It must be tough to be a priest in the modern age, preaching changeless values against a backdrop of falling church attendance and endemic levels of scepticism – but such is the lot of Father David (Joe Begos frequent flyer, Graham Skipper). He delivers worthy sermons to all-but empty pews, and knows that even a spiritual institution needs cash to prevail – which his church does not have – but he retains hope and works hard, doing his best to reach out to new people, and embracing his faith-based obligations towards the less well-off. You have to question the old edict that ‘you do unto others as you would have them do unto you, particularly because it could be an angel – or even Jesus himself‘, as this sounds suspiciously like a Secret Shopper scenario, but David preaches it: he even intends – he tries – to live by it.
As such, as he’s about to lock up the building one day, he finds a down-and-out trying to sleep there; he asks the man to leave (and really, it would have headed off a lot of stuff if he’d let him stay put), and the man, Terry (Jeremy Gardner) agrees to go, but – when David emerges from the church and overhears him on the phone, waiting for a ride which never seem to be coming, he offers to drive him to his destination. He asks to be taken to his girlfriend’s house, which gets ten minutes further away every time Terry describes where it is, but David drives him nonetheless. But there’s more. His girlfriend isn’t home, the streets are thick with snow, and Terry’s protestations that he’ll go and ‘sleep under a bridge somewhere’ just don’t sit well with David, who offers him a room for the night.
You know the drill. One night inevitably turns into several nights; soon, girlfriend Lexi (Taylor Zaudtke) arrives too, newly-homeless after being kicked out of her house; that this woman seems oddly familiar to David doesn’t ring alarm bells loud enough for him to ask these strangers to leave. Part of this is down to the rather obtuse hope that these two could constitute part of the new congregation he’s been after; after all, he rescued Rigo (Rigo Garay) from poverty and homelessness, and now he’s a kind of unofficial church curate. But if this is all part of some test by God, David can’t help but think he’s moving in ways even more mysterious than usual; the presence of these people is triggering more, far more, than just a mild schism between David’s charitable duties and his more worldly concerns.
In some respects, Terry and Lexi call to mind the man and woman who rock up at the door in Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! (2017) – there to generate rising levels of vaguely theological chaos, with some rather more, shall we say, earthy punctuation points. Also akin to that earlier film, there are some minor elements of brash comedy here, which mostly land well. Terry’s foibles seem very familiar, incorporating ‘bad guest’ tropes we’ll recognise – smoking indoors, blasting heavy metal (it’s never jazz, is it?) – but thanks to Gardner’s strong track record as a kind of ‘people’s deadbeat’, it’s funnier than it is overfamiliar, and he gets some good lines – which he delivers in his by-now well established deadpan style.
But things move beyond this kind of testing farce, and get consistently more intriguing. The plot doesn’t simply step up to a wholly spiritual level – were it to do so, it would be pretty easy to guess at an incoming twist – but it does weave aspects of carnal and spiritual together – including with regards gender roles, in some unsettling ways. As the film hinges almost entirely on its characterisation and dialogue, we are encouraged to focus on the very human impacts of this series of unfortunate events, and Skipper is more than equal to it; he’s a sympathetic character when it counts, and a bewildering, complex character with unexplained subtext in turn. It’s being presented as a Christmas horror, and it – sort of – is, but mainly for the fact that Christmas drives things to a certain end point, and hovers in the background as context, something there to push people to even more faith, hope and charity, if they are so inclined. It also adds some visual elements into the mix. The Leech is a surprisingly complex, deeply mean-spirited and often surreal character study, albeit with a few moments of black comedy to lighten the overall mood.
The Arrow release of The Leech (2022) is available now on all major VOD platforms.
A run of cable TV-style advertisements opens Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022), and amongst them is an ad for something called a RoboSanta+, a kind of seasonal cross between a decorative item – and a top-level piece of mall security. And why not?! It’s no detriment to the film that it’s completely clear this bit of kit is going to feature heavily in what happens from here; in fact, the way that the film continually wears its heart on its sleeve and so readily flags up its intentions is a big part of what makes this film work so well. It’s a delight.
We don’t stay in this retro setting for long: we skip forward to the present day, our world of Tinder and Reddit and social media (mentioned in the script for clarity) and meet record store owner Tori (Riley Dandy), who is about to close up on Christmas Eve, though agrees to have a few drinks with her clearly hot-for-boss employee Robbie (Sam Delich) on the way home. They head off, stopping by the nearby toy store to see their friends and clocking the store’s very own RoboSanta while they’re there; it’s a now-obsolete system, and all remaining models are about to get recalled (a kind of twist on the ‘detective’s last day’ trope perhaps, only flipped, so it’s the antagonist who’s about to have an eventful evening). As anticipated, RoboSanta is soon up and about, and he sees everyone as a potential threat; he starts with the toy store, but he has picked up on Tori and Robbie’s recent presence there and tracks them back to Tori’s, where they now are.
And so we’re off, in a film which has some similarities to Hardware (1990) in terms of its uncomplicated story, killer robot home invasion aspects and aesthetic detail – but the newer film is far more grisly and heady, incorporating more horror genres: we get slasher, a dash of splatter, and a little sci-fi of course, which moves more and more into the foreground as the film progresses. All of this is framed by an incredibly lurid, colour-saturated presentation – Begos has refined this approach more and more with each film he’s done – and so it looks great, glaring with festive red and green, but also rich with shifting palettes and an effective use of light. It looks 80s retro in places throughout, despite the contemporary timeframe, but it’s effective here, as the film itself is an homage to any number of horror films from that era (and just before, and just after).
Speaking of which, the Venn diagram of rock, horror and hard liquor – which surely we can all agree exists – is played for fun in the first half of the film, with horror and music fandom exerting an influence over many of Christmas Bloody Christmas‘s key elements – characterisation, settings, props, and dialogue. The script itself also works well: these are plausible, likeable, funny people, and relationships hang together just as they should, throwing in some overblown dialogue in places, but lines which are perfectly in keeping with the vibe of the film. In very little time, the film establishes its key characters as well-rounded enough and likeable enough to make us care about the outcomes. That all being said, the film feels primed from its first seconds for ultraviolence, and when it comes, it’s welcome.
The film’s occasional use of a ‘Santa’s eye view’ gave this reviewer some small concern that this was going to turn into a means of avoiding the kinds of unflinching, gory scenes which the film had so clearly set up. And, in RoboSanta’s first few moments as a killing machine, this did seem to be the case – the camera swings, veers and ultimately blurs what’s going on, at first. Happily, things don’t stay this way; they really don’t stay this way; there are lots of fan-pleasing set pieces throughout, which get more and more OTT as the film moves, with very few lulls, towards its close. It seems churlish to complain that RoboSanta (Abraham Benrubi) isn’t a massively convincing robot, as you’ll likely soon be ready to just go with it. Suspending your disbelief here is both a genre fan’s dream and the best course of action. The film also sets up later scenes of panic and disaster which only a horror fan, as opposed to simply a horror director, ever could (and, by the by, that is how you do a director cameo).
The film may have started off as a different kind of Christmas horror entirely, but its progression into a bloody, entertaining, unrestrained genre mash-up makes for a really fun film. Essentially, you’d have to be very easily bored or very hard to please in order to dislike Christmas Bloody Christmas: it’s a film which may just edge onto that hallowed list of Christmas cult horrors, given some time. Final note: somehow, and I’m not sure how it really finds the time, it even manages to feel really festive…
Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022) hits Shudder on December 9th 2022.
‘How long do you think we’ve been here?’ This early line in Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes (2021) perhaps puts us in mind of a classic haunted house story: like The Haunting of Hill House, with its dreaming walls and watchful ghosts, the film is centred on a beautiful, if tumbledown castle, and the people who find themselves there. But the film has other ideas, and refuses to stick with one mode or trope. An avowedly experimental piece of work, it weaves familiar-feeling horror elements with something more meta; essentially, it’s asking what storytelling actually is, positioning filmmaking somewhere on its axis. It begins looking like something from a 60s Gothic pulp cover, segues into avant-garde Eurohorror and winds up dabbling with 60s counterculture. It’s a period piece, but not as we may know or recognise it. And it may attempt a little too much in its modest running time, but its strong aesthetics and genuine ambition prevent it from sinking into tedium, self-congratulation or insincerity. Here’s a film which would not only withstand a second watch, but seems to demand one.
We begin with Margot and Dieter, an unhappily-married couple taking the long drive to the same castle – which Margot (Luisa Taraz) has just inherited. This boon is seen as little more than a liability by Dieter (Frederik von Lüttichau), who envisions month upon month of renovations – which will need to be done so they can sell it, take the money, move on. When they arrive, he sets to, looking over every inch of the castle. Margot is a bit more considered, taking her time as she explores. When they each encounter something otherworldly in the castle, it seems attuned to their mental states; the uptight Dieter is terrified, Margot rather more entranced.
They stay the night. The next morning, the vision of the roseate dawn makes even Dieter see the place differently, but still very much with a view to sell; not so Margot, who now wants to stay. The more time she stays at the castle, the deeper her antipathy towards her husband, whose discovery of some mysterious items in the castle cellar does nothing whatsoever to level him out. But wait: if you were enjoying this tale, too bad. The story of Margot and Dieter gives way suddenly to a different story, and what appears to be a framing narrative: this new device also places Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes in the category of metafilm, joining a fairly popular and established subgenre, particularly in horror: here, Berberian Sound Studio (2012) and to some degree, Censor (2021) come to mind, for reasons of mood, tone and visuals, to varying degrees. We are now – we might think – at the end of a shoot, watching the filmmaker and his team deliberate on the quality of their film, and the success of its ending. We’ll be invited to follow some of the same thought processes before the framing film also comes to an end. There’s something of a lull at this point – the pace drops, so that we can get to know these people – but look carefully, and there are a few key points and ideas which underpin the film – the one we’re watching – as a whole.
