Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

WatchAUT: Moon (Mond) (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Moon (2024) starts in a cage fighting arena: old favourite Sarah Reisinger (Florentina Holzinger) seems to have unexpectedly lost her spark. Losing the fight seems to mean losing her career, too. The whole faded fighter idea might be a recurring motif in film, but the way it’s handled in Moon is altogether more existential, using moments of terrific stillness and quiet being used to underpin the issues: where can Sarah go from here? What can she do next?

We share in the first of these moments just after the losing fight. Sarah continues training – the film often uses physical activity to represent the desire for control – but the young women she is now working with are uncomfortable with Sarah’s intrusions into their personal space. This is a problem, when you need to punch someone to do your job. She says nothing much, but you can feel Sarah begin to exude disbelief. Her sister is little help in all of this, having a young baby to look after. Sarah is clearly presented as an ill fit in this world.

Things begin to look up when she secures an online interview with a wealthy Jordanian man who’s looking for a martial arts trainer for his three sisters. Abdul (Omar AlMajali) explains that she’d be taking the role for a few months in the first instance, but all expenses would be paid, and the work sounds ideal. Sarah accepts the position, and soon afterwards arrives in Jordan. Her main residence is a luxurious hotel, but the job takes place at the family home, which is a long way outside central Amman. The house is a facsimile of wealth. It looks opulent, but frequent power cuts punctate day-to-day life and most of the house is off-limits to Sarah. This is policed by a bodyguard who clearly distrusts her, but then he seems not to trust the sisters, either. Oh, and Sarah has to sign an NDA. There’s always someone observing, always a protocol to observe.

The three girls, Shaima (Nagham Abu Baker), Nour (Andria Fateh) and Fatima (Celina Sarhan) are initially all for the new routine, but their enthusiasm soon wanes. On the first day of training, they don’t even get through the warm-up. Cue more incredulity from Sarah, for whom this kind of routine is everything; it’s clear to see that the girls live a strange, isolated existence. They are apparently home-schooled, though you’d struggle to find evidence of any tutors visiting the property. Their parents live abroad; there’s no internet and no mobile phones allowed. They like going to the mall – accompanied, of course – but there’s ultimately little for them to do. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that these young women aren’t instantly into their new hobby, but Sarah has to wonder if her presence there doesn’t have some other, as-yet undiscernible purpose. Or, if it’s not just some new sop to throw to three bright but bored teenagers. Perhaps it’s more the latter, on balance, but slowly the girls get closer to Sarah. They allow her to see some of the more unsettling details of their gilded-cage existence (something which I note has angered certain critics, who feel that it’s an unduly negative representation of Arab culture. But within the bounds of possibility, no?)

To return to other criticisms of Moon, the film’s tendency towards more oblique content which eschews conventional narrative has locked out some viewers, leading to suggestions that the film could have given us more closure – answered a few more questions. Yes, this is true, but on reflection, the gaps in the narrative really are the narrative. Its approach might not be for everyone, but the film speaks loudest when it says the least. Sure, some of the quite sudden developments towards the film’s close feel quite jarring, but they don’t ultimately shift the reality for the sisters, or for Sarah herself. Sarah is in many ways as cautious and closed-off as the sisters, especially Nour, who shows more initiative than the other girls but seems worldly enough to have more to fear. Sarah is plausibly physically fit, but in a strange culture she still comes across as vulnerable. She’s an odd figure, being shepherded through a superficially wealthy Islamic nation in her tracksuits and training gear, hair usually screwed back like it’s some sort of armour. It’s a lonely, perplexing new life, and Sarah is always strangely sympathetic as she navigates it in near silence. No one calls her; her attempts to phone home are beset by technical difficulties, or are just plain unwelcome. You could predict all sorts of likely comeuppances for her which do not come to pass, but the tension is still there on the horizon – again, much as it is for the girls themselves.

Ultimately, Moon is about the illusion of power. Its illusory nature allows director and writer Kurdwin Ayub to skirt around the idea of the ‘white saviour’ who arrives in a foreign place and makes waves; really, no one here is as empowered as they like to believe: not Sarah, not even Abdul, who at least initially seems to be cool, calm and in control. Sarah seems to hold fast to her ability to make a difference, however, even when bitter experience should have given her pause for thought, but the film wisely leaves that idea with us, not showing us how it plays out. All in all, this is a subtle, often uncomfortable piece of storytelling. It’s a film about secrecy, silence and image management, and it doesn’t need to wrap things up to point out that stories and journeys are often as imprecise as they are profound.

Moon (2024) will feature as part of this year’s WatchAUT Film Festival in London.

WatchAUT: Peacock (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Peacock (2024) opens with a scene both oddly quaint and chaotic, and as such gives us an early, handy symbol for what is to follow: there’s a lot of quaint chaos here. In a rolling, sunlit golf course, we see a burning golf buggy. This attracts the attention of a young couple who come to the rescue, putting out the fire before enthusiastically embracing. They seem to be enjoying the positive attention they gain after just the right amount of manageable peril. Okay – this seems strange. But we move from playing golf to listening to classical music, and there’s the same, altruistic boyfriend again. This is Matthias (Albrecht Schuch), now cast in the role of cultured partner, saying all of the right things about the very exclusive performance at hand for a wholly different woman. He seems like the sort of person you could take anywhere, and it seems lots of people like to do just that.

Matthias works for a very exclusive agency called My Companion. It’s emphatically non-sexual; he provides his services to anyone who books them, be they man, woman or child. The purpose of the service, if we can sum it up, seems to be to bolster the social standing of the client. Pretend artsy boyfriend, cool dad, dutiful son – you name it. Matthias is great at his job, but around the edges of his job, he’s trying to fit in an authentic life of his own. He has a partner called Sophia (Julia Franz Richter) and they have been together long enough to pose for an arty black and white portrait together, which hangs proudly on the bedroom wall. Their apartment is gorgeous and their lives appear easy, inexplicably moneyed and contented (not dissimilar, actually, to the people in another WatchAUT 2025 title, Veni Vidi Vici). And yet, there’s some sort of strain there, manifesting largely through random purchases. When the going gets tough, buy a Great Dane, apparently. Sophia, for her part, complains that Matthias doesn’t feel real anymore. She may have a point.

