Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

Men (2022)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

In recent years, no doubt as a result of changing social attitudes and debates, there’s been a steadily-increasing number of films which – subtly or less subtly – interrogate the relationships between men and women. This is their specific modus operandi, rather than incidental to the story. Men (2022) makes no secret of its modus operandi; it’s overt from the opening scenes. It also opts very much for a horror lens, distorting and refracting its key ideas through heavily symbolic content. The issue with this, for all its strengths along the way, is that the film struggles to justify, or to explore that symbolism; if you were to be uncharitable, you could even suggest that there simply isn’t enough depth here to bring everything together at the end, and it’s thus left to the audience to do it for themselves.

That’s not to say that the film doesn’t start strongly: it absolutely does, weaving an intense sense of dread and vulnerability. This is cemented by the performance of Jessie Buckley as Harper, who immediately comes across as a woman raw with grief after the unexpected death of her husband, James. But grief is seldom uncomplicated; James’s death came after a number of problems for the couple, culminating in Harper’s decision to ask for a divorce. To help get over this ordeal, Harper has rented a house in the remote English countryside. When she arrives, she’s greeted by the owner, Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear) – what we’d tend to call an ‘eccentric’, an old country boy who has lived very much within the village bounds, though he seems harmless, and Harper’s plan to get away from it all seems, initially, to be working. She heads out to explore the area, and the greenery and the silence seem to be working their magic. (Incidentally, let’s assume seeing apples on the trees at the same time as bluebells in the woods is all part of the strange otherworldliness of this place, rather than a daft oversight.)

As mentioned above, Men explores its themes through a horror lens, and there’s always a storm after a moment of calm such as this. As Harper playfully tests out the echo of her voice under an old, disused railway arch, she seems to disturb someone: a man at the other end of the tunnel stands up, and then begins to make his way towards her. She responds as anyone would – or at least, as any lone woman socialised from early childhood to steer clear of strange men in lonely locations would. She retreats, but the nude (!) male figure follows her.

Thus begins the unravelling of whatever binds Harper, even nominally, to reality; this means, in terms of plot coherence, a series of diminishing returns. Not only does this strange, mute man follow her back to the comparative safety of the house, but all of the men she encounters thereafter (all played by Kinnear) display a range of threatening or degrading behaviours towards her. She behaves at first as you may expect, which is to run through the gamut of: attempted politeness, bemusement, anger and fear – pretty much in that order. However, the stranger things get, the less Harper’s reactions resonate with what’s expected, and the looser the relationship between narrative and exposition becomes. The film also introduces some very loaded symbolism and imagery which it values enough to come back to several times, though never quite to the point of unpacking that symbolism. In fact, in its initial setup, Men did remind me a little of Robin Redbreast (1970), story, folk horror symbolism and all.

The difference is that, neither in its dialogue nor its denouement, do these images and motifs get explored in any depth; even if they are aesthetically appealing and shot beautifully, they tantalise at a meaningful conclusion which, sadly, never comes. After becoming engrossed in the ratcheting isolation of a profoundly likeable and sympathetic female lead – and equally impressed by the acting chops of Rory Kinnear, who is an absolute asset to everything he’s ever in – the film withers and dithers away to an ending, which feels disappointing. It feels unfair to everyone concerned in establishing and carrying the film to that point, too; adding in a quick hodgepodge of grotesque surrealism feels like a cop out, not a bold artistic decision. It’s also difficult to determine whether the film is critiquing sexist attitudes, or glorying in regurgitating them somehow; much of this remains unchallenged, or gets blurred by the strong new focus on the ick factor.

Men does many things very well, particularly in its first hour: it’s artistically made, well shot, with a haunting choral soundtrack which perfectly suits the escalating tension on-screen. Its initial confidence is also clear in its early use of playful notes, giving us some moments of dark humour to offset the sense of a true existential crisis in the offing. Sadly, the rather sudden spasm into all-out metaphor (after rather clumsily lining up a few obvious symbolic nods) dispenses with many of the finer points which the film had built. It’s fitting that Kinnear spends a lot of time wandering around in the altogether, as The Emperor’s New Clothes comes to mind at this point. It’s a shame, and though no detriment to the excellent performances, it’s at great detriment to the film as a cogent whole. As I left the cinema, I overheard another attendee say to his friend, ‘I guess I’ll have to Google what that all meant’. That isn’t really the hallmark of a fulfilling trip to the cinema or an effective story, I’d argue.

Men (2022) is in cinemas now.

Interview: The Passenger’s Ramiro Blas

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Following on from our recent review of the ‘creature feature road trip’ movie The Passenger, we were pleased to get the opportunity for a quick chat with leading man Ramiro Blas, who plays the inimitable (and potentially divisive) leading man Blasco in the film. Blas has a long pedigree as an actor – over twenty years – and a wide range of experience in TV and film. But it’s in The Passenger that many of the readers of the site may be encountering his work for the first time. We talked about his experiences playing Blasco and of appearing in The Passenger (which hits some theatres on June 3rd and VOD at the end of this month).

WP: Firstly, thank you very much for talking to Warped Perspective! You are an experienced actor who also has some experience in genre cinema – including a role in [REC] 4. What attracted you to The Passenger?

RB: What attracted me to The Passenger, obviously when I finished reading the script, was the arc that occurs with this kind of retrograde, homophobic and even sexist antihero, but throughout the filming that changes radically and you realise that he is a character from the deep Spain with an old-fashioned education like the one that exists to this day in many villages. I was interested in how he ends up becoming almost a lovable and admirable character. The way he goes from antihero to hero.

WP: Where did you find the inspiration for Blasco? In your opinion, is he a sympathetic character? Does he have good attributes?

