sight.
The ‘found footage’ genre, as influential as it has turned out to be, has come to be defined by a number of pitfalls and clichés. The wildly spinning cameras, the frequent (and pertinent) question, ‘Why are you filming right now?’ and above all, the use of the shooting style as an excuse for the general lack of focus and clarity has, arguably, harmed more films than it’s helped. Thankfully, things have changed: the tech is better, the genre is more self-aware, and social media has – for all its sins – led to a number of titles where the people doing the filming clearly care about the quality of their film. This brings us to the mockumentary format, which has also grown increasingly refined as time has passed, giving us a kind of planned footage, rather than found footage. In Our Blood has plenty of confidence in straddling the divide between the two. There are a handful of questionable snap-shut cuts, and a few mega-zoom shots which aren’t really needed, but for the most part, this is a plausible, smooth piece of film. The whole purpose of the film is neatly transformed by Sam’s disappearance, too, as the film itself becomes part of a puzzle: its initial function as a film about family becomes instead a primary source for finding a missing person.
It is clever, clever work, as are the earnest, believable performances which underpin it all. Further verisimilitude is granted by the film’s setting near the Mexican border. There’s no telling us what to think, but we are invited to think: casual mentions of the ‘wall’, glimpses of the problems being caused by immigration policy and policing, and all the attendant issues of crime, poverty and homelessness provide a jagged, uneasy backdrop to the film. Director Pedro Kos, whose filmography up until this point has focused on real-life social issues, has successfully brought a lot of that realism to bear on this, his first narrative film.
Alongside all of this, the film’s ratcheting sense of the strange continues to unfold. Every clue, every discovery seems to lead somewhere steadily darker. Clarity and visibility is doled out really carefully, so that making sense of these events necessarily unfolds at a steady, slow pace, with only one quick bout of exposition which really differs from this (though it, too, only tantalises other world-building beyond the limits of this narrative). In essence, In Our Blood is a highly effective, razor-sharp piece of storytelling which manages to surprise and horrify as it goes. Just as an addendum, it’s one of those films where, having followed it to its close, you find yourself going back over the dialogue, reinterpreting it in light of what you’ve learned. It’s a clever, thought-provoking and surprisingly innovative horror.
In Our Blood (2024) screens at the Fantasia International Film Festival on Wednesday, 31st July.
Could The Dead Thing (2024) have a simple strapline? If so, perhaps ‘this is hell we’re in’ would suffice, bearing in mind how – at least for the first couple of acts – modern technology is crucially important, and a key factor in raising a specific kind of hell. Today, there are all sorts of exciting opportunities for meaningless, short term connections and Alex (Blu Hunt) is all over them. For her, the tech-enabled gamut of swiping left or right on a dating app which isn’t Tinder, but kinda is, takes up a lot of her time. She actively avoids real-life connections, preferring to scroll, scroll, scroll, and often, to follow up the scrolling with a brief encounter. Perhaps she likes her encounters easy to manage, navigate and delete? Well, perhaps, but she doesn’t seem particularly happy in herself. She even seems to see people she engages with in real life as a sequence of body parts or attributes, each comparable with the last, so that one guy’s appearance recalls another, and another, and another. The ‘ping’ of notifications runs through all of her day-to-day. It looks like classic addictive behaviour.
If it is addictive, then this perhaps explains a dissatisfied, if brief rant about the nature of existence, including the proximity of a meaningless death – which pops out of nowhere on her next date, with a nice guy from the app called Kyle (Ben Smith-Petersen). Oh, nice to see House of Psychotic Women in the nightstand, by the way. If this conversation disrupts the norm for Alex, then so it does for Kyle, but it appears that her sudden honesty about her state of mind appeals to him. Or, in any case, they get a lot closer, enjoying the time they spend together. What we’re shown here seems very authentic, even heart-warming, given the clinical briefness of Alex’s prior dates. Sadly, it’s not that simple and after the intimate space they share, it appears that Kyle ghosts her. He doesn’t respond to her messages – he doesn’t even read them.
Hurt and surprised, she tries to track him down. When this fails, it looks for all the world as though she is just going to go back to the old, familiar business of bad dates and one night stands – except that, on her next date, she sees Kyle again. My god, he’s even turned up in the same bar where they met. Intrigued and not a little hurt, she follows him as he leaves with another woman. Or does she? When she tries to track him down again – wanting answers – someone at his old place of work hands her a funeral notice. So did she really see Kyle?
Objective reality which, let’s face it, always felt like it was going to be in short supply here, quickly begins to fracture as Alex seriously comes to doubt her senses. Perhaps doing the only thing she has any faith in, she resorts to the app again, and decides to try something. She uninstalls it, and then reinstalls: hey presto, there’s Kyle, and when she matches with him, he arrives for another date, with seemingly no recollection of meeting her before.