It would take some doing to make a location like this look dreadful; here, Herrenhaus Vogelsang (in Lalendorf, Germany) looks very beautiful, and the film-within-a-film also has a somewhat faded look which is consistent, embellishing the visuals selected and revealed to the audience. I could watch a candle burn in this film for ten minutes and still be charmed by it. Even the cracks in this marriage look gorgeous. The shift in the narrative is accompanied by a somewhat different visual and shooting style, though the castle itself retains its strange influence over people, eventually proving to be the real linking device. There’s arguably some homage, or at least some inspiration from the likes of Jean Rollin’s rustic-Gothic set pieces here, with a couple of dashes of 70s exploitation cinema, not least in the film’s queasy, peripheral treatment of sexuality, which is always thwarted, interrupted or otherwise made to feel unsettling, like it shouldn’t really be there. Eventually, it forms part of the circular structure of the film, keeping people together, keeping people apart.
Being such an experimental piece of work, particularly around narrative structure, means that this won’t be a film for every viewer, even though this film takes some of its cues from older films which themselves are not exactly neat, linear progressions (the same films many horror fans often rate amongst their favourites). But Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes has ideas, it looks fantastic and it’s surprisingly economical, with some ambitious decision-making.
Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes will receive a limited theatrical release on December 2nd 2022. It will be released on home media in February 2023.
On The Edge sees filmmakers Jen and Sylvia Soska back at the helm: here, writing, directing and producing an original feature once again. You may, if you look around, see it being vaunted as a ‘psychosexual’ piece of work, a film targeted at an 18+ audience and, through its use of nudity, BDSM and kink, simplyguaranteed to agitate the censors. Hmmm. Here’s what will agitate most viewers far more: the student film quality, the shaky performances, and most of all the chippy, naive belief that all of this nudity is somehow edgy, somehow enough – if you add in a dash of dick torture, that is. On The Edge is a bizarre regression in quality, if not quantity; it’s all crass self-indulgence, flimsy moral message and nylon knickers. It’s absolutely astonishing.
As an American politician pontificates about ‘family values’ on the TV, a woman serves breakfast to her twin daughters, wink wink (the Soskas are way more interested in twins than most people are). Shame that dad (Aramis Sartorio/Tommy Pistol) arrives and possibly symbolically disrupts the meal by spilling it all over the floor – where it stays, by the by. But he’s out the door on a business trip, so it’ll be for mom (Sylvia Soska) to clean up: no mean feat in a bodycon dress. Anyway, we follow dad Peter to his hotel and see him checking in: the clerk specifies that he’ll be with them for specifically ‘thirty-six hours’. Noted, though an odd thing for anyone to say, and perhaps a clue on the calibre of the script, as much as what is to follow. For when he reaches his room, he’s greeted by a dominatrix, Mistress Satana (Jen Soska) who immediately holds forth on what a dreadful man he is, as well as getting started on the whole whips and chains stuff. Strangely, Peter seems genuinely bewildered by at least the beginnings of this ordeal; fair enough, we all sometimes pay for things we forget about.
Next: the film unleashes what I’m sure is meant to be deeply shocking footage of genital torture and the prone male body, albeit that you may have seen something very similar in, say, the godawful Neighbor (2009) – before the most graphic scenes were cut for UK audiences, anyway. In fact, if you survived the torture porn years, there’s little in this particular torture porn which will unsettle you. So, assuming shock value is out; what’s in? Not much, not much. There are long, long lulls throughout; lines of dialogue and scenes which repeat (“Let me out! Let me out!” etc) and – about an hour or so in – some theological/mythological plot additions, there to insinuate that there is far more to this than merkins, verbal abuse and various things being shoved up Peter’s jacksie. Yes, this is Peter’s dark night of the soul in more ways than one, and so across nearly two hours things cross into more surreal fare, with the whole ‘demons of conscience’ shtick taking over for the rest of the film’s duration.
And yet, just as the whole tied-to-chair thing had its day some time ago, so the whole surreal introspective nightmare has been done better elsewhere, too. But that aside, segueing from physical torment to existential drama offers zero excuse for the production values here: roughly edited, poorly lit and lacking impetus, the whole film comes overlaid with All The Musical Genres as a loud, clumsy accompanying soundtrack, easily drowning out most of the dialogue, as the audio here is atrocious – echoey, unclear and uneven. But when you can hear what’s being said, it contributes little of meaning anyway. The nagging suspicion here is that the whole idea behind the film started loosely with how subversive it would be to have a ‘strong female character’ reclaiming her sexuality by being in a position of power – something like that. Miss that memo, and what you have here is a film where you are mostly getting an ass-eye view, with little script, muddy audio, jarring music and a lacklustre plot. It’s as fragmentary as you’d expect.
An additional challenge here is this: it feels impossible to critique any Soska film without – to a greater or lesser extent – critiquing the Soskas themselves. But the particular way in which they, as people, blur into their projects is what makes this so tricky. Where they write, direct and inevitably appear (rarely deviating from ‘the badass’ or ‘the sexpot’) then creative priorities must come into question; is straightforward vanity at play here? In On The Edge, they also have a hand in the production design, the sets, the casting, some of the sound design. Where a film is flawed, this deeply flawed, these flaws keep on finding their ways back to them and how they chose to make that film. And it’s hard not to ponder the trajectory their careers have taken, as the sizeable momentum generated by American Mary (2012) largely dissipated and has instead found outlet in a number of smaller, and/or fewer original projects. Rabid (2019) was, for this reviewer, a rather hopeful sign of better to come. I’ve been watching their films for well over a decade; I’d genuinely like to like a new one.
Of course, it’s tough to get films made out there, particularly post-pandemic. Times are tough and getting a project off the ground, let alone completed, takes some determination. But it seems that the best outcomes for the Soskas are where there are other people involved to say ‘No,’ ‘What for?’ and ‘Are you insane?’ from time to time. Clearly, no one uttered those golden words on the set of On The Edge; the results are there to see. Maybe next time?
On The Edge (2022) received its world premiere at FrightFest Halloween 2022 and recently featured at Monster Fest in Melbourne.
When a couple has been together for a “stupid amount of time”, as in the case of Dan (Max Woertendyke) and Jen (Dana Berger), then breaking up is a difficult thing: years of shared history blur into bad feelings, anger obscures rational solutions and it can feel as if you’re going around in circles. In Brightwood (2022), this deeply unpleasant phenomenon is not only at the heart of the film, but it’s placed under bizarre kinds of pressure. ‘Going around in circles’ gets both a literal, and fantastical spin here.
We meet this troubled couple on a morning run: well, Jen is on a run, trying to clear her head of the embarrassment her husband caused at a works event the night before, whereas Dan is attempting an apology in motion. She makes her feelings clear by running harder than he can run; she deliberately chooses a trail he doesn’t want to do, but, doggedly, he follows her anyway. When the run lulls for even a moment, squabbles break to the surface. Clearly Jen is beginning to envision a future without this man in her life, and takes the opportunity afforded by this remote, people-free space out in the woods to make this extra clear to him. But quickly, Brightwood flips this moment’s opportunity into a distinct problem: this same remote, people-free space out in the woods soon begins to seem oddly unfamiliar, despite the fact that Jen knows this trail well. In fact, where is the trail? They can’t find their way back; they keep running into the same minor landmarks, even when they change their direction. And it gets worse: they each begin to hear strange sounds, and soon they each see a mysterious figure, blocking their way even as they try the same path they can see, again and again.
You can probably easily glean from all that there’s a metaphor at play here: the link between the same, inescapable route bringing two people back to the same point, over and over, isn’t a tough code to crack considering we already know how Jen – in particular – feels. But there are good elements here, particularly in how the film gets going: it wastes no time giving us a sense of this fraught relationship, and it achieves it simply, not opting for reams of opening dialogue and exposition to establish this. Jen’s podcast of choice – a show all about life after divorce – is more than equal to it, even though the audience only hears a few seconds. Similarly, the whole ‘going for a run’ idea is plausible enough, and offers a good reason for these two to head away from the trappings of their everyday lives – probably urban, middle class and comfortably uncomfortable, at a guess.
Director and writer Dane Elcar also takes the many opportunities afforded for bitter black humour, without sacrificing the realistic moments of pathos, cruelty and relatable mortification. It’s here that the film is at its best – in its quieter interactions. Where it segues into a few repetitions of the ‘accidentally bump into other character/SCREAM’ motif, and on those occasions where Berger in particular throws in some comedically-overblown facial expressions, the film’s at its weakest, but thankfully it moves on from that, or at least allows its humour to settle into being more verbal before it shifts away from the humour altogether. The increasing elements of strangeness and nightmarishness are welcome, adding extra layers to the film’s low-key plot and taking the film far more in the direction of straight-up horror. These kinds of symbolic horrors often run out of steam to an extent – it’s true here too – but the decision to do without explication in order to prioritise the escalating desperation of these characters is often effective.
It’s a simple enough idea, in essence; in fact, Brightwood is based on a short film, which can lead to trouble – short films don’t always step up to a full-length format very readily – but there’s just about enough here for a feature-length film and, despite a few minor issues, Brightwood does successfully hold up a carnival mirror to the horrors of relationship breakdown, with all of its deja-vu and inescapable dread reflecting back at us. You can interpret the ending as you see fit, but it seems like a deeply grim conclusion to me.
Brightwood (2022) premiered at Cine Excess in October 2022 and will be receiving its US premiere at the Other Worlds Film Festival on December 4th 2022. For more information, please click here.
It’s the longest day of the year in the small hamlet of Pangnirtung, part of the Canadian Nunavut territory – close to the Arctic Circle. The adults of the village are excited for the special yearly barn dance, but there’s not a hell of a lot for the teens and pre-teens of Pang to do. Still, they spend a lot of time taking care of their own, and have a sense of camaraderie that, at a guess, will come in handy, especially given there’s some strange lights on the outskirts of town. We the audience have seen evidence of what this could be already, as something strange dispatches a Sacrificial White Guy doing surveying in the area.