RB: I consider that he is a character full of kind attributes that make him a gentle being; he even goes so far as to risk it all for a creature that has nothing to do with him and ends up almost adopting her with a paternal kind of love, beyond anything the first indications of the film suggest.

WP: How do you expect audiences to react to Blasco?

RB: We talked a lot during the filming and during the creation of the character about how we originally expected people to be a little freaked out by the kind of retrograde character that he was. However, I always bet that he was a character who was going to stay with the audience and that he would end up being loved. In fact, I learned to love the character. It is a character that allowed me to change a lot the image that I have as an actor, because here in Spain (because of the series that I have done before) I was always stuck in the role of the bad guy. However, this character is tinged with a goodness and a sincerity that filled my soul.

WP: The Passenger gets quite…messy in places. Did you enjoy working on this kind of ‘body horror’ project? What was fun, and what was not so fun?

RB: The characteristics of the filming attracted me a lot, especially because I know the directors and I knew what they were looking for. I had already worked on short films with them, especially with Fernando [González Gómez], and I know his cinematographic point of view. The project caught me from the start, because as I read it I was imagining what the images were going to be like, especially because of that continuous tribute that the film pays the cinema of the 80s where horror became entertainment as well. There are many analogies to great directors and great films of the 70s and 80s.

The good things about the project were really everything: travelling through the character and their moments, discovering within myself what were the real fears that this character could feel. The only bad thing was the weather conditions, because it was filmed at night in the middle of the mountain forest and the cold was enormous! That’s the only bad thing I could say.

WP: In terms of your own likes and influences – are you a genre film fan? If so, what kinds of films do you love?

RB: Well, I don’t know if I could say that I’m a fan of the genre. But it’s a genre that amuses me above all things, and in which I always try to find a fear that goes beyond the pre-established, beyond the stereotyped. I do like horror movies with lots of reality. I like psychological horror films, especially where the fears of any human being are manifested in the film and where the actors who play the characters in the film transmit and transmute, going through those fears in an absolutely real way.

WP: And finally, now that The Passenger is getting a release – what is next for you?

RB: At the moment I am shooting a rather dark series, a psychological thriller for the Netflix platform and then there are a couple more film projects to shoot in Italy that we are waiting for. The actor’s life is like that, we are always waiting sweetly…

Many thanks to Ramiro Blas for his time!

The Passenger (2021)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The blurb for The Passenger – or La pasajera, to give it its original title – doesn’t give too much away; going from this to an opening scene which seems to point to a different genre of horror altogether, the film we actually get turns out to be quite a pleasant, unpleasant surprise. The Passenger could be best described as a creature feature road trip, darkly funny and overblown, and tailor-made to be a diverting Saturday night film – which is of course intended to be a compliment.

Although we start by picking through some potentially offputting genre staples – lost hitchhikers in the woods, creepy mist, creepy ghostly (?) woman hightailing it out of said mist – this is brief, and we’re quickly whisked off elsewhere, with more than a few signals that none of this it to be taken too seriously. Somewhere in rural Spain, we meet Carlos Blasco (Ramiro Blas), a driver who ekes out a living by hiring out his ‘vintage’ van – it’s not quite a taxi, and it’s not quite an independent hire, as he’s along for the ride.

On this occasion, he’s due to drive three women – a religious type, and a career woman dropping off her unimpressed teenage daughter at her father’s – and it’s soon clear that Blasco is clearly a comedy of errors kind of a guy, a fact which doesn’t really endear him to his right-minded passengers. He seems well meaning, but he tends to say the wrong things, particularly where women are concerned: for all that, he’s warm and likeable: this could be the wrong impression, but it doesn’t feel like we’re intended to oppose him or dislike him. He quickly forms an odd friendship with the teenager, Marta (Paula Gallego), too, which draws her away from being the surly teenager she first appears to be.

The awkward journey continues, but when it goes from bad to worse, it really goes from bad to worse.

Noticing something at the roadside, they pull over and Marta finds herself investigating what looks clearly like the kind of space debris which can only lead to dreadful, splattery consequences for the people that discover it. They get back into the bus and a squabble soon ensues, but there’s more: the bus then seems to hit someone, a woman stood out in the darkness of the road. The women on the bus insist that they go back and help this person, but there’s something …not quite right about them, even before they’re dragged onto the bus. The set-up is complete then, and things are about to get very weird (this also casts a different light on what seemed to be a ghostly figure in the early reels; oh no, it ain’t).

That’s enough with the plot summary: the important thing is that what ensues is a fairly ambitious, rather enjoyable mash-up of different genre elements. There is a lot if accompanying dialogue, sure, but no justifiable way to say that things get boring. It has the fun, OTT feel of something like Night of the Creeps, but the road trip element is an engaging development, as it’s usually associated with Hitcher-style threats – very definitely human, even if oddly powerful or knowledgeable to the point of seeming a bit supernatural. Well, whatever is involved here, it pays dividends in terms of horrible ‘ick’ body horror. One slight issue is that not all of the Spanish cultural references fully land; some expressions go untranslated, for example, which might not be hugely significant, but it’s a shame to feel like you’re potentially missing something. But hey. Along the way, we also get decent characters and good performances which really hold things together. The unlikely due of Marta and Blasco is genuinely charming, and – come what may – Blasco is great, so it would be great to see him on screen again. Perhaps we will. Perhaps we will.

The Passenger will be released in cinemas on June 3rd 2022 and on VOD/DVD on June 28th.

Studio 666 (2022)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The (alleged) relationship between heavy metal and pure, unadulterated evil has given rise to some great horror movies down through the decades, and the best of these have been able to marry a sense of humour with their often fairly grisly content. When it comes to this humour, it’s also important that the film laughs with the audience – because you can bet that a large proportion of the audience will be metal fans themselves – rather than at them; the film has to be on our side, never peering disapprovingly in from the outside. Films like the standard-setting Trick or Treat (1986), Black Roses (1988) – shut up, it’s fun – and of course Deathgasm in 2015 have helped to form up a small, but solid subgenre all about the Satanic Panic which still gets linked to rock and roll.