As his own life grows increasingly fraught, Matthias is left to figure out who he is and where he’s going – all whilst continuing to excel at his profession. A profession which almost necessitates a continued blurring at the edges…of course, something’s gotta give.

This story could have played out in a nightmarish fashion, and lots of drama, horror and even sci-fi has taken this approach to the whole loss-of-self motif. Here, inasmuch as there are definitely some poignant moments, Peacock is much gentler than that. It has a wide-ranging approach to humour without deliberately foregrounding that comedy, never yelling at the audience to notice it and to respond accordingly. There’s dry wit throughout, observational humour in places and silly physical humour in others – not to mention a few pitch-black moments. Schuch is a great choice for this role: young, handsome and plausible, but also somehow blank, ready to be overwritten. It’s only very gradually that you start to see more in there, beyond the good looks. His own emotions can be gleaned then, but with some effort: for the most part, Matthias is quite tough to read, but worth the effort, and he grows as a character throughout. The film is edited in such a way as to provide snapshots of Matthias’s life, leaving us to work out what has been happening in the interim. He’s a bewildered, strangely sympathetic and flawed Everyman of his time, and you must find yourself on his side.

The central conceit of Peacock makes for an interesting update to a time-old conceit. Paying someone to pretend to like you is as old as society itself, but this is a little different. In these deeply alienated times, the illusion of companionship is more tricky, more intricate and more nuanced. The film feels bang up to date in how it riffs on this, and again, all without hammering that theme home. People spend so much time now seeing brief flashes of end points; they see people crossing the line, raising the cup or getting the diploma, refracted through social media platforms which can’t accommodate all of the hard work and effort which gets people to that point. As a result, people just see other people seemingly winning. Perhaps they resent that they can’t also be at that point. Well, yes they can – vicariously! Matthias and his company are there to weave these illusions. Subtly, the script alludes to consumerism, influencers, online reviews and other new routes towards ‘keeping up appearances’; even in its world of muted lighting, airy apartments and exclusive restaurants, we see a world which is also competitive, cynical and superficial.

Peacock is a really enjoyable, engaging, light-touch comedy of manners which also manages a good balance of more profound points. Well acted and well made, it eschews the nightmarish to both poke fun at our modern-day obsessions, and to suggest that there is something better out there, if you will just let yourself grasp it. As the first feature-length film from director and writer Bernhard Wenger, it proves that he’s had no issues whatsoever scaling up from the short film projects which he has made to date. Peacock is a delight.

Peacock (2024) will feature at this year’s WatchAUT Film Festival. For more information, click here. It will also receive its UK premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival.

Interview: Hayden Hewitt, director of Cara (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

A lot of independent films find their way to Warped Perspective, and now and again, one arrives which makes a bigger impact than many of the others – be that for its originality, its ambition, or its earnest levels of nastiness. Cara is one such film, noteworthy for the way it’s steeped in a deeply unrelenting bleakness (and, given the website as a whole frequently sees its share of bleak content, that’s quite the accolade). Reminiscent of the underrated British serial killer film Tony (2009) and in some respects, Possum (2018), Cara is an urban horror story of a person living on the periphery of functional society, fantasising about seizing personal autonomy. Almost needless to say, this isn’t a straightforward, or an especially uplifting journey, and when I reviewed the film just ahead of its FrightFest premiere last year, it struck me as one of those films which leave you with certain questions. Now, just ahead of its release on a range of digital platforms on February 17th, I grabbed the chance to have a quick chat with director Hayden Hewitt, who is currently working on his next project (more anon) to find out some more about this, his first feature-length film. Take a look, and do remember to pop along and take a look at the exclusive trailer over at Rue Morgue magazine.

Please note: the last two questions I ask contain potential mild spoilers. Be forewarned!

WP: Thanks for speaking to Warped Perspective! Firstly – why this screenplay for your first feature-length project? What appealed about this particular subject matter?

HH: The core idea for Cara had been rolling around in my head for years. I was even going to attempt a version during the time DSLR cameras became available to consumers without pots of cash to burn. I think it never left me, because I was fascinated with the idea of a seemingly simple concept (revenge) where I could play with the questionable reality of it through the eyes of a pretty unreliable narrator. The more time I spent on it, the more I wanted to tell the story.

WP: You already had some short film projects under your belt before making Cara: it may seem an odd question, but is there any lineage between those short films and this, your first feature?

HH: They were mostly a test bed, giving Black Octopus [the production company] some kind of established history, learning my chops, and making contacts. I think perhaps Unseen might be within a shout of having a connection, given the social commentary angle but beyond that they’re all stand alone stories – Elbows being such an absurd idea and Lips being a love letter to Tales of the Unexpected.

WP: Who is Cara for, do you think? By which I mean – what sort of film fan would you anticipate really getting on board with it?

HH: I’m not sure if it’s pretentious or conceited, but I never really considered that and thinking about it now, I’m not sure I have any clue. Horror is a very broad church, but there doesn’t seem to be a massively common thread between those who have enjoyed it so far, or at least been positive about it. “Enjoy” seems to be a word people use then try to explain how they didn’t but did but…

WP: On a similar note – how would you describe Cara in terms of its genre? This is another very broad church genre-wise, but is Cara an exploitation film, in your view?

HH: I certainly didn’t set out to make an exploitation film. Are there elements in there? I can see where some people might see it that way I guess, but the intention certainly wasn’t present. I settled on ‘psychological horror’ because that seemed to fit as well as anything else. It’s certainly a fine line when dealing with these topics and with a character like Cara, I really didn’t want her to be a final girl/swivel eyed psycho or black widow. At the same time I didn’t want to make her a stereotypical victim, either. A lot of the success of that obviously comes from Elle’s performance [Elle O’Hara] and the work she put in with me prior to shooting.

WP: Was there anything you wanted to do with Cara, or anywhere you wanted to go which, for any reason, didn’t come to pass? Or was there anything about shooting the film which changed the course of the film as you initially planned it?

HH: I think there are always things you’d like to do but can’t. Budget and time limitations will always get in the way to some extent. Time is the enemy of filmmaking! The final third contained some elements we simply couldn’t afford in an early draft: I did make a version of the film that wasn’t quite as gruesome as it could have been. Some effects I took out, because it became apparent they were crowd pleasers rather than integral parts of the story, and it felt wrong to keep them in.