Still, the kids make their own fun, stealing (‘borrowing’) a boat and heading out to what they refer to as ‘the land’, an area just off the coast, where they encounter what can only be described as a singularly messed-up polar bear. It lurches on its elbows in a really odd way, though to be fair, a polar bear in any sort of nick would be a terrifying prospect – but it sees them and chases them. The girls manage to escape, pondering whether this may be a shapeshifter as-described in Inuit folklore – but interest in this as an explanation is pretty short-lived. They now have a very, very tame party to sneak off to, after all. Would the proverbial have hit the fan even without the girls’ tinkering? Probably, yes, as the strange presence seems to have made its way closer to town under its own steam, but certainly, the kids are now of interest to whatever-it-is, and wouldn’t you know, they are primed to fight back?
Slash/Back (2022) feels like it’s crying out for an added blast of bombast: it’s all a little low-key, with acres of chit-chat from the girls which punctuates the action, not in a way which contributes a great deal to their characters or back-stories, but in a way which feels a little like necessary padding, because the budget didn’t extend to too many big scenes. Mobile phones are frequently referenced. There are odd lapses in reaction to peril. This is a bunch of first-time actors for the most part, too, which sees them a little understated on screen, though the performances are certainly not terrible: I always feel that if you can get to the end of a film which has child protagonists without hating them, it’s something of a win. Clearly director Nyla Innuksuk is writing two simultaneous love-letters here – one to The Thing (1982) (with an open reference to it in the script) and one to, well, pick any kiddie hero horror from the mid-eighties to Attack The Block (2011). This gives them the tough job of not only balancing aims against available funds, but also blood-curdling body horror against a far more kid-friendly tone, including the levels of violence; even the blood splatter here is black, not red, which is one of those odd loopholes which can impact on age ratings. The film is trying to be too many things, perhaps, so it feels as if it’s all been spread rather thinly.
That said, it’s hard to imagine how you could film the hostile beauty of this part of the world and make it look anything other than stunning; the hamlet itself is an effective setting, too, because it’s not exactly a fortified, well-equipped urban fortress or anything of the kind. It’s a vulnerable and isolated spot where people have long lived on their wits, passing down survival skills from one generation to another. Maika’s too-frequent disavowals of ‘boring Inuit stuff’ make it almost certain that she’ll have to rely on what her father taught her; hopefully that isn’t a spoiler, because, yep. And, when the film can focus on the alien invaders themselves, some of the sequences are genuinely rather good: the practical SFX work is better than the CGI, as some of the contorted, slack-faced creatures are genuinely very unpleasant. We learn but little of the aliens’ motivations, on balance, but this is true of a lot of films, and perhaps their single-minded advance is enough in a lot of respects. There are some good ideas here and some fun sequences, even if the film is held back by a few factors. It’s a decent, if not outstanding offering.
As The Retaliators opens, a voiceover speaking about justice in an unfair world sets out some of the film’s themes. It also, by the by, introduces us to the film’s approach to its themes: things move around from one thing to another, first a dour drama, then a glimpse at organised crime and finally an exploitation movie, with elements of torture porn along the way. As such, we don’t return to the voiceover; it’s there, box ticked, and onwards.
We start with two teenage girls from out of town (town being somewhere in rural New Jersey) and, if you are straight away thinking, ‘oh no, I bet there’s no phone signal’, think again: they’re reading an actual paper map, but a tyre blows and needs a change. By the way, the blaring music and clear indications that at least one of these girls might be into metal (green hair and piercings) is just one of the ways the film frontloads its metal credentials, as for reasons which have little to do with the finer points of the plot, The Retaliators boasts several metal musicians in its cast, and the obligatory metal OST. Anyway, God alone knows why this girl tries to change a tyre with her friend still sat in the vehicle, but she has little time to ponder this, and nor do we: someone drags her off into the trees; there seem to be some…zombie assailants, but a guy appears with just enough time to say nope, they’re not zombies. They sure look like it, and act like it, but we can only assume that we will find out what’s going on here later. Onwards.
We then meet what is bound to be our chief protagonist, a pastor (Michael Lombardi) raising his two daughters elsewhere in NJ. Since losing his wife, he has thrown his all into giving them a good upbringing, even if this means retreating from conflict to set a good example for them. This is a horror film, folks: it’s clear that his ‘turn the other cheek’ ethos is going to be tested, and so it is. This all happens soon after he allows his eldest, Sarah (Katie Kelly) to drive herself to a Christmas party, and she encounters a Bad Man (we have just been shown enough to know he is one of those). The consequent fall-out from this horrible encounter sees some soul-searching and some very unorthodox detective work – taking the lead from the disillusioned detective assigned to his case (Marc Menchaca). Meanwhile, Bad Man’s criminal fraternity are doing some unorthodox detective work of their own to find him; the issue here will be, how far is our pastor willing to go for revenge, and what will become of him?
Does that sound garbled? That may well be down to my limitations as a writer, but it feels tricky (or even somehow dishonest) to structure things in such a way that reads any clearer than the above. The Retaliators is an immensely uneven film, but not just ‘uneven’ within one genre; it ducks and dives between different horror genres altogether, and still varies the pace along the way. It feels as though there are a dozen different films in here all vying for their fifteen minutes, when they could each have had ninety and made perfect sense. This race to do All The Things means that much of the characterisation is curtailed; it’s hard to feel invested in cardboard characters, even when they get messily pulped. But Lombardi is very good in his role, and whilst it is frustrating when his story gets subsumed beneath Detective Jed’s own story arc, both of these men do lend some much-needed gravitas to the goings-on. The presence of metal musicians in the extras is neither here nor there, unless you happen to know who you’re looking at; I largely didn’t, with the exception of Tommy Lee, but churlishly, you’ll probably work it out by assessing how well various people can or can’t act. You could also be churlish and suggest that spending plenty on these guys, but cutting corners by including freebie clips from the public domain go-to Night of the Living Dead, speaks to questionable filmmaking priorities. That was a film intended to turn a profit, too.
But here’s the thing. As the film switches modes yet again, settling to some degree on a kind of overblown exploitation revenge horror, it gains focus and yes, becomes a lot more fun. In fact, it manages to drag things together for a grand finale, although it’s a hell of a climb to get there. Had it been the film it is at the end, from the start, then it would be a minor masterpiece of OTT exploitation horror; as things stand, it just about redeems itself in ways which are engaging, gory and imaginative enough. True, it is in some bizarre race with itself to cram in as many elements as it can, but in amongst those, The Retaliators has some interesting ones. This may be more luck than judgement, but thank god for it, as it just about makes things feel worthwhile.
Editor’s note: this discussion of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities contains some spoilers.
Anthology TV series always feel like a tantalising prospect: the same goes for feature films which use the same frame. Even if one, or a couple of the stories aren’t to your tastes, you can usually bet that there’ll be something there to enjoy. A few of the best-known anthology horrors made for television have also incorporated a narrator into the format; in one of the best of these series, Night Gallery (1970-73) host Rod Serling brought his Twilight Zone experience to bear and became a part of the appeal, not to mention a key writer; his sardonic introductions set the tone and lent a consistency to each episode. In many ways, Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities most resembles Night Gallery, right down to the objet d’art as a linking device (and including a new version of Pickman’s Model, see below) – though, it has to be said, Del Toro himself doesn’t have Serling’s ease in front of the camera, and probably feels far more comfortable behind it. Still, now’s the time for this kind of thing; the swing back towards television in these days of HBO, Netflix and Amazon amply rewards this kind of format. It’s also worth noting that the series didn’t land all at once, evading binge-watchers to some extent at least. I prefer that. It is, in its way, a tribute to how TV series used to work; you had to wait. Anticipation’s half the charm.
As with any series of this kind however, some of the Cabinet of Curiosities episodes work better than others; so, without further ado, here’s the Warped Perspective list of worst to best (delivered with the proviso that every single episode has plenty of positives; there are no out-and-out duds, and despite playing favourites for the purposes of this article, I’m very glad to have seen all eight)
8: Pickman’s Model (directed by Keith Thomas)
Knowing del Toro’s love for Lovecraft (he’s in many ways as famous for the film version of Mountains of Madness he didn’t make, as he is for films he’s completed) it was inevitable that the originator of cosmic horror would turn up in this anthology. The thing is, Lovecraft is damn near impossible to bring to the screen in ways which feel akin to his stories. So much of his horror depends on the fractured recollections of his unreliable, mentally-broken narrators that the immediate problem is: how do you render that into something visual, and was it ever really visual at all – or a delusion? Some of the best on-screen Lovecraft adaptations have found their own way through the madness – the much-missed Stuart Gordon blended HPL’s stories with a lurid, darkly-comedic tone which worked in its own right – but Keith Thomas here (using a screenplay by Lee Patterson) deviates too far from the original story in my opinion, making it all about a family man whose family predictably become the sacrificial lambs; it feels rather simplistic, and the end result a little obvious, eye-gouging and all. That all being said, Crispin Glover is an inspired choice as Pickman; the artwork is excellent, too, even if the teleplay loses some of the dark, uncertain horrors of the story.
7: Dreams in the Witch House (directed by Catherine Hardwicke)
Dreams in the Witch House is another Lovecraft adaptation in the same series which labours under the exact same issues as the take on Pickman’s Model: isn’t that strange? Again, we have a much-expanded premise (which borders on the sentimental, something Lovecraft himself would have studiously avoided) whereby a young boy, Walter, loses his sister in childhood; he spends the rest of his life trying to ‘find’ her, dedicating himself hopelessly to Spiritualism – until a chance encounter sees him using mind-altering substances, which in turn pitch him into a rather gentle limbo, where he finally finds sister Epperley. Unfortunately, his interloping in a realm where he shouldn’t be attracts the attention of Salem witch Keziah Mason and her likeable-rogue familiar Brown Jenkin, whose old house he has rented; they were bound to bump into one another, you could say. One of the least-fantastical elements of this episode is in the state of the house, and the fact that the landlord is taking Walter’s money anyway; the most successful fantasy element comes with Keziah Mason herself, and it is she who grants the episode its only true moment of cosmic horror, her dead eyes glittering in the dark of the Witch House. Excellent creature design, too. But, ultimately, it’s the misty-eyed stuff which dampens any protracted sense of being out of one’s depth, which you must retain for a Lovecraft adaptation (or, of course, do something else entirely and save yourself the criticism).