These aren’t words I ever really expected to link to a horror film review, but, well, step forward, Dave Grohl, for it was the Nicest Man in Rock who came up with the initial idea for Studio 666 – a worthy new entrant into the aforementioned subgenre. Based on his idea, directed by BJ McDonnell (equally well-versed in metal videos/documentaries and horror, given his work on Hatchet III) it’s a film which feels like what could have happened had the audio recordings in Evil Dead II come with some good guitar hooks. From that, you can probably guess a lot about the plot. Grohl came up with the idea for the film based on his own experiences of recording the tenth Foo Fighters album in a strange, remote mansion house. Ergo, Studio 666 places the Foo Fighters back in that strange, remote mansion house and this time loads it with mysteriously abandoned recording equipment – equipment linked to an up-and-coming metal band in the 90s, who sadly had to abandon their killer album on account of being suddenly dead.

The Foo Fighter management suggests that the band should cut themselves off from the outside world to really hunker down and get their new record done, and so they agree, heading to the abandoned Encino mansion -but they still struggle for inspiration. Grohl, in character, decides to explore the house’s basement (of course) where he finds said abandoned equipment and listens to the tape: it’s amazing (and it actually is really, really good). It cuts sharply through his writer’s block and helps the band to get going on their next album, but at what cost? (That was a rhetorical device, but go on – guess.)

This is an absolutely unpretentious film, and it’s a lot of fun. A few things are clear – one of which is that, however successful the Foo Fighters are as a band, they ain’t actors, but somehow their clear shifts from script to improv, and a certain level of looking even less like actors up against the genuine actors working alongside them, more than works out. I think it’s because whatever else is going on in terms of their performances, they’re very comfortable in each other’s company and it seems like they’re really having fun (something which comes into especially sad focus, given that drummer Taylor Hawkins has passed away since this project happened). I’m not sure in what order the scenes were filmed, but it looks as though the band warms to their roles as the storyline progresses; either that, or you just kind of get used to the film’s style and how they each come across; what’s important is that it works on its own terms.

You could choose to see a Real World point in here about the unholy cabal of record executives always pushing for the next album, and certainly there’s an argument to be made for that reading of the film, but it won’t be made here, because the occult elements are far more entertaining seen as a means to some ingeniously gory set pieces; they just happen to be set pieces which come about via occult plotlines, given that there’s a demonic presence pushing for the completion of the ultimate heavy metal album track (and band members quibbling about how unfeasibly long the track is clearly haven’t been keeping up with Bell Witch’s career arc). Practical effects are blended with CGI very well, and there’s a lot to be said for seeing ex-Germs guitarist and FF musician Pat Smear (who now comes across as a kindly uncle figure) screaming his lungs out as malign entities try to tear him apart. Pretty much everyone in the film, by the by, gets put through their paces, with each getting their moment in the grisly spotlight. Fans of the Hatchet franchise, and similar, will love the knowing homage to horror classics, and it’s entertaining picking out the potential nods to pre-existing films (I would put a… okay, a tiny amount of money down on there being a reference to The Sentinel (1977) at one point).

Studio 666 doesn’t set out to change the face of horror, but it has a sense of where it fits in, it clearly showcases a love of the genre as well as a love of the music so often closely associated with it, and it’s a great Saturday night film – with the right balance of jokes and SFX. There are some great cameos, too. (The only truly unbelievable plot point is that Dave Grohl, in any condition, wouldn’t graciously take the demo from the food delivery guy, but you can’t have everything.)

Studio 666 is available on VOD now.

Interview: Sophie & Dan of Sketchbook Pictures

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Whilst it’s usual to get screeners for feature-length projects arriving in the site inbox, it’s less usual to get screeners for short films, so it was great to hear from the UK-based Sketchbook Pictures a couple of weeks ago: Sketchbook has (thus far anyway) exclusively worked in short film – a medium which Warped Perspective has long championed. Warped Perspective not only reviewed The Thing That Ate The Birds, the short film which they sent, but we were also able to embed a link where readers could turn into viewers, and view the film for free: if you missed that one, well click here. You can come back afterwards.

Sophie and Dan then very kindly agreed to answer a few questions about their work to date. Enjoy!

1) Firstly, how did you guys come to be working together on film? And how do you work as a team?

We fell in love first and are now married with two boys. Along the way, we started collaborating whilst Sophie was at art school, firstly with Dan as Director/Writer and Sophie as Art-Director/Producer, but this evolved into collaborating on the writing and then eventually as co-writer/co-directors. It was a natural evolution for us.

It’s hard to define exactly how we work as a team as we’ve been doing it in different capacities for so long, so it feels very organic. Hopefully we are on the same page, trust, empower and don’t talk over each other (too much)!

2) Thinking about your careers so far – what is your proudest moment?

It was a very special day when we found out that The Thing That Ate The Birds had been selected for SXSW in 2021.

3) You have made a number of short films to date: what, in your opinion, makes for a really great short film?

Some of our favourite shorts like Nash Edgerton’s Spider, Simon Ellis’s Soft and Rúnar Rúnarsson’s Two Birds are all brilliantly executed, simple and clear narratives with big repercussions. These are three absolute gems that are well worth seeking out.

For us, we always try to keep the essence of our shorts as simple as possible, so with The Thing That Ate The Birds it’s structured around the question of what is killing the birds? With ‘Bill’ (a DIY short we made in 2019) it’s based around the idea of a woman trying to communicate with a dead loved one.