I did change something very near the end of the film on set just before we shot it. The choice seemed more sympathetic to the characters and story, although it did make it slightly less brutal to some degree. Overall though, I’m as happy as I think I could be, even if when it’s your film all you see are the ‘faults’ for a while.

WP: Have you had – good or bad – any particularly noteworthy responses to the film?

HH: Mostly it’s been very positive so far. Comments like “I really liked it but feel like I need a shower now” are quite wonderful and being asked at festivals what happened to certain characters or people sharing their interpretations of the film are beautiful things, too. Naturally there are some negative comments and reviews, some hilariously so, but that’s the nature of the game, isn’t it? One great compliment was from an actress who received the script, and was so incensed by something she thought it represented that she shared it with some other unknown film producers. This small group then proceeded to tell people not to work with us, or they’d never work with them. I don’t know who these people are, nor will I try to find out, but I hope they’re choking on their non-dairy lattes come release time.

WP: Cara begins with the titular character operating on the periphery of some very dark websites and online content; she’s a camgirl, but on a very niche website with, shall we say, niche clientele. Why did you decide to place her in this world?

HH: I have a lot of history with the darker side of the Internet [Hayden was the founder of the website LiveLeak]. Though that doesn’t encompass the porn side, the fascination has always been there. I think one experience in the dawn of cam streaming shaped a lot of that. Someone I knew passed me a link and it was a livestream. A woman was sat naked on a bed: she looked utterly miserable, genuinely just worn out. The text chat box next to the video player was just full of seemingly angry men doing their best to be as awful as possible in their demands and insults. Nobody seemed to be enjoying themselves really and I couldn’t figure out what people got from it, beyond one side making a few dollars and the other getting to humiliate someone without consequences, even though it didn’t seem to make them happy.

As with everything else in the film, I’ve tried to avoid being too judgemental, because I do wholeheartedly believe that consenting adults should pretty much be allowed to anything they damn well want. I think the thing is that if I believed humans have a soul – and I don’t – I’d believe every touch of that world would take a piece of it. Then again, some people seem quite happy, so I guess that’s a me problem…

WP: Finally, and this is something I’ve found myself wondering: at the end of the film: does Cara actually get the redemption which she so clearly craves?

For me, if she does, it’s a fleeting and hollow moment. Nobody in Cara gets what they think they want and only one person gets close. That person might well not be Cara, though…

Many thanks to Hayden for his time! If you’re an Apple TV subscriber, then you can check out this link now to find details on how to view. For the rest of you, look out for more details on how to see the film from 17th February 2025.

WatchAUT: Veni Vidi Vici (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

A cyclist making his way up a winding Austrian hill is first paused, then stopped forever by a sniper’s bullet before two surprisingly languid-looking hunters step out of the undergrowth, seizing his pushbike in the name of ‘recycling’. That’s about as dramatic as we ever get in Veni Vidi Vici (2024), a film which spends most of its time presenting the audience with an indolent, privileged world, occasionally pointing at something darker, but retreating into its indolence instead. We are left in no doubt, even very early on, that we’re looking at a very moneyed existence: the big clue, for me, is the classical music playing over a slow-mo game of polo. Just call it intuition. In fact, this is the film in a nutshell: it’s no subtle social commentary, though at times it seems to believe that it is. Elsewhere, however, it’s content to luxuriate in the pretty world at its core, and your tolerance for this will largely dictate how much you enjoy the film and its glib treatment of power, status and wealth disparity.

Next, we get better acquainted with the family, of whom so far we’ve met one sniper and one cheating polo player. These are, respectively, father Amon Maynard (Laurence Rupp) and his eldest daughter, Paula (Olivia Goschler). There’s also mother Viktoria (Ursina Lardi) and younger siblings, Coco and Bella. Viktoria is trying for a pregnancy, despite it being a regular tussle with Mother Nature, given her advancing years. Paula, our occasional narrator, adds an interesting, rather detached voice to proceedings, sometimes seemingly inside the family group and sometimes outside it. When dad isn’t shooting people, a hobby he enjoys with seeming impunity, he’s working on requisitioning part of the local countryside to use for a brand-new battery factory, lobbying local politicians to do so. However, the presence of a sniper in the local area is a complicating factor: the powers-that-be wonder if it’s something to do with Maynard, or someone in his circle, deliberately meddling in law and order for his own ends (it did seem for a moment there that this would be the case, in a kind of Dream Home (2010) way, but this possible plot development never fully gets off the ground).

Perhaps where the film begins to lose some goodwill is in the way it quickly dwindles into inaction, despite seemingly positioning itself as about to explore some potentially dynamic ideas. There’s never an upsurge in action here, nor any real surprises. There’s a lot of talking though, including by Volter (Dominik Warta), a down-at-heel investigative journalist (signified by his knackered leather jacket and unshaven face). Volter is onto Maynard. There’s also a witness called Alois, who seems determined to get the police to listen to him. But if anything, the lives of the Maynards grow even more charmed, despite these incursions.

There’s a very shallow narrative arc in Veni Vidi Vici, and an uncharitable opinion would be that this film is all set-up, no pay-off. It’s a defensible take. This film is immersive rather than instructive, destructive or dramatic. Where it does excel is in its depiction of modern torpor, in a world where wealth and cruelty seem to go remarkably, consistently unchallenged by the people most harmed by it. When Maynard asks, “Where’s the uprising?”, the line lands, despite being a simple encapsulation of an often complex, recognisable puzzler. There’s a gentle, but familiar feeling of exasperation hovering here. The film also affords itself a few moments of whimsical humour. It’s all somehow oddly compelling.

The film looks extraordinarily lovely, too. It all unfolds against that recognisable kind of minimalist luxury, the bare concrete and stone floors which signify real wealth. It’s odd how, nowadays, the really rich people like to live in structures which look like empty warehouses. Elsewhere, the film snaps into a different mode, revelling in soft fabrics, block pastels and a Cath Kidston world of florals, prettily-wrapped gifts, balloons and glitter. Ah, the gorgeous, sunlit uplands of having fuck all to do. These are easeful lives, lived by objectionable people. Things never get weirder or more momentous than that, even though the film tantalises a few things. Does it suggest that compulsive behaviour will catch up with anyone, in time? Or that attempts to tackle inequality will always fall flat, where people at large have spent long enough perfecting deliberate ignorance? A little of the latter, sure, but this isn’t a film with any cathartic moves to make, and this may well be the whole point, even if it means a rather hollow-feeling film overall.