6: The Outside (directed by Ana Lily Amirpour)
The Outside is in many ways a familiar parable about the perils of vanity. Added to that, it holds aloft the questionable boon of dead-end, cruel friendship, and invites us to wonder why these things are so appealing. Stacey (Kate Miccuci) is a plain and withdrawn woman with a soul-sucking job at a bank: this might be why she’s drawn to the chattering friendship of her co-workers, who – whilst not mean to her exactly – make it clear that they don’t have a lot to say to her. Still, they invite her to a Secret Santa party, where everyone gets a tube of Alo Glo lotion, which all the women say is the best. Stacey’s homemade taxidermy gift is politely received, and immediately put away; to be fair, a pot of lotion is more conventional. Feeling every inch the outsider post-party, Stacey begins to apply the Alo Glo, but it brings her out in a horrendous rash; this is the start of a process where not only her body, but her mind gets consumed by the lotion and all it promises.
Pretty much all of the stories in Cabinet of Curiosities are either period (turn of the twentieth century, or not too long after) or living-memory retro, usually set in the 70s or 80s. The Outside plumps for the 80s, with a house which looks like it could be next-door to Red and Mandy’s. It looks good, and there’s neat characterisation (though jaded horror fans might soon spot that a man written to be this awesome may well be for the chop). The Outside also adds just the right amount of surreal elements, poking fun at the claims made by telemarketers whilst also segueing into creature feature – all in a fairly understated way, give or a take a few more violent moments. It also works fully well in the time allowed, delivering a complete narrative where any remaining questions feel deliberate, rather than oversights.
5: Lot 36 (directed by Guillermo Navarro)
Lot 36 was the first episode made available and, to give it every credit, it does a good job at setting out the stall for all episodes to come. Encompassing occult horror, mystery and something more visceral, it is busy busy busy with perhaps a slightly abrupt ending, but via its plausible but deliberately unlikeable lead character, Nick (Tim Blake Nelson), it provides the punishment in some fun, florid ways. And, it doesn’t set all of this up just to bang out some jump scares, although there are a few which work rather well. Does it lean a little heavily on the ‘bad man by all modern measures of decency’? Perhaps a little. As del Toro wrote the (as-yet unpublished) story behind this screenplay, we’d have to take that up with him, but of course these people do exist and they are out there, even if they seemingly have problems of their own; it’s not an excuse, but it’s enough to give them some motivation for their most desperate actions. The first two lead characters in this series, through coincidence or otherwise, are plagued by poverty, and we see what horrors they are willing to turn to as a means to get out of it. Lot 36 uses the tantalising idea of the mysterious storage lot, brings in brilliant set and prop design, and sees things through to a fantastical conclusion. It does a lot in its timeframe, and what it does is largely very successful.
4: The Viewing (directed by Panos Cosmatos)
Honestly, deciding where to place The Viewing in this list was very tough-going. Thinking back to some scenes or lines, it feels criminal not to place it higher. Ultimately, its biggest sticking point comes from its biggest success, as it crafts an engaging, body-horror-sci-fi so compelling that its end scenes feel positively frustrating. It has a great cast too, with Robocop actor Peter Weller popping up as a mysterious wealthy recluse, who has selected a number of strangers, each very successful in their field, to come to his house – for reasons which, later, become horribly apparent. Were the possibilities for how this could play out known to Lassiter (Weller)? Maybe, maybe not; it doesn’t detract from the episode, and nor does it harm the film’s grotesque developments any. If you watched and liked Mandy, then you’ll know that one of director Panos Cosmatos’s great strengths is in depicting the strange, the trippy, the altered states. That is key here, as each of the assembled group are urged to partake of fine whisky and weapons-grade cocaine. After they are suitably hammered and on the right wavelength, they’re taken to see something very strange belonging to Lassiter.
With some of the finest face-melting you could ever hope to see, a sardonic and effective script, and some gutsy SFX, The Viewing hangs onto some ambiguities, and whilst it all rolls to a stop just when you feel you could stick with this narrative a while longer, its lurid, late 70s vibe, embellished with trippy colours, light and angles, is a joy to watch. It channels the OTT nature of late 70s/early 80s video horrors, but it very much as its own beast too.
3: Graveyard Rats (directed by Vincenzo Natali)
It feels like quite the surprise to be declaring Graveyard Rats only the second most disgusting entrant in this list – let’s start there. It’s based on a short story by Henry Kuttner, contemporary and friend of Lovecraft and fellow Weird Tales author; whilst this particular tale doesn’t include the Cthulhu Mythos elements which Kuttner often wrote about, perhaps as a nod to this, the screenplay expands the story somewhat in this direction. Again, it makes for a busy episode, but what’s one more element in a claustrophobic take of grave-robbing and subterranean horror? This is also another tale about poverty, too, something often rather well known to the original twentieth century authors. Masson (David Hewlett) has delusions of greater grandeur, but this cemetery keeper is also a grave robber with significant debts, determined therefore to take whatever he needs from the recently-interred. He is thwarted by a network of oddly sentient rats, who nab the cadavers before he can get to them. One night, desperate for a big haul, he himself burrows into the ground in pursuit of an already-disappearing body – where he encounters far more than the rats themselves. Beware, anyone whose stomach turns at visions of decaying flesh, impossibly-airless furloughs in the soil, and the horrible darkness: most of this episode takes place amongst them. Bringing together these very real fears with something more eldritch, via a shabby, hideous but plausible-enough lead, Graveyard Rats is a rotten, cautionary tale and an advert for cremation.
2: The Murmuring (directed by Jennifer Kent)
Tonally very different to every other episode in this series, The Murmuring is a ghost story, and in many respects, a familiar-feeling one. Consider the elements: a pair of outsiders spend time in a mysterious old house, where before too long, strange phenomena begin to afflict one of their number. To understand and perhaps to get rid of the frightening phenomena necessitates getting to the bottom of a mystery – finding out what happened to the old inhabitants, via clues and problem-solving. But if that sounds dismissive, it really isn’t intended as such. The Murmuring is a subtle, oh-so clever, humane story about grief, as well as the only episode in Cabinet of Curiosities which has the power to move you to tears. It also ends on a rare moment of hope, without ever sacrificing the very effective, hair-raising moments which it carefully offers up.
Ornithologists Nancy and Edgar Bradley have thrown themselves into their work with modest success; they study the specific phenomenon of murmuration, seeking to explain its processes through further research. This research takes them to a remote house and waterside, where Nancy begins to first hear, and then see a crying child; later, the child can be heard to cry that his mother is angry with him. Then the mother herself begins to manifest, both terrifying and further isolating Nancy. Frustrated, Edgar tries to tell Nancy that this is all a result of her own, unexplored grief and exhaustion over their lost baby daughter. But she feels she must find out more about the house and what she is seeing, driving a painful wedge between them both (seeing this sweet, believable couple begin to splinter and turn away from one another is genuinely affecting). With as-ever superb performances from Essie Davies and Andrew Lincoln, this really is something special – it’s not a ghost story where the past comes back to punish the present, but rather, it becomes a means for the living to go on living. Jennifer Kent has created something very special here.
1: The Autopsy (directed by David Prior)
The Autopsy is seriously, seriously, horribly impressive. It is tough to do it justice in a brief write-up, but here goes: firstly, it’s absolutely repellent. If Graveyard Rats goes a long way in its relentless presentation of the horrors of death, then The Autopsy (clue’s in the name) goes even further, lingering with an unseemly delight on the bits and pieces of organic matter which inexplicably make us living, breathing, sentient things. But it doesn’t stop there; oh, no. It interrogates the meaning of human life further, by threatening it with something which is not only outside it but superior to it, able to essentially drive us around like big stupid meat machines. And yet, the hostile superior force which would do this can’t anticipate every aspect of human behaviour; as such, this disgusting hacking, cutting, weighing, flesh-disturbing tale has a strange, brief moment of hope for mankind in it, too.
Dr Carl Winters (F. Murray Abraham) agrees to investigate the deaths of several miners in a small American town, killed when one of their number, one Joe Allen, reappears in the mine following a disappearance, with what seems to be an explosive device, which he hurls amongst the men. It’s a local tragedy and a mystery which needs investigation, so local sheriff Nate Craven (Glynn Turman) calls in a favour from an old friend. In a makeshift, deserted morgue, Winters begins the autopsies, but the story expands when Allen’s battered corpse reanimates with a tale to tell.
In its short amount of allotted time, The Autopsy blends body horror, science fiction and a kind of existential nightmare, questioning what we are and how vulnerable we are. It doesn’t miss a beat either, offering a kind of (mitigated) redemption without discarding anything which came before, whilst keeping up the pace until the very last moments – in a perfectly formed narrative which fits the episode length exactly. You don’t want or need anything more than this screenplay offers; it is complete. A harrowing, unpleasant, fascinating story which reminds you of what the best horror and sci-fi can do, The Autopsy is both riveting and revolting.
Most Horrible Things starts at the end, or thereabouts. Here is a grand house party gone wrong, all blood splatter, discarded underwear and – body bags. We also hear a 911 call, alongside seeing police and scenes of crime moving through the property. Clearly, this party has ended… interestingly. Starting a film like this, well, it’s a risk: by a couple of minutes in we know, broadly, that bad things have happened, and now we have to hope against hope that the narrative which gets us to this point (and, as usual, just beyond it) justifies the reveal. Sadly, you’d be hard pressed to say that it does.