4) In terms of The Thing That Ate The Birds, where did the idea for this come from? Would I be right in thinking you could interpret events in the film in a more symbolic sort of way than taking it at face value, or did you not really have any sort of intent regarding that?

Sophie grew up in the North Yorkshire Dales and we both lived in a small farmhouse on the moors for a year in our late 20s where we got to know the local gamekeepers and take part in grouse shoots. This was a fascinating window into a world that not everyone gets to see, and we’ve always loved the friction between commerce and conservation that lies at the heart of what a gamekeeper does. It felt like a great backdrop and setting for a horror film.

We wrote the film during the Brexit campaign when it really felt like communication and nuance had disappeared from the political discourse and in lots of ways, we felt that the country was losing its head, hence the themes and backdrop of the film.

The key theme and takeaway for us was lack of communication (both in his marriage, the world outside and how he deals with unfamiliar intruders on his land) so we worked hard to make the genre and drama elements reflect each other and propel how his actions have tragic consequences.

The idea that the film could be seen more as symbolic is totally valid and became more apparent to us as we were working in the edit – but in saying that, our stance is that everything you see in the film happens to the characters. 

5) Short films are often an important part of film festivals: it can be frustrating, then, that excellent shorts don’t often get widely seen or known about beyond the festival circuit. Is that something you have found yourselves? Do you think there is scope for short films to be more widely appreciated, and if so – how?

Funnily enough we were talking about this the other day. There must be thousands of shorts and features that are not online or in an archive and could be potentially lost forever.

For us short film is an art form of its own and now there are fantastic platforms to place your film post festival run, for example ALTER, DUST, Short of the Week, Vimeo, etc. Channels like Alter and Dust are great, because they have subscribers and an inbuilt audience which has been a big help to us getting more eyes on our work.

It would be great to programme more shorts before features at the cinema or on TV channels like Film Four, but advertising rules, so it’s either a 15-minute short film or 15 minutes of adverts…

6) What draws you to genre filmmaking in particular?

We love it for the pure genre thrills of tension and suspense, but also for the way fantasy and genre can talk about the truth of human existence, fear of the unknown and politics – whilst making you either sick or laugh or both. There are endless possibilities to genre!

7) And finally…what are your plans moving forward – do you have any exciting projects on the way that you can mention?

We are about to start developing a feature screenplay with a well-known partner that we cannot name yet. It’s another horror film set on the Yorkshire moors. And in the summer, we should be shooting our first music video – which will contain genre elements, of course…

Many thanks to Sophie and Dan for their time. You can keep up with Sketchbook Pictures on Twitter and Instagram.

NYIÞ ‘᛬ᚢᛁᛋᚿᛁ•ᚼᛆᛏᛁ•ᚼᚱᛅ᛬’ (2022)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Icelandic band NYIÞ are not particularly forthcoming when it comes to publicity. Very little is known about them, and you often need to look to other artists to get even the barest amount of information about them, but it’s clear that – inside Iceland and beyond – they have a small but dedicated group of admiring fans. Nor have they just come along as a new project, as they already have a long history of recording and performance. What’s at least sort of clear is this: they seem on the surface to be a good fit with the metal genre, and they have some touring history with metal bands, but they’re little to do with that genre at all.

Given their album artwork, their song and album titles and their stage set-ups (right down to their interest in the occult and ritual), you’d be forgiven for expecting something between Sun O))) and Dragged into Sunlight – which isn’t the worst comparison, actually, but NYIÞ is far more about ambient, malevolent soundscapes and what I’d have to shrug and eventually refer to as ‘post rock’. If that has piqued your interest at all, then you could do worse than to spend a few minutes looking at some live footage of the band, captured last year. The skulls on the mike stand and the concealed faces look familiar, but the sound is less so.

Recently released on France’s Cyclic Law label, the keyboard-taxing “᛬ᚢᛁᛋᚿᛁ•ᚼᛆᛏᛁ•ᚼᚱᛅ᛬” is in fact a compilation of the band’s earlier releases, here brought together with some additions. Linking these together, we are told, is the use of ‘curse poetry’, a literary tradition which goes back through thousands of years of history. The band has either repurposed existing texts to make these additions, or looked to historical precedent (a grimoire dating to the 1600s is one such source). There is some slight sense of the ‘joins’ in the album perhaps, given that it brings different projects together, but overall it works very well, with the opening track ‘Decompose’ (also the only track title in English) setting the tone: slow, impressive, often pleasantly dissonant. There’s no clamour of guitars, rather a deliberate track which begins to add in the wide array of instruments used on the album. Orchestral sections run throughout, and the use of strings on Angurboði is genuinely very beautiful.

By the time Fjörbrot plays, it feels as though this is the closest we’re going to get to anything conventionally ‘guitar band’ in nature, though the song feels like a continuation of the palpable menace of Til eru hræ, with its sinister vocal burr. (Of course, what is spoken on the album is in Icelandic, though non-Icelandic speakers will still catch the sense, or at least the tone.) By the time we get to Rót (‘Root’) and Iða (‘Maelstrom’), the final two tracks, it does feel as though we have come full circle; there’s certainly ‘magic in the web of it’ when you consider the album as a whole.

“᛬ᚢᛁᛋᚿᛁ•ᚼᛆᛏᛁ•ᚼᚱᛅ᛬” is a heavy, ominous album, very expansive by its nature – but it works well, and is certain to reward further listening. Full of slow gravity, it takes an interesting premise, explores it in an unconventional manner and delivers a crisp-sounding, atmospheric and hypnotic release (Cyclic Law are past masters at working with bands who eschew convention in their music, and they have done excellent work here). Of course, it won’t be for everyone, but none of the really interesting stuff ever is.

“᛬ᚢᛁᛋᚿᛁ•ᚼᛆᛏᛁ•ᚼᚱᛅ᛬” is available now via Bandcamp.