Veni Vidi Vici (2024) will feature at both the Glasgow Film Festival (UK Premiere) and watchAUT (London Premiere) in March 2025.

The Mire (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The Mire (2023) opens with video footage of a man named Joseph (Antony Knight), leader of an organisation called The Canon. It’s soon clear that it’s a cult by any other name, with shades and aspects of very real cults, past and present. The video states that ‘the day is coming’, and we all know what that means: there are clear references to Heaven’s Gate here, as Joseph talks us through the Canon’s key beliefs in an existence beyond Earth, out amongst the stars. There’s a planned mass suicide, and it’s imminent: in fact, when we first meet Joseph away from the broadcast, we discover that it’s scheduled for the very next morning.

Ordinarily, we might ask if the congregation is fully on board with this idea: past cult suicides have taught us that this has not always been the case, with panic and chaos breaking out when the hour is finally nigh. The Mire dispenses with that idea, however: here, it’s Joseph who’s having second thoughts, and when two Canon members arrive at the church building because they have some concerns about him, it turns out that he’s just about headed out of the door with an overnight bag. In one of the film’s occasional, but pithy moments of humour, it’s made abundantly clear by these Canon members – Hannah and Marshall – that an overnight bag is a fairly odd thing to be carrying, given that one’s life is due to end in a few hours. However, Hannah (Holly McLachlan) and Marshall (Joseph Adelakun) are true believers; they’re still looking to Joseph for guidance. And they’re not about to let him leave.

By turns, the film then takes us through the individual stories of each of these followers (with on-screen chapters, obviously), exploring why and how they ever came under Joseph’s control. These flashbacks are intercut with the real-time narrative unfolding, providing some understanding of each of these otherwise taciturn – if needy – figures, still so ready to listen to Joseph’s word. Joseph himself is shown to be a shrewd man, there to offer structure and succour to the most needy people who cross his path; his success in recruiting Hannah and Marshall now presents him with a big problem, though, as they are so convinced by his teachings that they see his imminent desertion as – just maybe – part of a test of faith. That’s something which The Mire presents very clearly: once people have developed such beliefs, even those that seem to outsiders to be wildly fantastical beliefs, and once they are invested in all the trappings and parlance of that, then it becomes impossible to simply, suddenly step away. As such, Hannah and Marshall still want to proceed with the ‘prophecy’ – which refers to the suicide, of course – whilst Joseph must use all of his reserves of wit and manipulation to try and talk his away out of this mess. Each faction argues for their own way, struggling for clarity and power as they do so.

It’s funny: in some respects, The Mire feels like a strange inversion of recent horror hit Heretic, which is one of those strange, but strangely common coincidences which crop up in film, and we should remember that The Mire precedes Heretic. In both films, however, we see people arguing for their respective world views, and having these views put under increasingly uncomfortably scrutiny, particularly around the little hypocrisies which they have concealed in order to go all in on their respective religious outlooks. Here, though, it’s the visitors who create the scrutiny, leaving the host to fight back. Similarities end there, though: The Mire isn’t a horror, it’s a slow burn human drama with horrifying possibilities. It spills barely a drop of blood on camera, by the by. At around the one hour mark, it begins to feel as though things are running out of steam to an extent, but it is setting something up which comes to fruition in the final act (with some very clever writing and direction by Adam Nelson and Chris Watt).

This, then, is a film which rewards your patience, and it’s quietly devastating – watching people having everything unravelled, and seeing the time-old impulses to greed, selfishness and lies battle their way to the fore. The Mire has a very small cast and does most of its storytelling in a very limited setting, but it has plenty to say and shows plenty of skill. The ending, by the way, is a well-handled gut punch which leaves you wondering…

You can watch The Mire on Amazon Prime Video.

Bokshi (2025)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The story of Bokshi (2025) is, in essence, a simple one. For horror fans, it will also feel like a very familiar one: a young woman follows her mysterious destiny into the mountains and woods, where it turns out she’s linked by fate to ancient folklore. Along the way, there are interesting snippets and ideas to consider, and throughout, the production values on this film are very strong, with decent, committed performances. Its biggest problem stems from – to make an educated guess – its great personal importance to director and producer Bhargav Saikia as his first ever feature-length film. It’s taken five years to get it made. But Bokshi is close to three hours long, and it’s that epic runtime which dilutes its best ideas almost to the point of being negligible. A brutal edit would have improved this film tenfold; directors unable to forfeit even a few minutes of beloved footage, take note.

The labyrinthine nightmare which opens Bokshi, and the many folk horror friendly motifs which accompany it, belong to the nightmare of a young woman named Anahita (Prasanna Bisht). Believing her dreams (and her sleep incontinence) stem from PTSD over the loss of her mother, Anahita is often found poring over leaflets and information about the condition. School life is almost obligatorily hellish, and at home her grandmother proves a fierce matriarch who disapproves of her granddaughter’s histrionics, voting to send her off to boarding school rather than put up with it any longer. The histrionics are only compounded when the matriarch finds a makeshift altar and a depiction of some mysterious entity, hidden in the wardrobe. Anahita has procured all of these occult items from the Marai housemaid, giving granny an opportunity to lambast her not only for her belief in ‘black magic’ but for her class, her primitive culture. There are some tantalising moments which link class, ethnicity and occult belief here. But anyway, we’re off to boarding school, to meet some more dreadful teenagers – and a super-cool history teacher named Shalini (Mansi Multani) who shows an unusual interest in the new girl, taking her under her wing.

As she gets settled in and gets used to new bullying from different people, a lesson on an ancient stone labyrinth piques Anahita’s interest, and when it transpires that there’s a school trip heading there very soon, Anahita begs to be allowed to go. Of course she’s allowed: it looks exactly like the structure in her nightmares, and she is recalling more and more links between all of this and her late mother, who shared a fascination for the occult.