Having established than a lot of people are already goners, we are taken back to the beginning of the evening – where you can, if you fancy, play a game of Guess Who’s Dead – where a group of six bright young things are arriving at the house in their finery. Things kick off with a chap in drag miming to a disco track, and though the simpletons at the gate are delighted with this performance, we see a different side of it: the performer, when the song is over, retreats to another room, seemingly distressed. The film sticks with this distress for rather too long, by the by, which is the first clue that plot-building might be a tad dilute. But anyway, the until-now strangers get to know one another, share a selfie (hip and happening film klaxon, number one) and ponder what’s about to happen. It seems that they have been invited to attend a special Valentine’s Day dinner here: at the behest of a surprisingly hirsute butler (Simon Phillips) they then sign waivers and hand over their phones. This being done, they await their host, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s the drag performer from earlier on. How to define him…He’s handsy, he’s given to cod philosophising and he wants to set personal challenges for each guest. If they pass, they each receive the hefty sum of money agreed. What could go wrong?
An early issue here – not quite as early as revealing that most of the cast are already dead, but not long after – relates to the ‘romance’ aspect of the plot. In fairness, it seems fairly unclear to the characters, so it’s no great surprise that it feels a little thinly plotted for the audience. It’s Valentine’s Day, a day which, as we know, has somehow turned into an oddball celebration (or commiseration) on love. The guests seem to think that their evening is going to be romance-themed; indeed, this film, under its first title Love Hurts, had its first release on 14th February, and I’d imagine a few dates ended angrily as a result. But love doesn’t quite take root as a theme; there’s too much script, too little plausible chemistry, and a tendency to dip in and out of two timelines, present, and future – where the police are interviewing the survivors. Whilst this is probably intended as a means of backfilling the plot, it really just takes us out of the moment and then lobs us back in again. It jerks forward at different rates, like the handrail on an escalator. As a result, ‘love’ never really feels relevant, despite the attempts to keep it so.
The film devotes far too much time to chit-chat, in any case. Some of this comes from our host (Sean Sprawling), a strangely glassy-eyed fellow, like someone who badly needs glasses, but has taken them off for a special occasion for reasons of vanity. He is meant to seem like a person presiding over events, albeit not quite confidently, and not just because of the eyes thing: as a master of ceremonies, he’s just a little too self-involved. To be fair, though, his guests won’t shut up and develop as characters, which can’t help. They regurgitate buzzwords and unconvincing discourse about veganism, racism, sustainability, carbs, and so on. No wonder they’re single. Possibly intended as a shortcut to making us care about them and see them as a modern bunch, this clanking banter fails because it instead makes them look like fairly obnoxious, two-dimensional representatives of recognisable, sure, but tedious conversations. Again, it takes us out of the here-and-now as we wait for it to end. This lot badly needs some more plausible pressure, and we need to see it steadily unfold. Without it, we’re just killing time waiting for the killings.
These kinds of social experiments can make for good cinema – consider Panic Button (2011) – but here, it unfortunately lacks in the right kind of writing, and flounders early. Most Horrible Things lacks the psychological weight to see it through, ultimately, and instead dandles some bit-part players in a regrettable situation.
Most Horrible Things (2022) will be released on 14th November 2022.
Dead Can Dance have long been a deeply resonant, exploratory presence on the outskirts of alternative music. Never comfortably existing in one genre or another – no surprises there, given their incomparably wide range of musical influences – they have nonetheless formed a kind of breathing and thinking space for an array of punks, goths and even metal fans who, on occasion, want and need to step outside the usual. This state of affairs has, by the by, always been a source of surprise for the band themselves. Drummer Peter Ulrich joined the band in 1981, and has since then contributed to the band in different ways – not just musically, but in a management capacity, too. When not directly musically or professionally involved with Dead Can Dance, he has taken a turn as a ‘fan with a backstage pass’, alongside a solo career and collaborative involvement with other projects, such as This Mortal Coil. No one is better placed, then – in terms of close relationships and different perspectives – to provide insight into the history of DCD, and a career in music more broadly, during a period in time which will almost certainly never be paralleled. This memoir and history takes in a great deal, offers unprecedented levels of detail, but does so with a very affable, honest tone throughout.
With a brief but perfectly-formed foreword from DCD’s Lisa Gerrard, we start in the early 80s – with a tanking economy, leading to Ulrich losing his arts job just at the serendipitous time that musician Brendan Perry was looking for a drummer. Fitting in with an already eclectic musical style caused a brief shock to the system, but it began to work: friendships developed, and after a retelling of how a nascent DCD first relocated from Melbourne to London, Ulrich pauses to consider his own musical history: what influenced him, and what brought him to this point in his life. It’s an endearing personal story and – without necessarily trying to be – a reminder that this kind of introduction to music, with all its vital formative power, seems to have been transformed beyond all recognition today. Later in the book, Ulrich is magnanimous about the future of music in the digital age, though even taking the most optimistic view, it seems clear that something very specific has been lost, or at least irrevocably altered. But back to the book: a lot of Ulrich’s clearest early memories relate to learning the drums, but not exclusively: alongside this, the musical landscape is fleshed out with anecdotes about early record buying, musical lessons, genres, gigs and early forays into bands. Of particular interest here: a level-headed appraisal of the importance of punk in its own time, from the perspective of an outsider. There’s no fawning, no vitriol, but a considered weighing-up of punk as a genre. Also notable is Ulrich’s comment on what he calls the “dark broodiness” of Joy Division having an especial appeal and influence.
We get back to DCD here, taking a look at their creative processes and approaches to writing, then onto their early recording experiences, the band’s fruitful relationship with the 4AD label – and of course, early forays into touring, which always make me feel that local touring bands should get footballers’ wages (try a band member accidentally having full mains voltage flowing through them after a mishap with a continental plug). Incidentally, here’s something else which seems to have been largely lost, though on this occasion for the good: it sounds as though groups of skinheads at alt gigs were essentially like wasps, always with the potential to rage and ruin any event not to their liking. Goodness me.
The absolute wealth of information and recollection as we go along, largely in a linear way from this point, is exhaustive to the point of being quite bewildering in places; there’s so much here, from tour dates and venues, to anecdotes, to descriptions of new albums and recordings. It must have taken a great deal of cross-comparison to piece all of this together. It’s in the detail that the book really succeeds in weaving all of these dates, facts and figures into something engaging and cohesive: the local flavour, the sketches of notable people encountered along the way. Ulrich comes across as very personable, with plenty of rather wry humour and – underpinning all of that – a sense of genuine surprise and delight at being part of a diverse music scene, including a by-now pretty extensive solo career. It’s also charming to note that snippets of reviews and comments, even from the unfiltered world of YouTube and the like, make it into the book: clearly Ulrich reads them and reacts to them. Again, there’s that sense of appreciation.
Clearly, fans of Dead Can Dance will love this book: it takes you straight to the band’s formative years, influences and developments, following them to the present day. But, given the wide range of other bands and musicians who have briefly or otherwise flitted in and out of DCD’s orbit, it could well appeal to more general readers and music fans too, as Ulrich has really put together a kind of time capsule in some respects, whether that was an aim or not. His is an honest, knowledgeable voice, one which doesn’t omit things, or add a gloss to them: he simply describes his experiences, and the result is a very engaging read. The book also includes a number of photos and artwork, with an Appendix offering a guide to World Music (something more or less unknown to a lot of us) and an extensive discography.
Drumming with Dead Can Dance and Parallel Adventures will be published by Red Hen Press on November 15th.For more information, including how to order, please click here.
**Update** Since writing this book – and since the impact of Covid made its presence felt on live music – Peter has written an addendum to Drumming with Dead Can Dance and Parallel Adventures. With Peter’s blessing we have added his addendum to this post, but you can see the post in its own location here.
Such is the process of bringing a book into being, two years drifted past between my completion of my memoir and its publication in November 2022. A significant chunk of this period saw the world on pause while health organisations struggled valiantly to contain and control Covid 19, then tentatively emerging from its bunker. As we now head into 2024, another year and a bit has escaped since publication, and this overall extended period has thrown up some further ‘parallel adventures’ and reflections from which I offer this addendum:
April 2022. Following enforced cancellations of tour on tour, Dead Can Dance finally hit the road on a re-scheduled European Tour. Shortly beforehand, I heard from Brendan that preparations had been thrown out of kilter when Lisa went down with Covid while touring with Hans Zimmer’s orchestra, and a bad reaction caused her to miss virtually all the DCD rehearsal period – both a nasty scare for Lisa and a significant issue for Brendan who was introducing new arrangements of several DCD classics.
Percussionist David Kuckhermann was not available this time – principally because of commitments to his young family (ah, that rings a bell) – so Brendan was also re-arranging and redistributing percussion parts. For the support act, long-established DCD touring band members Astrid Williamson and Jules Maxwell would step into the breach, taking turns to open the shows with selections from their respective solo catalogues. In the months preceding the tour, I’d tried to help Jules arrange a couple of low-key warm-up gigs in England, but my efforts had fallen on stony ground, largely again because of the reluctance of venues to commit while the Covid threat still lurked menacingly in the wings.
The tour was scheduled to open in Glasgow on April 7th. As this would be DCD’s first ever show in Scotland, a couple of days later was our daughter Ellie’s birthday, and we (Ulrich family) had long wanted to visit the lands north of the border, Nicki booked the trip. In the foyer of the Royal Concert Hall before the show I was re-acquainted with Looby – the first time we’d seen each other since he’d toured with us back in 1987. Despite the passage in time, we recognised each other instantly, though he immediately demanded to know what had happened to the slug that used to live under my nose – an appendage which I hadn’t sported for nearly as long as I’d not seen Looby, and which we agreed had never been a good look (despite Confucius maintaining that ‘A man without a moustache is a man without a soul’). Also in the foyer was old DCD stalwart Tony Hill, making me envious as he was planning to get along to several shows on the tour while this would be my one and only.