Whilst The Dead Thing grows increasingly thematically close to other films – it feels like somewhere between Nina Forever and Soulmate, if closer to the latter – then neither of those cover the same ground in such an eerie, meticulously detailed way. It’s an uncanny spin on a world starved of genuine connection, and more than that, it’s good at showing how the ways we understand and interpret death have been changed irrevocably by social media. People are gone, but there; they’re absent but present. At the heart of it all is Alex, and Blu Hunt does an incredible job conveying the world of barely-contained emotions she experiences, all sensitively directed by Elric Kane (and the intimacy coordination work here is very good too, responding carefully to the challenging world-building, and the absence, surrounding it). As circumstances grow weirder, we come to rely on Alex as our single point of relatability, as she is our only constant. That being said, it does feel tricky at some points, such as when she seemingly gives up on the mystery for a while, even if her willingness to go back to some sort of normality is understandable.
This is an interesting-looking film, too, which utilises an array of modern tech and its attendant preoccupations, but looks like something which could have been made decades previously. Its horror soundtrack, its framing, lighting, colour and shadow all look as though they could come from a different era. The ominous roar of traffic is 80s Fulci – as are the women in sexual peril, come to think of it, though The Dead Thing never focuses on the grisly details of bodily trauma and its supernaturalism never takes over, even as it grows to feel more familiar as we head into the final act. It’s much more about emotional ordeals, and it does deliver on those. And, as we explore these, we see that everything in The Dead Thing unfolds for us a mere version of reality. Nothing is anything more than ephemeral. Alex scans documents for a living – she literally makes copies. Her roommate hangs out in a wedding dress, when there’s no wedding. Reality is piecemeal, and something to be handled carefully, if not avoided altogether.
There’s plenty of space for horror in this kind of environment, and even as it settles into more expected tracks, the film has plenty of merit to offer in terms of its updated concepts of hauntings and bereavement. Many of its horrors may ultimately be age-old, but this parable of modern loneliness has more than enough brilliant, unsettling and resonant moments along the way. And, hey, perhaps we’re ready for this kind of limbo – the location for which almost, almost made me smile – and for the terrifying blackness pressing in on its edges, which didn’t make me smile once.
The Dead Thing (2024) featured at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.
A fraught, uneasy atmosphere seems to pervade Dirty Bad Wrong (2023) from its very opening moments. There’s something about the ways in which young mother Sid (Michaela Kurimsky) sits, distracted, as her young son Jesse (Jack Greig) fidgets and investigates their surroundings in ways which quickly suggest they aren’t at home. And, as she is called out of the room by a nameless man (Cody Ray Thompson), it is quickly revealed that she is a sex worker. She puts her headphones on her young son, instructing him not to remove them; it’s all she can do, given she’s had to bring him along, to protect him from the realities of her own life during these moments. Our John Doe shows some brief consternation that Sid has brought her son along with her, but not enough to stop him doing what he wants to do. In fact, given there’s more money in the envelope than Sid expected, it seems he wants her to do more than she wishes: she rebuffs him.
As it stands, the childcare issues which brought Jesse into this house in the first place return to the fore when, as small children do, he simply can’t sit still, and starts wandering around, injuring himself in the kitchen. A distraught Sid calls the whole thing off and leaves with her son. But, with his birthday coming up and a new, sudden financial issue, she needs money. Reluctantly, she has to return to John Doe and take the work she was so adamant to avoid.
Whilst the metaphor of consumption – particularly based around the relentless selfishness of the male libido (oh, come on, yes it is) – is pretty clearly addressed here, even going so far as to touch upon body horror, Dirty Bad Wrong ensures that this is always intermeshed with a plausible normality, with a young woman who has normal concerns, needs and wants. This is carefully done in the film’s brief runtime, showing us a loving relationship between mother and son. Jesse, in only a few lines, is presented as a patient, kind but often sad little boy; his mother, who only faces the camera in full when she’s with Jesse (otherwise glimpsed from the side, or the back) is fiercely reserved when she can be, but it’s very much her and him against the world. It’s also hinted that other women are in a similar situation, juggling the deviance of others with the normality they ordinarily embody. In short, the film invites us to consider what sort of a world this is, and whom it harms.
In some respects, Dirty Bad Wrong is reminiscent of Simon Rumley’s short film, P is for Pressure, taken from the anthology film The ABCs of Death in 2010, even though Sid doesn’t harm others in her own unsavoury assignment. But the love for one’s children, and hoping that through deviant means they can have a normal life, is definitely there in both films. Dirty Bad Wrong is a quiet, clever film which only ever needs to hint at Sid’s defiance and will; in less than fifteen minutes it achieves a great deal, with well-delineated characters and their motivations displayed against a backdrop of a mean-spirited world, but one which – despite the oppressive feel at the start of this film – can clearly be overcome with love.
Dirty Bad Wrong featured at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.