Much of the rest of the runtime of the film covers the trip into the wooded Himalayas, and it’s here that things really begin to falter. Whilst we do meet some new characters and get a sense of some unfamiliar religious, or magical beliefs, the downtime in-between these plot points is loose and unfocused. And, as much as the notion of shamanic communities promises much, it dawns on the viewer that, ultimately, this will be folk horror by numbers. Visions. Strange, feminine deities. Inescapable destiny. Mushrooms. Masks. The addition of features such as numbered chapters doesn’t help in all this, and anyone who has watched even a reasonable number of recent horror films would likely be tired of the chapters thing by now, which makes me think that the team behind Bokshi has seen a few films of this ilk, but not lots and lots. Not enough to notice the ubiquity of chapters, anyway. Elsewhere, we get acres of static shots, shots of the landscape, long snatches of accompanying music – lyrics and all – and even a few scenes which repeat. This kind of luxuriating over small details can contribute a good deal to atmosphere in the right sort of film, but given we later bolt on some very bloody, Ari Aster-style scenes, Bokshi was likely never intended as just a mood piece. For example, the sequence where Shalini gets Anahita to prove her ability to take on the hike to the labyrinth has her doing press ups and jumping jacks. Why all this? We know she’s going to be allowed to go. That, and there’s a multitude of Western eyebrow-raising safeguarding issues when a teacher lets a student into her house and plies her with liquor. Moments like these only unravel the narrative, and make implausible additions to boot. That runtime is racking up, and it needn’t.

There are some good elements along the way. As much as it can be tricky to unpick beliefs from beliefs, the mooted idea that folklore can only harm you if you know the stories is an interesting one in its own right. Lots of Western folk horror takes the opposite approach: uneducated outsiders get subsumed by entities and practices, whether they know about them or not. The settings are attractive, moving from ex-Raj India and its British hangover (the first school looks like an Anglican church) to a far more remote landscape, ungoverned by either past or present social rules. Linguists would be interested in the whys and wherefores of the code-switching between Standard English and Hindi, and in the newly-invented language of Boksirit (though of course you would likely miss that, if reliant on subtitles).

Some of the trippier elements are appealing, even if feeling oddly familiar to In The Earth (2021) – actually, the more I think of it, the more numerous scenes and structures look curiously akin to Wheatley’s film, but a lot of folk horror, when it comes down to it, turns out to be a palimpsest of similar ideas. You could be charitable and say this is because of a vast, shared folklore, which extends beyond regional and even geographical boundaries. Bokshi seems to suggest this in places, too, so if you’re amenable to it, it may be an appealing addition – as would the film’s overlay of feminist plot points and ideas, if you’re up for some political content. You just need ample patience.

Bokshi (2025) premiers at the International Film Festival Rotterdam on January 31st.

Round the Decay (2025)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

A grim history lesson kicks off Round the Decay: pay attention, because it matters later on. We start in, I’m assuming, the 19th Century: a pursuit through woodland leads to the capture of a Native American woman, who is then brought to the tent of a white settler – who it seems is expecting her. He has plans, and not just for the land. Nor is his vendetta against indigenous people the full story: he has more than conventional means at his disposal, including what looks like the ability to resurrect the dead. But he needs sacrifices. Something monstrous, dependent in some way upon a place and its people: that’s pretty much all you need to keep hold of with this film, as it’s a fairly old school monster movie, using the familiar tropes and tricks of the genre to weave together a decent, if not always ground-breaking horror narrative.

Sticking with the small community of Newport’s Valley, we move into the modern day, and meet – a lot of people. In fact, even discounting the historical prequel, I think we link up with around twelve different characters in the first twenty minutes, and more as we go: it can feel like quite a lot of characters and threads. We meet Kenzie (Victoria Mirrer) and her fiancé Zack (Topher Hansson); Bart (Cary Hite), new owner of the local inn; single mother Ros (Sienna Hubert-Ross), new employee of the inn; some community spokespeople, a hiking party, a mysterious outsider called Munroe (Black Eyed Susan star Damian Maffei)…it’s busy. In terms of plot, we get some local discussion of the town’s economic situation and need to attract more tourists – which it can ostensibly do, given the great natural beauty all around, with attractions such as Whelan’s Pass – named for the town founder – an appealing hike, but the for the fact that there’s a fenced-off, foul-smelling cave at the bottom of the trail. That all aside, the people come, and this route seems to have particular importance for Kenzie, for reasons which become more apparent.

It soon becomes clear that there’s more going wrong at Newport’s Valley than just an economic downturn. As different bands of people in turn begin to suspect that there’s something weird in that cave things kick up a gear, doing so via some nicely-handled moments of practical SFX (take a bow, Makeup Department). And, whatever was in there, is now out – following the survivors back to town.

Round the Decay is a decent indie horror, but be aware that it follows a tried-and-tested route, sticking to what works and has worked rather than risking – if that’s the right term – any surprises. For some, that may mean that it falls rather flat. It plays its narrative reasonably straight, too: there are no big aesthetic decisions, no designs on being a period piece (as much as the plotline and the monster FX feel like a big callback to a lot of straight-to-video 80s horror); there’s nothing trippy, no interruptions to the timeline, nothing of that kind. However, its performances are good, neither hamming it up nor playing it totally po-faced i.e. striking the right sort of balance for the subject matter and style. There’s enough confidence to break the tension with a few moments of humour, which work fine, and although things begin to get a little slower after the one hour mark, for the most part the film ticks along at a reasonable pace.

There’s some attempt at world-building, too. On that subject, there’s some difficulty with understanding what the monster is actually saying in the current edit of the film, though I understand that this is getting fixed ahead of the theatrical release. Monsters always have the same speaking voice, have you noticed? Their intonation can suffer as a result.

Coming across very much as a passion project and content with being in many places an affectionate homage to other films, Round the Decay will be on select big screens (US) from January 31st. This feels like a good environment for it, so if this sounds like your kind of thing, why not take a look to see if it’s coming to your area? Tickets can be purchased ahead of time by clicking on the link…

Rampo Noir (2005)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

There are a couple of things to say ahead of this review of Rampo Noir. The first is that, assuming you have read some Edogawa Ranpo and always longed to see more of his work brought to the screen, that you should be careful what you wish for: this anthology film’s scattergun selection of tales, styles and directors makes it in many respects a hard sell. The second thing to say is that, if you haven’t read any Edogawa Ranpo but fancy some lesser-seen J-horror from the same decade which brought us the likes of Ju-On (2002), then absolutely forget it. Whilst there are some elements of horror, and in places some quite abhorrent horror, these often drift out of left-field, in a film which does encompass many different styles, but still comes across as much more arthouse than horror. Rampo Noir will pop a bit of limb amputation on the screen – or at least heavily signpost it – and then idle away into pretty shots of the landscape, or some surreal, kaleidoscopic moments, apropos of very little. In essence, Rampo Noir is not for everyone, and I’m pretty sure it’s not for me, either, as much as it has interesting material dotted throughout its two hours+ runtime.