I’d assumed Astrid would provide the opening set in her native land – albeit she’s a Shetlander – but it was Jules who took the stage, and surprised me with a set of folk songs rather than the more ambient, filmic repertoire I’d expected. Then, as the houselights dimmed, I waiting curiously to see how DCD would be greeted in Glasgow – notoriously difficult to win over! The initial reception was very warm, then took a while to properly lift-off, but ultimately the audience brought the house down for the encores as Brendan apologised that ‘it’s only taken us 40 years to get here!’ For a tour opening night, the performance was remarkably relaxed, with both Brendan’s and Lisa’s voices already hitting the highs, Astrid and Jules front of stage either side, Dan providing the percussive bedrock, Robbie flitting seamlessly from instrument to instrument as ever, and Richard supplementing his bass playing with some accomplished forays into the percussion department. The set covered pretty much the entire 40 year span of DCD’s canon and included seven or eight of the pieces we’d played live back in my drumming days. Amongst the new arrangements, I particularly liked how Brendan had breathed new life into “In Power We Entrust…” and “Severance”.
After the show we managed a quick chat with Brendan, Jules and Robbie before the DCD tour bus rolled out of town, leaving us with a couple more days in Glasgow, then a few days up around Loch Lomond. While our Tartan adventure was great, I was curious to know how DCD had fared the following night in Manchester Cathedral. Cathedrals can offer magnificent settings, but the acoustics can be very difficult to manage. I badgered Tony Hill for a report from the front line in the knowledge that, as a Manc, he’d be there on home soil. He’d been surprised – and in turn surprised me – to find that the audience was all standing, and reported that there’d been some mildly aggravated jostling around the Cathedral’s great pillars for a better view of the stage. But Tony had found the sound to be ‘special’ and considers that night’s rendition of “The Host of Seraphim” to be the best live version he’s ever encountered.
Back home, and rummaging around Norwich vintage emporium ‘Loose’s’, I came across an old bass (kick) drum case concealed under a rack of hanging rugs. I pulled it out to find the name ‘The Monochrome Set’ stencilled across the lid, a band I never saw, and whose path DCD didn’t cross during our early touring, but who are on my radar from having featured on the seminal and wonderful 1979 Cherry Red compilation album “Pillows and Prayers”. Both case and drum inside were in ‘heavily used’ condition, but after a light bit of bargaining, I secured it for 40 quid. Although the heads were knackered and a few of the tensioning bolts had seen better days, the shell was sound and it is, I believe, an old Tama Swingstar model, which will bring a tear to the eye of a fair few drummers from back in the day. With the noble efforts of Tristan who runs Drum Attic somewhere in deepest Somerset and keeps an heroic stock of salvaged parts from days of yore, and the purchase of a new pair of Evans EMAD heads, the Tama’s restoration is nearing completion, ready to feature in an upcoming recording. It seems to add something that there’s a bit of history behind it.
It’s been widely reported that Covid lockdowns caused much hardship to musicians prevented from earning their crust through live performance and having to rely on income from sales and airplay. This, in turn, brought back into sharp focus the issue of the pitiful level of payments squeezed out to songwriters by the various download and streaming services. Glancing through my own statement for the April 2022 royalty distribution from the PRS (the UK’s Performing Right Society) gave me a reminder close to home. To pick just one example, my song “The Scryer and the Shewstone” had registered a total of 215 streams/downloads across monitored European territories in the previous accounted quarter. As sole songwriter, I retain a relatively high 75% of the income on that song (the other 25% going to the publisher) – yet in total for that, I received the princely sum of 15.62 pence
At much the same moment, I happened to read a newspaper article which referenced a tweet by former Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey from March 2021 that a UK musician would need to register 7,343,157 streams per month just to pocket the legal ‘minimum wage’. The same article observed that, while eight out of 10 music creators earn less than £200 per year from streaming, the average base salary for Spotify employees in the UK is (or was then) £60,563 per annum, while in late 2023 it was widely reported that Spotify Chief Financial Officer Paul Vogel resigned his post after cashing in $9.3M worth of shares in the company. In Europe, new copyright regulations should now be starting to bring musicians an increased share of the proceeds of digital streaming, but thanks to the UK’s near-suicidal ‘Brexit’ vote and a government with its thoughts elsewhere, British musicians are back to square one. ‘Mad’ and ‘world’ spring to mind.
May 2022 brought down the curtain on the English Premier League football (soccer) season which saw Norwich City claim the dubious honour of becoming the most relegated club – having now managed the feat six times in the League’s 30 year history. I attended all but three matches, only missing two of those because I contracted Covid on the away trip to Newcastle and had to self-isolate for 10 days. I was lucky, thanks to the vaccinations, to get away with a few days with a bad cough. In a generally dismal season, the outstanding highlight was a 3-0 away win at Elton John’s Watford back in January, but ultimately both teams went down. Sir Elton apparently didn’t bear a grudge as Norwich’s Carrow Road stadium hosted a concert on his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour in June.
When embarking on my memoir, I had no idea of the grief that lay in store when it would come to tracking down the images I wanted, and gathering the necessary signed permissions. It was epic – writing the book had been the easy bit! At final reckoning, we ended up with 32 illustrations and – I think – a decent balance between images already well-known to DCD fans, and others newly revealed. Several I found and would like to have used eluded me, but one in particular still bugs me. I didn’t even know of its existence until after I’d finished writing the text and Brendan emailed me a photo he’d found online with the subject line: “Hardly recognised you!” It had been taken at an in-store “meet’n’greet” in Paris in 1989 to which I’d accompanied Lisa because Brendan didn’t want to do it. The picture is amusingly odd in that, despite being over 30 and already a father when it was taken, I appear to be about 12 years old. I’m looking over Lisa’s shoulder as she signs an autograph, and there’s a promotional backdrop of “Serpent’s Egg” album covers behind us. The photo is (or was) uploaded on the Pinterest page of a user called only ‘Yaroslava’, but all attempts to contact her failed or were ignored, and in any case, it looks to be a picture she probably downloaded from a third party source, though we could find no trace of an original. It would have been very different from all the other images in the book, and it neatly illustrates a specific event described in the text… but it wasn’t to be.
DCD announced another European tour for the autumn/fall of 2022, and confirmed the re-scheduled US/Canada/Mexico dates for spring 2023. While the Americas tour broadly set about reinstating the shows cancelled and re-cancelled through the pandemic, calling the autumn tour ‘European’ was a little misleading. Although it would kick off down well-trodden paths through France, Germany and DCD-fanatical Poland, there would be debuts in the capitals of Lithuania, Estonia and Finland, and first times back in Oslo and Stockholm since our Scandinavian mini-tour in 1984.
In June 2022, former Cocteau and 4AD label-mate Liz Fraser emerged from self- imposed exile with the fruits of a collaboration with partner Damon Reece (drummer in stints with Echo and the Bunnymen, Spiritualized and Massive Attack) – both project and EP called “Sun’s Signature”. At pretty much the exact same moment Kate Bush – apparently without lifting a finger – reached number one in the UK charts (and, indeed, around the world) with her 1985 single “Running Up That Hill” – a mere 37 years after release. This record-busting feat – the longest ever period between release and hitting numero uno – was the result of the song being prominently featured in Netflix TV series “Stranger Things” which poured it down the collective throat of a global audience. Even at the pitiful royalty rates I bemoaned a few paragraphs earlier, with Spotify logging well over 300 million streams and with the song reportedly appearing in around two million TikTok creations by the end of June, a startled Kate found her bank balance expanding by substantially more than minimum wage. The phenomenon also makes her the oldest female singer to attain the chart summit at 63. Keen-eyed fact-absorbers will have noted that I’m the same age as Kate so, probably illogically, I’m rather chuffed. I’d also like to point out that my 1990 single “Taqaharu’s Leaving” would love to be rediscovered should anyone…
In support of the charity our daughter Ellie then worked for, Nicki and I went to a fund-raiser for Prostate Cancer UK at London’s Royal Albert Hall on June 22nd hosted by Jools Holland and his big band which provided our first live sightings of an array of big name guest performers, including Sir Rod Stewart, Sir Van Morrison and ‘Sir-in-waiting’ (perhaps – though he might not accept if offered) Paul Weller. Highlight of the night, though, was an appearance by Celeste, disappointingly limited to a single song. I’m not sure if she was ‘new’ to a lot of the audience, but there was a discernible ‘electric’ surge through the gathered mass during her performance and, while I’d been mightily impressed when I’d previously seen/heard her on Jools’s TV shows, it was genuinely thrilling to hear her sing live. The same week ended with the post-Covid return of the UK’s Glastonbury Festival. DCD have never played it, and I’ve not been as a punter – a quarter of a million people in a field doesn’t fire my desire – but it’s always compulsive TV viewing. Top spot went to another senior knight of the realm – Sir Macca still rocking as he turned 80 and became the oldest ever headliner (hats off to that) – but a smart bit of scheduling saw the previous night fronted by the Festival’s youngest ever headliner – Billie Eilish (at 20) – whose set I really enjoyed.
The World Wide Web continues to veer between indispensable information source and purveyor of utter tosh. I was alerted to a site called ‘allfamousbirthday’ which purports to dish the dossier on celebrity folk, and wherein I’m apparently worthy of a listing on account of being a ‘famous percussionist’. Initially the personal details were correct, having been lifted directly from my verified Wikipedia entry, until the website’s algorithm determined that my August birthdate renders me a ‘Capricorn’ (if you don’t know, look it up). This early clue to questionable content was then royally trumped by the revelation that my parents were Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna of Russia and Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, and my spouse is, or was, Catherine the Great. Presumably then spotting that Catherine the Great died in 1796, the no-flies-on-me algorithm advised ‘as of May 2022 Peter Ulrich is not dating anyone’. The site further confessed not to know my shoe size (though tantalisingly my body measurements ‘will update soon’), but revealed my net worth to be ‘approximately $1.5 Million’. Bouyed by this wonderful news, I ordered a luxury yacht…. but then failed the credit check. Pah!