The Thing That Ate The Birds (2021)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

It’s always promising when a horror short film gives itself a title as straight up and out there as ‘The Thing That Ate The Birds‘, and accordingly, this film certainly doesn’t disappoint. It packs a lot more into its eleven-minute running time that a Thing which Eats Birds though, so whilst you get what it says on the tin, it doesn’t exactly stop there either. The film manages a balancing act between the kind of grisly fare suggested by the title, and a surprising amount of character and back story – indeed, more than you often get in a feature, which is quite some feat.

Filmed on location in North Yorkshire – let’s declare our bias here as this site is run from North Yorkshire, and say it is one of the most beautiful places in the world – Abel (Eoin Slattery) is a gamekeeper with a significant problem. Something is killing his birds before he can, and he’s perplexed. Whatever it is – his assistant Jake (Lewis Mackinnon) suggests foxes or stoats – it’s making short work of them, their remains bleeding out on the ground in front of him. This would all be bad enough, but it seems that the fate of his birds isn’t Abel’s only problem. The film is very good at including little visual clues in its shots, and so the fact that Abel wakes up on the couch instead of in bed with wife Grace (Rebecca Palmer) is one thing, but you can quickly guess that the half-drained tumbler of whisky on the table in front of his impromptu bed may be an issue too…

With the situation at home clearly as dire as his work dilemma, Abel makes the decision to focus on the latter, which perhaps strikes him as easier to solve; it’s a decision which leads on quickly to a run of other decisions, proving that his instinct wasn’t correct. Now, it’s at this point in the film that you are de facto invited to see what ensues in a straightforward, horror film way or in more symbolic terms. On balance, the film feels richer when understood through its symbolism, though it works perfectly well either way – another compliment for director/writer team Sophie Mair and Dan Gitsham, who have ensured that it works on both levels, with neither interpretation feeling like a cop out. What you do see on screen invokes palpable dread; there’s enough malevolent mystery here to ensure investment up until the end (and no tone-shifting determination to pack in a simplistic all-loose-ends-tied-up conclusion, either. The film hangs onto a few questions, but parts ways with the audience via a grisly, almost darkly funny final frame.)

There’s some BFI heft behind The Thing That Ate The Birds, which probably helps to contribute towards the film’s quality in style and appearance; the balance between sweeping, wide frames which convey the scale of the landscape and the very intimate, even claustrophobic domestic scenes works very well indeed. All in all, this is an impressive short film which leaves one final question hanging, a question which works however you read the rest of the film: how responsible is Abe for what happens here?

Sound good? Why then, you can take a look at the film for yourselves here.

The Sadness (2021)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

There has inevitably been a surge in ‘lockdown horrors’ over the past couple of years. It’s a fairly broad church, with some of these films simply being made under lockdown conditions, whilst others directly address the threat of novel viruses – but nearly every one of these films has directly or indirectly addressed the things we’re perhaps now newly aware that we fear: isolation, othering, illness, loss. The Sadness (2021) covers the lot, and is without a doubt the best of these so far: it’s a disturbing, relentless and unflinching film, a knowing entrant to the zombie horror genre in many ways, but knowingly crossing into other genres, too, whilst never offering any respite from what unfolds.

Modern Taiwan is ‘learning to live’ with a new virus called the Alvin virus, which causes flu-like symptoms; some commentators are alarmed at this laissez-faire approach, believing that the virus’s proximity to rabies (yeah, just go with this bit) means that it still poses a significant threat. Others see the whole thing as a hoax; it’s an election year, after all, and what better way to whip up fear in the masses? In the midst of all this, and quietly living their lives, is young couple Jim and Kat (Berant Zhu and Regina Lei) – and let’s be honest, it’d be no manner of film at all if the anxieties over the virus didn’t turn out to be very well-founded. However, as it turns out, the virus acts in an interesting way. Jim and Kat separate for work that morning as usual, right before this sudden shift in events becomes apparent: they then need to find each other against this chaotic backdrop. Yes, it’s a familiar plot point, but like everything else in this film, the journey is quite something. Happily, Jim and Kat are a sweet couple with all of the usual petty grievances and quirks which help to render them plausible, and they work effectively as key characters, each with their own traumatic character arc. Oh man, these are traumatic character arcs.

To the virus itself. Rather than turning the infected into fully mindless zombies, or indeed killing them outright, it instead gives people permission to be the worst versions of themselves; think Freud and his ‘weak superego’ idea, only run wild. People are becoming gleefully violent, unhinged – but importantly, still rational – monsters. Ever wanted to crush the head of the guy in the queue in front of you? The virus makes it all oh-so possible, or even impossible for you not to indulge those feelings. And, of course, it doesn’t take many people to begin shunning the rules of normal life before those rules cease to matter much. The film doesn’t present a society already under siege, mid-way through a crisis – as many of the Romero zombie films do – and nor does it quite explode into action the way that, say, World War Z does; instead, it shows the uneven, and startling ways in which society can be upended by people who have, as a result of the virus in this case, dispensed with social order. To come back to Romero, the on-paper similarities to The Crazies are clear – love for his films is writ large here in several scenes – but The Sadness blends its Crazies-esque plot points with what looks like a nod to the ultraviolence of the Noughties, all blue-filtered torture and a camera which stays unwaveringly on scenes of incredible cruelty.