Two hours of artistically rotting corpses, pretty male psychopaths and auditory overload feels like a lot in any case, so perhaps it’s no bad thing that the first segment – Mars’s Canal – is silent. It features a naked man staggering through a barely-Earthlike landscape as he seems to reflect on the horrors of his past conduct – assuming he has some regret for the bout of sex-or-maybe-violence we see interspersed with his later wanderings. What’s it all about? No idea, but it at least operates as an hors d’oeuvre for what is to follow.

The next segment is the longest, and probably the most linear: Mirror Hell starts out at a tea ceremony lesson in a very traditional, even reactionarily so, small town in rural Japan. We are soon shown that for all the decorum integral to the ceremony itself, there’s some bad blood between some of these women. When the instructress falls dead after a surreal and head-frying experience with a small hand mirror, we learn that there’s a common denominator here: the mirror maker, Toru Itsuki (Hiroki Narimiya), whose work with the traditional skills of mirror-making have exposed him to the traditional mythology of the mirror – something which has taken over his psyche. There’s an engaging push-pull between supernaturalism and practical science here, as the investigating detective Mr Akechi accounts for the dangerous nature of the (very beautiful) mirrors by rational means. As we ponder which account is the right one, there’s plenty of visuals to enjoy. This is quite a long film, given that it’s one of four, but it seems justified in taking its time over its themes, idling over aspects of traditional Japanese practices and arts – translations of ancient texts, crafts, tea ceremonies. Rampo Noir is a bit of a misleading title overall: an alternative title is Rampo Jigoku – where ‘Jigoku’ approximately translates as ‘Hell’. However, Mirror Hell does have some identifiable noir-ish qualities, even if by coincidence. The shadows, the framing, the mysterious deaths, the hard-bitten private eye…I doubt you’d get Toru’s, erm, unusual sexual proclivities in a Hays Code noir, but it’s another reminder of where and when we actually are. This is the most successful segment by far.

The next one, Caterpillar, is based on one of Ranpo’s most unseemly short stories. Indeed, ‘The Caterpillar’ was banned by the Japanese authorities during the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 for its potentially harmful impact on morale. I’ll give them that: perhaps the time wasn’t right for the Japanese reading public to encounter a once-renowned Army veteran, a so-called and celebrated ‘war god’, bereft of his limbs and trapped in his body, little more than a ‘human caterpillar’. But the story itself is a mood piece – a dark, dark mood piece – and unlikely to be an easy story to film, although it has been done, and successfully, since Rampo Noir was made. Here, the film sticks fairly closely to the story, and is no less gruelling – a kind of Lady Chatterley’s Lover recast as a Guinea Pig film, with added arthouse stylistics. But who is watching the wife as she goads and torments her husband? Adding some of its own ideas and proclivities, Caterpillar is partly sickening and partly alienating. Its sickly sexuality is horrible to watch and its slow pace makes it all feel horribly unnecessary – in the sense that this is torture, made worse by almost rolling to a halt or pausing to overlay avant-garde flummery.

Finally, Crawling Bugs returns us to some more obviously noir-ish elements as a young actress, keen on the odd romantic tryst, becomes the object of obsession of her ostensibly ‘nice guy’ chauffeur – a man tormented by a terror of bugs, afraid to touch anyone. So he decides to kidnap her, and there’s no brilliant way out of a scenario like this for a pretty woman, so you can perhaps guess the rest. Yet, this feels lighter in tone that what has just unfolded; perhaps this is partly because there are moments of deliberate humour here, and things skip along at more of a pace. It feels absurd to feel grateful for an equally repellent story – which Crawling Bugs definitely is, in its own way – but that’s how it goes, this happens at not far off two hours in, and everything’s relative. I mean, it’d be nice if fewer women ended up with melted brains, burns, welts, limbs being chopped off or indeed a playground for maggots, but here we are. We do get a final girl, but only in the sense that she’s the final girl who’s going to have a protracted ordeal set to piano music.

Having been through all of the segments, it feels to this reviewer that there are just too many structural and tonal misfires here for things to work effectively. Nonetheless, arthouse cinema fans willing to be pushed into more unseemly terrain than usual may find enough here to love. Rampo Noir has some moments of artistic brilliance, with beautiful shots, inspired framing and striking visual flair. It certainly explores Ranpo’s fiction in radical ways, and that in itself may be enough to get it over the line for many viewers, keen to see something done with the source material which stretches beyond straightforward horror. Personally, some more sense of an overarching scheme, style and aim would have improved the overall experience, as the films feel mismatched, or else united only by sexual elements which are jarring and unpleasant, together with themes which feel simultaneously repetitive and overwhelming, especially after such a long runtime. Coming back to the original proviso: it is not for everyone, and for me will probably be hereafter filed as an interesting but defective cinematic experiment, one which has perhaps remained lesser-known for the twenty years for some of the reasons given above. If you want to make your own minds up, then the film is available now on Arrow.

Hunting Daze (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Is Nina (Nahéma Ricci) on her own in the wilderness? That’s the first question in the provocative and left-field horror-thriller Hunting Daze, a film which offers rather subtle moral questions in amidst its much more brutal, alarming developments. Nina, then, is at first framed as though she’s alone; actually, she’s part of a group, and her and her companions have broken down on a remote road somewhere in Quebec, where they’re waiting on a friend, or rather an acquaintance, to arrive to give them some fuel. It’s just as well he arrives when he does, because tempers are frayed: after a spiteful discussion about who is or isn’t a ‘whore’ and a fierce fightback by Nina, her friends abandon her, leaving her in a place where there may well be no passers-by or public transport for days. Kevin, the rescuer (Frédéric Millaire-Zouvi) only knows Nina from her work as a stripper, but he’s her only hope – as much as he isn’t too keen on taking her with him to the hunting cabin/stag weekend he’s on. He acquiesces, though; he can’t just leave her there. Relieved, she accompanies him.