August 2022 bestowed grandparenthood on Nicki and me, courtesy of daughter Louise and partner Chris introducing baby Anna to the world. Utterly joyful – enough said. Later the same month came a new album from Lisa’s ongoing collaboration with composer Marcello De Francisci, this called “Exaudía” and said to be inspired by the expulsion of Sephardic tribes from Spain in the late 15th to early 16th centuries, and their subsequent dispersal around the perimeter of the Mediterranean. The album’s seven pieces give great breadth to both Lisa’s vocal styles and Marcello’s compositions, ranging from gentle, tender passages to moments of swirling drama, and have a thematic base in that heady cooking pot where the musics of Andalusia and northern Africa meet, which I love. As a small aside, there’s an interesting interview with Lisa and Marcello on YouTube with our friend and great music supporter Claudio Bustamante on his Fairfax City Music channel – worth checking out!
For the final months leading up to publication of my book, I was deeply back into my old press & promo role, compiling e-lists of music and literary reviewers, sifting through old contacts, drafting my news releases, designing a postcard, identifying retailers who might support it, checking out upcoming literary festivals, and so on. In late October my parcel of author pre-publication copies landed on the doorstep and there I was holding a copy of my first book in my hands – much akin to the thrill of receiving my first vinyl record decades earlier. Publishers Red Hen Press had done a fabulous job – the cover which I’d only previously seen in e-form looked great, and there’s a lovely kind of sheen matt finish on it which doesn’t fingermark. This moment suddenly made the exhaustive process a reality, and shortly after, on November 15, 2022 – publication day arrived.
There was no launch party, no fanfare and no blaze of publicity, but a websearch of the title quickly revealed that Red Hen’s distributors had also done an amazing job – my title was listed by booksellers across the planet. I’ve no idea if it sells in Norway, Switzerland, Chile, Columbia, Taiwan or Korea (to pluck a few retailer locations I’ve seen at random), but it’s out there! Reviews have rolled in steadily ever since and have really exceeded my expectations. I won’t regurgitate them en masse here – suffice to say that, happily, as well as bestowing high praise, they broadly bought into what I was trying to achieve, a few examples of which include:
‘…so different from the typical sex-and-drugs-and-rock-and-roll memoir…really smart recount of a life in music’ Eric Alper, That Eric Alper Show, SirusXM
‘…detailed descriptions of the band’s [DCD] unusual songwriting and recording processes left me pretty enthralled’ Greg Fasolino, Goth and Post-Punk historian
‘deftly weaving in tales of life… a vast musical landscape’ Jane Cornwell, Songlines Magazine.
Happier still, the response from DCD fans across online forums and social media has been overwhelmingly positive, for which I’m hugely grateful. It’s very exciting to create that connection with people who have supported our music over the years and to provide a means for us all to relive the experience. I was also somewhat unexpectedly thrown back into contact with various characters from the plot. Brendan put me in touch with Ivo Watts-Russell for, I think, the first time in around 30 years, triggering a very touching email exchange. Ivo really enjoyed the book and particularly felt I’d captured the serendipity of those early 4AD years when everyone was winging it, acting on gut instinct and clinging onto the stone that had been set rolling down the Alma Road hill in London SW18. Steve Webbon of Beggars Banquet independently gave me much the same response, while Ivo tipped off former Cocteaus and 4AD manager Colin Wallace who then similarly embraced the retro ride and memories. Former v23-er Tim O’Donnell sent a hearty thumbs-up from Pennsylvania, while original DCD bassist Paul Erikson sent his seal of approval from DCD birthplaceMelbourne. Piano Magic’s Glen Johnson was in touch, having received the book as a birthday gift from his brother to bring his own memories flooding back, and we met up at London’s Barbican Centre for him to interview me for his ‘Arcane Delights’ website. Projekt’s Sam Rosenthal loved a story I recount in chapter seven about a dinner one evening in Venice, and then give Lisa’s quite different recollection of the same event, thus confirming his belief that all memory is faulty and there is no reality… a somewhat questionable endorsement for a memoir!
While all this activity was a pure delight, my big opportunity to ‘shift some units’ was going to be the merchandising for DCD’s upcoming tours of Europe and North America. I was in planning for this, as well as hoping to fly over to the States with Nicki to catch a few shows, when news of the cancellation came through. In my fan capacity, I immediately regretted not having attended more shows in the 2022 tour, but this was also a big blow to sales. The American tour was due to play to 60,000+ people, and losing the opportunity to put my memoir right there in front of all those fine folk… well, no need for explanation. Along with the DCD fraternity, I awaited news.
Continuing to check my memoir’s availability across the globe, I found it offered on the website of American supermarket giant WalMart then, scrolling down the page, nearly toppled off my drumstool on encountering a suggestion panel headed ‘Similar items you might like – based on what customers bought’ proffering “Spare” by Prince Harry. Really…??? I clicked through to “Spare” to see if the Duke of Sussex’s readership might be returning the interest, but disappointingly my tome was nowhere to be seen.
March 2023 saw the release of a debut album by an artist unfamiliar to me – Lucinda Chua. What caught my eye was a review in the UK Observer newspaper which began: ‘Signed to 4AD (home to the Cocteau Twins and Jenny Hval)…’ and how curious it seemed that 4AD might be summed up thus. Thinking about it further, I guess writer Tara Joshi had simply chosen to bookend the label’s output with one of its earliest acts and one of its most recent. In April, Cincinnati kids The National – who had inadvertently become a 4AD act following a reshuffle within the Beggars Banquet stable back in 2009 – released new album “First Two Pages of Frankenstein” featuring a guest appearance by global superstar Taylor Swift, which somehow seemed an extraordinary stretch from those early ’80s days! Then in May, 4AD alumni Nick Cave unexpectedly (I suggest) popped up as an invitee to the Coronation of King Charles III of the United Kingdom and its Commonwealth Realms. Old Nick was spotted entering Westminster Abbey in deep conversation with former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, prompting one journalistic wag to speculate they may have been discussing Cave’s lyrical disbelief ‘in an interventionist god’. Cave was later reported to have been ‘extremely bored’ during the ceremony, begging the question what exactly was he expecting?
Old 4AD connections seemed to be flavour of the moment. In April a contestant on the BBC’s renowned quiz show “Mastermind” nominated ‘The 4AD Record Label’ as his specialist subject for two minutes’ worth of hard grilling by presenter Clive Myrie. Much to the glee of a swathe of the old guard, Colin Wallace emerged as the answer to one of the questions, setting off a chain of messages including Tanya Donnelly and Emma Anderson posting on their respective Instagrams. In May Glen Johnson invited me to contribute some percussion and sundry bits to tracks for his project Allegory of Vanity, in which old Wolfgang Presser Mick Allen was also due to participate, though ultimately that fell through. And in June, a friend of mine – writer and filmmaker Juliet Jacques – secured a slot for her to interview me about my memoir at the prestigious Stoke Newington Literary Festival in north London, where I discovered on the programme for a couple of days later was Miki Berenyi discussing her memoir “Fingers Crossed”.
June saw Lisa awarded an Order of Australia Medal for ‘service to the performing arts through music’ in the King’s Birthday 2023 Honours List – richly deserved say I, and she seemed mightily chuffed. June also brought the announcement that filming had finally started on “Gladiator 2” – the movie having reportedly been in planning for some 20 years! Way back in this process, word circulated that Nick Cave had been contracted to write the script and had submitted a time-warped tale under the working title “Christ Killer” in which central character Maximus – revived and cursed to live forever – battles his way through the Crusades, World War II, the Vietnam War, and ultimately winds up in The Pentagon. Somewhat disappointingly, Cave’s concept didn’t fly, and it’s reported that the eventual storyline, written by David Scarpa, gives the central role to a now grown up Lucius, being played by Irish actor Paul Mescal. Whether or not Lisa will be involved in creating the soundtrack again I cannot say – principally because, at time of writing this, I genuinely have no idea. Then a while later, in a nod to a hitherto little aired string of 4AD’s bow, I spied a ‘Q&A’ in the UK’s Guardian newspaper with Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell in which, when asked his choice of best song to have sex to, he replied ‘anything by Cocteau Twins – every song sounds like an orgasm’.
On the flip side, a headline caught my eye in a Songlines circular in July: ‘MARRS supporting Iranian musicians at WOMAD’. It turned out to have nothing to do with pumping any volume up, and – more as a sad sign of the times – this current acronym is for ‘Musicians Artists at Risk Resettlement Scheme’, an organisation established in Northern Ireland in response to persecutions under regimes which censor or even outlaw music. It seems we are going backwards, rather than making progress.
Suddenly the online DCD community was buzzing frantically with the news that Lisa had given a couple of interviews stating that DCD was no more, dashing hopes that previously cancelled tour dates were being rescheduled behind the scenes. I’d been out of touch with both her and Brendan for a while, so thought to let the dust settle a little. Then Lisa contacted me asking how the book was doing and if there was anything she could do to help – she gave it a fresh shout-out across her social media which generated a lively response. And then, following a YouTube blog session I recorded with fellow Projekt alumni Bret Helm and post-punk aficionados Frank Deserto and Greg Fasolino comprising a two hour long appraisal of the DCD back catalogue, Brendan emailed to say he’d seen it and really enjoyed it, then shared it on the DCD Facebook page. That both these wonderful friends are still looking out for me after all these years is something very special.