Along the way, the film looks superb: shots are composed carefully, make-up effects more than match up to the virus carriers’ grotesque, joyous curiosity about what can be done to the human body, and the pace of the film does just enough to render everyone here an unknown quantity; you’re often not quite certain if the person filling the frame is, in fact, infected, or otherwise unhinged. The ‘what are you reading?’ man on the train is one of the film’s most successful sequences for me, an eminently recognisable scenario which plays out in part in every city in the world on a daily basis. The man’s anger and frustration when Kat asks politely to be allowed to read quietly is in itself creepy and alarming; let’s remember that he escalates this situation when there’s nothing at the time wrong with him. And, though the virus divides Taiwan suddenly and sharply into ‘us and them’, it’s also clear that some people are apparently always on the verge of perpetrating horrors against one another, and that the virus simply grants permission for that.

It’s hard not to think of the current situation, in Ukraine of course, but also in other places perhaps less fully reported in the West, where people apparently behave appallingly as soon as they feel like they can. It’s a deeply unsettling aspect of humanity: to what extent are our consciences simply mandated? Ditto, people’s understandable – but still often unpalatable – desire to look away, remain uninvolved, is put under scrutiny here too. The only sequence which jars against the tone of the rest of the film is a certain political nod-and-a-wink; everything else makes for a deeply unsettling, thought-provoking horror, a story taken to extremes in the way only horror can. The Sadness has real gravitas and clout, it’s slick with blood, and it’s a worthwhile, reinvigorating addition to the genre. Grimly subversive stuff.

The Sadness is available on May 12th 2022 from Shudder.

Exposure 36 (2022)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

If you knew that the world was about to end, what would you do? No, what would you do? Rage? Panic? Loot? Or spend the time trying to atone for a lifetime of missteps, treating your imminent demise as a means of finding purpose? Films tend towards the louder, messier, angrier answers to that question, but not without exception, and Exposure 36 (2022) is one such exception. It’s a film focused on more intimate human stories, albeit against a backdrop of a world three days away from destruction.

The first notable thing here is that – well, the world seems to be taking it rather well. Admittedly the three-days-to-doomsday thing doesn’t seem to be completely nailed down, though people are still treating it as if it is – but the streets are quiet, the radio offers listeners the chance to hear their favourite tracks before the three days are up, and commercial flights are doing their best to get people home to their loved ones, for as long as they’re still able to fly. This is of no apparent interest to Cam (Charles Ouda), whose priorities seem to be sifting through his vast, saleable array of prescription meds and spending the rest of his time photographing what he sees around him, using one last roll of film he finds. Is he just hiding behind the lens? A comment in The Blair Witch Project (1999) suggested as much; that real life and all its horrors feels safer refracted through a lens. We know that Cam has his demons, but he keeps ahead of them, moving from place to place, memorialising people and scenes with his camera, and selling his meds to anyone who needs them, earning a vast sum of – soon-useless – money.

Cam drops by a friend/customer’s house – a guy called Nick (Nick Smithson) – where he chats to Nick’s younger sister Katie (Jennifer Leigh Whitehead), a girl he’d bumped into by chance earlier: they hit it off. This could all have been just another drugs deal however, except Nick confides in Cam that he’s heard rumours of a ‘way out’ – access to an underground facility, some distance away from NYC. Nick wants in, and tries to convince Cam to invest his wealth in going along with them. Whilst Cam refuses, as he goes about his business he finds he’s drawn back to the pair, Katie especially. When she calls him later that day, now newly aware that she’s in a very precarious situation, Cam reluctantly agrees to help, but there’s more to this than a sudden disappearance.

What needs to be understood here is that Exposure 36 is an immensely slow-burn, muted film: it’s classed as a sci-fi, but it’s that fairly popular modern kind of sci-fi which eschews the big and bold, instead using an extraordinary premise to to examine what this could do to people’s psychological states. There’s nothing much fantastical here, and in fact it’s the intense quiet of the incoming apocalypse which is the most obvious fictional note in the film; it’s quite a reach in terms of plausibility, given how many people act after even a brief break in normality. The big question for viewers here is how much they will feel sustained by this human drama by the time the credits roll, as both the lack of urgency and the lack of obvious signs of the deadly situation facing these people is noteworthy.

However, the film does do a good job of building emotion, chiefly via Ouda as Cam, who dominates both screen-time and audience interest. It’s an incredibly self-contained performance throughout, with Cam seemingly genuinely perplexed by the behaviour of people he meets, even whilst holding back on his own emotions: there’s a sense of distance to him, something which does work well with the odd, often enigmatic situations he finds himself in. Overall, give or take a handful of slightly jarring moments of humour from others, the other characters are also subtly drawn. This reviewer perhaps expected the photography motif to move more to the fore as a plot device, but nonetheless this is used interestingly throughout, acting as a record of what unfolds around Cam and adding some artistry to it.

If Exposure 36 has similarities to any other film, it’s These Final Hours (2013): here, too, a man seeks personal redemption as the end of the world rattles towards him. The earlier film keeps this incoming event more in its sights, however, with a few moments of the kind of spectacle you may have come to expect. Exposure 36 looks carefully at the ordinary rather than running with the extraordinary, but it’s a well made, watchable film with a strong lead character and a great, immersive soundtrack. It does show some aptitude for doing genre film a little differently, and given this is writer/director Mackenzie G. Mauro’s first feature-length project, it will be interesting to see what comes next in his career.

Exposure 36 is available on VOD streaming platforms from May 10th, 2022.

The Sound of Scars (2022)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

There’s been a run of very good music documentaries lately. This has been facilitated by the likes of Netflix and Amazon, ever hungry for new content, but regardless of the means, the best of these have been about bands with careers and fan bases of a certain vintage, making them commensurate with enough highs, lows and turning points to make for an entertaining story. Even a passing awareness of Life of Agony would suggest that they fit that bill, given they formed over thirty years ago and have enjoyed a career with very jagged highs and lows to date. So there’s plenty here for a documentary, and The Sound of Scars has its moments, though some of the decision-making on editing and emphasis turn the project into something other than a straightforward music lover’s film. In many respects, the film is far less an appreciation of the music than it is a capsule of current social mores and attitudes, via old sadness and more recent woes. It’s all about the feelings.