My heart initially sank when the film’s script began loading up on gendered epithets, with ‘whore’, ‘stripper’, ‘virgin’, ‘damsel in distress’ and ‘witch’ arriving in quick succession, but this isn’t simply a cautionary tale about what could happen to a woman in the woods with a testosterone-jacked hunting party (as per the poster, actually). Nonetheless, the film does feel like tension is steadily brewing: true to the film’s well-chosen English language title, the film does feel like a ‘daze’, with its aerial shots and dreamy music overlaying the more expected boorish bachelor party behaviour. But, woman or not, the men seem to accept Nina, so long as she agrees to live like one of them, hunting with them, eating and drinking with them, and agreeing to whatever bonding activities they come up with along the way, replete with philosophical chit-chat about life, death and destiny. Nina seems equal to it. She’s no pushover; we’ve seen that already. And, perhaps, her profession has taught her coping skills for dealing with rambunctious male groups: for now, she’s one of the boys, and she seems to take to it very well.

As one of them, she goes off hunting the next day and it’s a successful outing, but this tentative and newly-formed social group is a delicate ecosystem, and things get more complicated when Kevin returns with another waif and stray, Dudos (Noubi Ndiaye). A gang of people, some of them strangers, all under the influence, brandishing guns and hanging out on the distant outskirts of society itself: things are about to go wrong, but again, not according to expected parameters.

To reiterate, because it’s important, Hunting Daze is a lot more thoughtful and thought-provoking than the initial sum of its parts suggests. This is a very heady film and a looping, fragmenting and hallucinatory experience, even before any substances pop up. There’s lots of napping and dreaming, too. I think it works well not only because it avoids simply travelling down familiar routes, but also because, at heart, none of these people are simply bad or very obviously flawed. There are no supervillains or sudden revelations of dark, dangerous pasts. The men and woman here are the sum of lives which may well have been, for the most part, pretty normal. Perhaps Nina’s familiarity with people’s failings has been honed by sex work, whereby she has had to fight or develop a tough skin in order to survive, but once she’s shown she’s equal to the men’s edict that she be part of their pack, she does what she said she would do. For the biggest part of its running time, the film achieves an interesting blend of dreamy camaraderie and more jagged, in places simpler commentary and symbolism, like an existential frat party – but it works, and the film’s precipitous atmosphere is well sustained.

Performances are excellent from everyone here. There’s not much dialogue, but the character development is plausible and engaging, and the physicality of the roles is really well handled by director Annick Blanc. Whilst gender (and race) do figure in this situation, it’s superseded by something even bigger, I’d argue. The film is all about the horrors of finding – and potentially being excluded from – your tribe, in an alienating and unforgiving world. The Canadian wilderness, genuinely vast and largely empty of people, serves as a fascinating backdrop for all of this, allowing the hunting party to operate as a microcosm of alienation, in a film which is provocative and nasty in carefully selective ways.

Hunting Daze (2024) will be released on 14th January 2025.

Immaculate (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

As Immaculate opens, we are shown a young woman, ardently praying to the Virgin before packing a bag and attempting to leave – though pausing to steal a substantial bunch of keys from an elderly woman’s bedside cabinet. She’s trying to escape from a convent, as revealed by the ominous group of nuns who intercept her before she can – entirely – get out through the gates. It’s a cruel, alarming sequence and as such, an honest introduction to the film; it also bodes ill for new novice Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney), newly arrived in Italy and excited to take her vows. America, she frets, just isn’t able to give her the kind of spiritual succour which she craves. Well, as with everything, be careful what you wish for.

The convent itself is beautiful; it houses a hardworking group of Sisters, all of whom seem proud of the Order’s long history, even those who are – as the supremely unimpressed Sister Isabelle has it – about to ‘meet God’. Perhaps surprisingly, there are a lot of younger nuns here: I’m reminded of one of my favourite search histories, whereby someone visited this site based on the search term ‘hot nuns surely they exist’ [sic]. However, these young girls are ‘broken birds’: runaways, unstable, or a bit of both. Despite this, and despite a few misgivings creeping in, Cecilia is resolute, taking her vow as planned. The ceremony is beautiful too: this is, on the whole, a very picturesque film. It also starts gently showing to us that much of this devout faith could be characterised as hypocritical: vows of poverty and chastity take place against a backdrop of moribund finery. Even if the chastity element is safe in this remote spot, then the charity part looks a little more problematic, at least in some respects. There’s plenty of finery here. And there are other, more acute discrepancies too: Cecilia begins to espy private rituals, isolated supplicants; there are odd sights, sounds, odd dreams. By day, the very real charity and care work performed by the women serves as quite a contrast, but there is clearly more to this place.

Things change, shall we say, a lot more significantly when Cecilia is confronted by a… change in her circumstances, shifting both her relationship with her Order and with the Order’s personable young priest, Father Sal (Álvaro Morte), who seems to take an especial interest in this resolute, if traumatised young woman. Reconfiguring both her role and her future in the convent, Cecilia is by turns alienated, celebrated – and confined. And that’s just the start. Oh really, it is.

This is such a fun – fun? – film to unpack. There’s the supercharged patriarchy of the Catholic Church, the intersection of science and faith, and the way that things which can’t be, must somehow be. At the centre of it all is the female body, and its persistent, pesky calls for autonomy – here, played out in a bizarre microcosm where the powers that be do not want to give up their prize. There’s no space to relax in Immaculate, which works in its favour: its at-first charming domestic sphere turns out to be terrifying, less a haven and more a trap. Sydney Sweeney plays it perfectly as Cecilia, too, never overplaying her part (and, thankfully, she’s given the right amounts of silence and space. There’s more to a performance than dialogue, which both actors and filmmaker appreciate here).

It’s hard, at this point, not to mention a certain…other film, a film where a young woman gets systematically isolated and lied to by a group which is exploiting her and her body. It’s almost a shame not to be able to talk about this other film without absolutely spoiling Immaculate, as in many ways Michael Mohan’s vision feels like a stylish update on that particular seminal horror. But even…the film I’m not going to mention for fear of spoilers never musters quite this level of escalating, engrossing batshittery. That’s a compliment, by the way. Immaculate is much more grisly, more overtly cruel and more expansive, whilst just as thought-provoking. I also very much enjoyed its dark, witty use of symbolism, its touches of deft humour and its boldness.