Among various themes in my memoir, classification and ‘pigeon-holing’ of music pops up a few times, and 2023 has emerged as a year to bring that strangely elusive category of ‘Goth’ back into focus, at least here in the UK. In July the publishers of ‘Uncut’ magazine issued their ‘Ultimate Genre Guide’ to Goth, with a front cover listing the eight bands/artists it apparently sees as its most prominent flag-bearers:
Siouxsie and the Banshees The Cure Nick Cave Bauhaus The Cult Joy Division The Sisters of Mercy The Cramps
The inclusion of Joy Division in this Top 8 surprised me as I’ve never thought of them as ‘Goth’ and can’t recall having seen them previously categorised thus. The Cramps were ‘psychobilly’ until becoming aware they were gathering some goth following and swiftly coining the additional category of ‘gothabilly’ to welcome them in. Emerging from a clutch of ‘Goth’ books – rather oddly issued in the height of the UK’s summer months – publication of original Cure drummer/keyboardist Lol Tolhurst’s retrospective entitled ‘Goth: A History’ might seem to confirm their credentials, until he revealed in an interview with the Observer newspaper in September: ‘there are loads of fans who are going to say ‘What? No, the Cure were never goth!’ In fact, the original title for the book wasn’t Goth. I wanted to call it The Lesser Saints, but the publishers said: ‘What’s that about?’ I tried ‘Post-Punk’ on my editor, but he said that was too broad.’
I’ve previously said in the early days of Dead Can Dance we were surprised – albeit very grateful – to be so taken to heart by the Goth community, and my memoir explains Brendan’s thinking behind the DCD name which had no intended Goth connotations at its inception. But, having been firmly planted in the heart of Goth territory by so many commentators, I combed through the 124 pages of Uncut’s Ultimate Guide and initially thought we’d been overlooked. A second trawl through revealed I’d missed the inclusion of “Severance” in a Guide to the Top 50 Goth Club Anthems tucked away on page 112, describing Brendan’s opus as “The ‘Jerusalem’ of the late-1980s goth scene”. If I’m honest, I would have been miffed if DCD had been entirely omitted!
To many it appears the currently emerging primary issue facing musicians (and artists/creators/performers more widely) is Artificial Intelligence – ‘AI’. It polarises opinion between the highly alarmed and the dismissive, and personally I’m inclined towards the latter. Polly Jean Harvey makes an interesting point in a recent interview in The Guardian newspaper: ‘I can’t imagine that the imperfection of the human touch will be outridden by the perfection of a computer. I think there’s something beautiful about imperfections and failings of us as human beings.’ I guess AI proponents would counter that imperfections can simply be programmed in to mimic human frailties where desirable – perhaps so, but I’m still not convinced. To me, AI in the music world is just another songwriter and performer. There are millions already out there, and that doesn’t prevent any of us continuing on our creative paths. For decades songwriters have tried to bottle the formula of what makes a ‘hit’, but while some clearly churn out more chartbusters than the average, nobody has ever come close to a definitive blueprint. And they won’t, and I’m highly doubtful AI will either. As regards another application of AI, while avatars may be harnessed to great effect to bring back to life and re-imagine performances of artists and bands no longer with us, would that ever entirely replace the live shows of human beings? And OK, I appreciate that ‘deep fake’ videos in which artists can be replicated and misrepresented are bad news, but those artists (and their management people) are going to get wind of such incidents almost immediately, and can issue disclaimers to their legions of followers and complain to the hosting media – seriously annoying, sometimes upsetting, and a sad reflection on elements of our society, but still not an overly-daunting threat to the artistic community… is it?
The last album of The Peter Ulrich Collaboration’s trilogy – 2019’s “Final Reflections” – opens with the song “Artificial Man”, whose lyrics were written by chief among my cohorts Trebor Lloyd, and in which the protagonist is ’empty of all feeling’ and ultimately confined to an ’empty hell’ – ironic, perhaps, that Trebor found a source of creative inspiration in the robotic world. The clue is in the tag – the ‘Intelligence’ is, by definition, ‘Artificial’. Sorry to bang on, but can a computer be given the ability to create a catalogue of music as widely varied as that of Dead Can Dance – from (and I pluck randomly) “The Trial” to “The Host of Seraphim”, to “The Ubiquitous Mr Lovegrove” to “Kiko” to “Dance of the Bacchantes” – but incorporating the intangible essence of what makes all those pieces intrinsically DCD? And even if it can, what really would be the purpose? And can AI clone and re-project Lisa’s spine-tingling live renditions? I’m doubtful, but in any case, isn’t that just like offering people the chance to go and see a virtual tribute act? Maybe I’m missing some greater point, but I’ll stick with the real world and its imperfections… thanks!
Updates from Lisa’s world find her remaining in insatiable demand for movie soundtracks. Another intriguing collaboration with Marcello De Francisci has spawned the music for a Nepalese film “Gunyo Cholo”, while a return to her earliest big screen collaboration saw her contribute to Michael Mann’s latest blockbuster “Ferrari”. I still love that Lisa’s voice can sit with equal comfort in such extraordinarily different worlds!
Returning to another theme of my memoir, it seems that sales of physical music formats are going from strength to strength, with 2023 seeing a rise in vinyl sales for the 16th consecutive year while CD and cassette sales continued to hold up. Seemingly an increasing number of people weaned on the disposable, background noise of streaming are newly discovering the joys of getting immersed in an ‘album’ and properly ‘listening’ to music. And for those readers who recall my particular frustrations with UK music retail chain HMV, it was bought out of administration by ‘Canadian tycoon’ Doug Putman in 2019 and is being revitalised with a greatly increased emphasis on vinyl sales. Symbolic of this rebirth was the recent re-opening of the original HMV store on London’s Oxford Street, originally opened in 1921 and whose closure four years ago had previously seemed terminal. The album format has long-since infiltrated my DNA, and its resurgence inflates my optimistic sails.
Talking of albums… just as I was about to sign this additional chunk of memoir off, Brendan has leapt back into the spotlight with a retro classic. His beautiful first solo album “Eye of the Hunter” has been re-mastered and re-released in a package together with his live solo performance at London’s ICA in 1993. I wax lyrical about this performance in Chapter Eight of my memoir, but hadn’t previously realised it had been recorded, then the tape stashed away in the proverbial attic. It’s wonderful to be transported back these 30 years later and re-live the experience. And I believe I’m right in saying that it’s reunited Brendan with 4AD for the first time this century. Anyway, it’s been on repeat play in our house since I got my hands on a copy, and I can’t recommend it strongly enough. That feels like a perfect point on which to end.
In the days of the YouTube famous, everyone wants a gimmick to get them noticed – even if it means an element of personal risk. It’s a way to get ahead, right? This phenomenon has steadily started to make its way into cinema, where looking at what people are prepared to do, and at what cost, is a source of modern fascination. Though of course, a lot of the things people do on their channels are themselves inspired by examples from film and TV, so art imitates life imitates art. Low Life (2022) is an ambitious spin on this, though the social media aspect of the film acts more as a framing narrative than as an integral plot device; really what this film does, and does well, is explore a series of unfortunate events.
Benny (Wes Dunlap) has a channel called Creep Dunk: it’s essentially his own DIY spin on To Catch a Predator – the TV series – only rendered down into abrasive snippets as per the expectations of an online audience. Creep Dunk is a source of exasperation for the local police, whose cases it keeps jeopardising. This doesn’t bother Benny; in fact, he sees the negative attention as a badge of approval, a sign of his growing notoriety, and so he keeps going. He masquerades as underage girls and hooks people in, although it can be an abortive process at times – as shown by an embarrassing early encounter. Still, he thinks he’s found a live one: a local teacher, who has been messaging what he seems to think is a Grade 7 girl, asking ‘her’ for explicit selfies. Benny takes a big risk, reaching out to this man and – out of desperation to get a big hitter, by any means – sharing his address, inviting this man to come over. This is all partly motivated by the attentions of a young fan, Nicole (Lucy Urbano) who found him this guy, a father of a friend. She also ends up involved in one way and another, and as she has aspirations to actually work with Creep Dunk, her awareness of the scheme adds another complicating factor. The stage is therefore set for a range of flimsy plans to collapse, though the extent of all of this – when it finally comes – is quite something.
The film moves quite quickly from being handheld, i.e. when Benny is actually recording for his channel, to a more conventional shooting style. This tells us that, really, it’s Benny’s story which is being told here, and the shift between a film made by him and about him helps the film’s overall readability, as well as getting rid of the issues around what would have been called ‘found footage’ once, but is now just filmed footage, shorn of a lot of the issues which were around before it was quite so easy to edit, adjust and present filmed material. There are some issues in the first thirty minutes or so of the film, however: a lot of the dialogue could be tighter, as it feels aimless; the poker game as a visual metaphor is rather laboured, and it’s really at this stage that the film risks becoming diffuse. Thankfully, the film begins to add in twists, starting more low key, but steadily escalating as errors, misunderstandings and shock developments occur.
A large share of this developing tension comes from a further exploration of Benny’s character, though it’s also at this point that some viewers may begin to struggle with the film, because: Benny is far from easy to watch. He’s clearly a liability, and assuming the film wants us to see that, then it succeeds. It’s just that not everyone may be up for that particular journey, as vital as it is to gleaning what is really going on and why. Make no mistake: Benny makes your nerves jangle. At first you can put that down to the ‘big voice’ of the small time vlogger, but nope, he’s like that all the time. He is an irate, frustrated and unstable young man, whose promising career as a basketball player disintegrated; this is something he clearly hates, as he continues to hover on the periphery of the sport, as if in a kind of arrested development. His channel and his attempts to ‘out’ these men speak to various needs, not least of which is as a way to lash out at a world which he feels pushed him aside. Other than that, he measures himself by how right or how liked he feels himself to be. Certainly, he is a challenging central character, and his positioning himself on a moral high ground is simply bound to come crashing down. But as much as it feels like Benny is bound to get himself in an inextricable fix, the film does an overall impressive job of playing this out. Once you understand what motivates him, you…can’t quite see past his character flaws, but you can understand them.
Whilst the film hangs onto a kind of ambiguity for a large part of its running time, it certainly doesn’t skimp on the action: this escalates further still in the last act, by which point this reviewer was fully drawn in. All in all, and by the end, Low Life feels like a modern-day parable; it brings its own lessons to bear on a scenario which feels, at least at first, plausible, recognisable.
Low Life (2022) featured as part of the 30th Raindance Film Festival.