Of course, the emotional states which fed into the band were always going to figure here; that’s understood. LOA were initially so interesting for striking a formidable balance between the nascent hardcore metal scene and more heart-on-sleeve, emotional content (would it be unkind to see some aspects of proto-emo in there?) They have also long had a unique sound which I strongly associate with 90s Brooklyn: their debut was produced by Josh Silver of Type O Negative, and you can absolutely hear it in the music. Moving on somewhat from their hardcore sound by the time they recorded their magnum opus – Soul Searching Sun – in 1997, the band made something far more expansive and progressive without losing the emotional weight they’d become known for, but this high point (and close call with mainstream success) turned into a profound low with the abrupt departure of vocalist Keith Caputo, who was beaten down by the pressure.

It’s a tale as old as time, but perhaps LOA stand out here on one count: when Caputo re-joined the band some years later, it was no longer as Keith, but as Mina, as the singer had decided to come out as transgender. This fact becomes a kind of narrative frame for the film, and I’m surprised to see some reviews claim the reverse; it opens with Mina after all, who is quick to point out that Keith was only ever a ‘construct’, a hyper-masculine man amongst hyper-masculine men, and a kneejerk response to a traumatic, challenging early life. (This instantly-recognisable masculinity is present throughout the film, the blend of camaraderie and tribal warfare which means, for most women, deciding very carefully where they can stand and walk during a gig.) This introduction segues into a brief early history of the band, together with a history of the incredibly traumatic childhood experiences shared by bandmates Joey Z and his cousin Keith (and a brief note: rather than fixating on ‘deadnaming’, the film is fairly relaxed about interviewees using either ‘Keith’ or ‘Mina’ to refer to Mina Caputo, depending on what point in time is being discussed). Bassist Alan Robert is the exception here, coming from a loving and supportive family – who profess themselves baffled by his long history of depressive thought.

All of the band members are aware that their early ethos was very much ‘do unto others what has been done to us’, referring to themselves as ‘punks’ and relating how intensely violent and combative the early years of the band were. A particularly engaging section of the film relates to getting signed by Roadrunner, and the subsequent upsurge in pressure, noted particularly by Caputo who – a contested person at this point – struggled with it, alongside feelings of unhappiness relative to gender identity. It’s clear to read between the lines and see that the same diehard gender expectations which gave rise to the punching-and-kicking masculinity mentioned earlier seem to also mean that anything more sensitive or gentle is by its nature viewed as ‘feminine’ (Caputo has mentioned elsewhere that being a woman allows her to be a ‘fucking sissy’ in ways impossible whilst living as a man). That’s testament to just how entrenched a lot of these roles are – but of course, this discourse being held sacrosanct, it’s all simply affirmed, which is occasionally frustrating, especially as a more in-depth examination of the music itself isn’t really there as a counterbalance.

Sure, there are some clips of early practice sessions, early gigs and interviews – which are great to see – but these are still brief and there’s actually little detail on things like musical influences, the recording processes, tours, changing creative directions and so on. Surely if the trauma which underpins the music is seen as vital, then the end product itself deserves a little more emphasis? It’s also interesting to consider that, given the happy endings displayed in the film – loving family lives, cute kids, nice homes, personal fulfilment – the bleak emotion of the music keeps on coming. Will this always be the case? And will this ever impact upon the angst-laden sound the band has perfected? I’m also curious as to why drummer Sal Abruscato – a vital part of River Runs Red and Ugly as well as the reformed band – isn’t mentioned once; there’s only a glib comment on how the band ran through numerous drummers before Abruscato was replaced by current member, Veronica Bellino. That’s strange.

Perhaps The Sound of Scars simply isn’t the film I was expecting, because it certainly has good elements; its meandering style at least tantalises with a lot of previously-unseen footage, home video, early promos and plenty of access to most of the integral members of the classic line-up. The emphasis on problematic childhoods was always going to be there, and the film is an interesting document in the way it straddles music documentary and tell-all personal story – though, for all that, I didn’t reach the end of the film feeling like I had a deeper, more significant understanding of the individuals in the band, even whilst wishing them well: their friendships certainly come across warmly, and you’d never begrudge any of them their success. But the music still speaks for itself and for the band far more convincingly than the film does.

The Sound of Scars is now available on digital and cable platforms.

‘Thrills & Chills’ short films at NFFTY

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Interested in promoting or otherwise supporting filmmakers who are aged 24 or under? You really should be: it’s a jungle out there, and we need that emerging talent coming through. With that in mind – it’s been one of their core aims since their inception – The National Film Festival for Talented Youth is about to celebrate its fifteenth birthday, and as part of these celebrations, there’s an in-person and virtual film festival coming up: if you are able to get to SIFF Cinema Uptown in Seattle, check out the live event on Saturday, April 30th (8:45pm Pacific Time). Happily, the festival will also be running a virtual component, with no geo-fencing, so it can be viewed anywhere in the world: this will be available from the point of the live event and through to May 8th.