Whilst it could be dispiriting to think that, well over half a century since the film which must not be mentioned was made, we’re still imagining horror narratives whereby women’s rights over their own flesh are taken from them, there’s a kind of riotous comfort in the redemptive fightback on offer here, as the film goes where I did not expect it to go. It makes you inwardly cheer some rather grim behaviour – because you are so totally on side with Sweeney’s character by the end that there feels like no other sensible reaction, and that’s quite something. Immaculate is an incredibly strong and assured film, offering a deftly paced blend of brutality and smarts. I hope Mohan makes more horror.

Nosferatu (2024)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Well, Robert Eggers has done it again; whether you think he should have or not very much depends on your level of affection for his work to date. His spin on Nosferatu has been tantalising audiences for what seems like forever, but certainly ever since it was announced as an alternative Christmas 2024 movie. As with other, high-profile horror films of the past year, a strong promotional campaign can be a mixed blessing, but certainly the grim Gothic splendour suggested by the trailer looked very promising. And it’s great: this is, all else aside, a beautiful, stark, visually impeccable film. But, sadly, there are also a hell of a lot of issues, many of which become fully clear as the film runs out of ground in its second hour.

Oh, come on. Deep down, you know it too.

Weaving together elements of Murnau’s 1922 classic and Herzog’s 1979 masterpiece – a film which, cards on the table, I consider to be one of the finest horrors ever made – this newest rendering of the same not-Dracula storyline stays more or less faithful to the name changes, relocations etc. used by Murnau. As such, we follow a young solicitor called Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult). Thomas, recently married, gets packed off to remote Transylvania to broker a property purchase being made by an elderly aristocrat, who is strangely keen to settle in Germany (or what would become Germany, a generation later). Thomas sees this as a sound career move, assuring him and his wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) of a comfortably genteel life together. Of course, as soon as he heads off, he’s beset by horse thieves, gypsies (not in cahoots with the Undead here, but not exactly helpful either), a surly innkeeper and guests, all of whom warn him off making the rest of the trip to the castle. As he deals with a version of Count Orlok he can barely see but knows well enough to fear, at home, his nervy wife – now in the care of friends of theirs – begins to experience old nightmares of a monstrous figure, hellbent on claiming her as its own. Thomas is trapped abroad, Ellen is detaching from reality – and to make it all worse, Orlok is soon on his way. His vessel arrives in Wisborg and brings with it a ‘plague’ which can only be stopped by somehow breaking the Orlok curse.

There are lots of great features here, and the film does set up a number of interesting elements which, as it moves its pieces into play, suggest great things. However, the film casts its spell chiefly through its visual details, meaning that once you have taken the time to enjoy and appreciate these, you may want more of the other things which matter: a script, characterisation, pace. Before that moment comes, though, the costumes, set design and cinematography are all outstanding, showcasing Eggers’ long and fruitful years as a production designer. Perhaps he moved the film back into the mid-19th Century for purely aesthetic reasons, but if so, it’s a good call. This is a dark, gloomy vision, and probably the most Gothic piece of work to make it to the screens in quite some time. The sound design is effective, and by retaining characters from the 1922 film – such as Herr Knock (Simon McBurney) – Eggers can use the familiar, so to speak, to take things further, adding in bigger, nastier and more grisly sequences. So far, so good: who could find fault in that?

As things progress, it seems that there are two key issues with the film. The first is that modern screenwriters seem to have a problem with subtext, despite the interest and entertainment which stem from the careful, multi-layered readings this can offer. They’d rather plump for TEXT. A cynic might suspect that, on occasion, it’s because they don’t trust us to understand subtext. Whatever the reason, though, it means that a decision was made during the writing of Nosferatu (2024) to move away from the sexual subtext of Dracula and many of its subsequent on-screen versions, by making things a hell of a lot more overt. Here, it involves making the plot all about a psychic sex pact, in a film full of pleading, pawing, tearful and sometimes laughable quickies. This drags us away from the suggestion and subtlety of the previous versions of Nosferatu, at some cost to the film as a whole. The sets are a lot more plausibly intimate than the sex. Yet, this isn’t the chief problem here. Well, actually it contributes, but it’s linked to a bigger issue.

Once the first of a few ripples of laughter broke out amongst the audience in my screening, it became clear that Nosferatu hadn’t really decided on whether it wanted to be camp or not. It seems torn, somehow, between its sombre, monochrome nightmarishness and, say, the gurning misdelivery of some seriously bad dialogue which cannot do anything but generate laughter. Only Willem Dafoe, who himself played Schreck/Orlok in the fantastic Shadow of the Vampire (2000), can really pitch it correctly (and, by the by, he is such a welcome addition here). Perhaps Eggers would say of course his Nosferatu is intended to be camp, but I’m not so sure that was his aim. There’s a sense that filmmakers will always claim that was their intent, even if it patently wasn’t; it suggests an affinity with the audience, rather than gross misjudgement. Script errors, mistakes over how people in this period may have spoken – these detach you from the horror itself. After the third wave of giggles, I started to wonder if people giggled through Nosferatu The Vampyre in the late Seventies. It seems hard to imagine – even though Kinski’s Orlok is, by quite a few measures, definitively camp. Bill Skarsgård’s Orlok, with his moustache and his maggots, is too swaddled in prosthetics and too barely-seen to be properly camp; the rest of the cast, though putting in decent enough turns, feel young and flimsy and they aren’t developed enough to allow us to really know them. Lily-Rose Depp does what she can with some rum lines, but her ‘present absence’ style of performance isn’t quite substantial enough in the end, especially given that she’s doing what’s already been done, with the same ending – bare flesh excepted – that we’ve come to expect.

Nosferatu (2024) is a triumph of design, with a genuine early sense that it is building up to something spectacular. It is beautiful, mesmerising and promising. However, despite its mastery of atmosphere and aesthetics, it lacks the necessary substance and impetus to deliver on its promises, and it gets bogged down, tonally and thematically. By the close, it has lost a lot of its strength, and becomes instead – nudity or not – a fairly safe re-tread of what has come before.

Nosferatu (2024) is on general release now.