Screening as part of the festival, the Thrills and Chills package is probably of the most obvious, immediate interest to Warped Perspective readers: largely horror-based, with a few dashes of surrealism and dark humour, the films on offer really are of a high calibre; if we were going to group them together in ways other than genre, then certainly many of them display a fascination with the domestic sphere and how happy homes don’t necessarily stay that way, however inviting and modern they might seem. Sure, this isn’t exactly a new thing when it comes to horror, but you can’t help thinking that a couple of years of being locked down in that very sphere has prompted a few new kinds of recurring domestic nightmares along the way…

With that in mind, the first film in the collection – Peaches and Scream – brings us two different viewpoints from its two lead characters. Young couple Thomas and Anna are heading back to her place for the first time, a home which she has inherited; it’s a stunning period building, replete with some unusual wall art which Anna assures Tom is down to her dad’s very particular tastes. This would be one thing, but it seems as though dad – and the rest of her family – are kind of works of art themselves. Alarm bells begin to trill, but it’s all quite low level at first; still, from the beginning, Thomas is a very sympathetic character for the audience, a kind of everyman in this increasingly weird situation whilst Anna seems to struggle to square up her home life with the expectations of others. The film has plausible, very natural dialogue and there’s a natural energy between the two leads which carries across a lot of the more bizarre goings-on, as well as keeping the film’s humorous touches alive and well throughout. (NB: this film will only be available in person, not virtually.)

Proto is another domestic horror with more than a few comedy notes, this time taking for its basis a very contemporary anxiety – namely the power we, as a society, have handed over to virtual home devices such as Alexa. The version of this used here is the ‘Proto’ of the title, and Proto is responsible for taking care of the apartment shared by Val (Lane Emerson) and Tom (Cal J. T. Moreno, also the director). Proto seems unusually keen on ordering things for the apartment – something which Tom refers to as “kinda creepy” – but it gets more intense, and harmful in fact (plus you will not see the likes of one of the sequences here again). Much of the film comes to us via Proto’s own point of view by giving us what Proto would ‘see’, making the device a kind of character in its own right; despite it being just a device, it also clearly has a malign presence from very early on, and the film does a good job of exploiting the certain kind of paranoia about being listened to, with a neat horror flourish at the end. The film is nicely paced across its ten minutes, too.

Talisman is also set in a new home, recently moved into by a Canadian-Chinese family (this is a bilingual production). From the start, there’s a strange dynamic at work here: it’s a beautiful house, but mother (Qingqing Yan) seems unusually superstitious, determinedly cleansing the house of ‘bad energy’ and looking pointedly for signs of good or bad luck; this is a concern to father (Danny Liang) and son Yi (Sean Lu), with dad alarmed that their son is becoming increasingly indoctrinated into these folkish beliefs. But Yi does begin to encounter odd phenomena, things which really frighten him; it seems that the family may have brought some bad luck, but why and how? Shooting Talisman so frequently from Yi’s perspective is very effective, as it questions his potential suggestibility, as well as his vulnerability – and he does seem to be singled out by the frightening goings-on in his new house. Did we need screen time and dialogue allotted to him getting frightened and fleeing the toilet? That sequence jars a little, but on the whole, this is an interesting film which makes great use of its setting, landing a few real-life points as well as making good use of more supernatural scenes.

Another Taste is rather different, this time a music video starring performer Kathulu Lemon: in terms of thematics, it’s all about an appearance of staid normality which gives way to sequences of blood and gore, starring Lemon herself. The video is sumptuous to look at and very effectively put together, with vivid colour, gorgeous framing and innovative, artistic shots throughout. It’s somewhere between Excision (2012) and Raw (2016) in terms of aesthetics. What’s not to like about that?

Smahorror, a Japanese film directed by Masaki Nishiyama, brings us an intriguing take on social media and its horror potential. Mobile phones and the terrors they facilitate are nothing new perhaps, and it’s worth saying that Japanese cinema has always led the way in terms of bringing contemporary technology into the fold (remember the use of CCTV in The Grudge?) but in any case, Smahorror does what it does very effectively. It starts with an Instagram story, introducing us to a group of girls investigating a rumour of a live-streamed suicide at their school. Fake, or real? The girls get drawn in, as events take an increasingly savage, alienating turn. The film blends its phone footage with more conventional footage throughout, doing so in interesting ways. As a result, it looks good whilst also managing a few very effective scares despite seeming familiar in several respects. It’s simple, clean and compelling, with a few neat tricks up its sleeve.

Spare Body is probably my pick of the collection here, as well as the darkest, genuinely scariest film too – it tantalises at some kind of dystopian nightmare society rumbling away in the background, but chooses not to explain all the mysteries incumbent on that, instead again invading a domestic setting with something perplexing, ghastly and very, very unpleasant. The opening scene shows us a package with a couple of logos printed on the outside: ‘Second Lives Now Possible’. it says, alongside a warning: ‘Do Not Open Until Necessary’. Cut to a teenager ignoring a similar notice displayed on the outside of a closet in his home, opening it to retrieve some cash hidden there. However, he notices a large object inside, and can’t resist a look. He’s horrified by what he sees, but – morbid fascination quickly draws him back: yes, it is a bad decision. This economical and disturbing spin on the idea that ‘curiosity killed the cat’ plays out extraordinarily well, with more than one incredibly equilibrium-disturbing scene. A simple idea, absolutely, but it all goes to show that with skilled handling it’s more than possible to weave something terrifying out of these simple elements. Bravo to writer, director and star Ethan Hunt: he’s one to watch for sure.

Finally, animated short Wendigo – taking North American folklore for a basis, but actually an Irish project – demonstrates plenty of ambition and vision, becoming hypnotic and surreal as its plot unfolds. It’s the story of a young traveller, Charlie (voiced by Marc-Ivan O’Gorman) who wishes to investigate the story of an ill-fated house, known locally as the Olsen manor. Aided by inn owner Fred (voiced by Dave Hendrickson), Charlie is able to get the history of the house, but a visit to the site itself seems to trigger something strange; soon, he feels like he is being pulled into the Olsen legend, as well as pursued by a strange, skeletal entity. Whilst the dialogue here starts out rather stilted – although it’s in keeping with the odd, quirky vibe of the film – things really take off as Charlie gets closer and closer to the mysterious phenomena which he has, ultimately, come to explore. It’s a film which boasts some very appealing visual sequences and let’s not overlook its soundtrack, which is very effective too.