Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

The Good and The Bad of Squid Game (2021)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

It’s a little curious, speaking from a personal perspective, that Netflix’s Squid Game has turned into such a break-out success. This is not to claim it’s anything other than great TV – in many respects, it is – but, given the sheer amount of new series routinely arriving on the streaming service, for a Korean language drama to make it to the top of the pile is rather unusual. Certainly, the ways in which we watch TV and films has changed; it was on the cards for some time before a succession of lockdowns closed the cinemas and closed off one of the traditional viewing options, but Covid led to a boom which is only just starting to slow. Netflix is now commonplace, and its reach and influence not only bring in television from around the world, but have the clout to promote it. And so, Squid Game – an idea ten years in the making – has finally reached its global market, with the true mark of success – media terror of copycat games – now hitting the news.

But why has it grabbed people’s imaginations in this way? Many of the issues which drive people into the games come from what seems a very Korea-specific set of problems. Of course, debt stalks people in all parts of the world, and the gap between richest and poorest continues to widen across developed countries, but in many ways the Korea of the first couple of episodes – a Korea riven with poverty, mass-occupancy hostels, endemic zero hours employment, all-too-easy loans, crippling personal debt, rocketing property prices in the country’s cities – is out there as a particularly serious example of what debt can do in a toxic slew of high-concentration population, a deep culture of shame and a country where debt exceeds GDP by 5%, making it all but impossible to clear what you owe. Gi-hun’s desperate spree in the first episode, betting money, gambling for a gift, stealing and committing fraud – is bleak, but plausible. Only a quick fix can set him free.

The same is true for his peers – a disparate bunch, each with their own motivations, but each vulnerable through poverty, exacerbated by debt and fear. Where the family at the heart of Parasite (2019) find a carefully-constructed ruse to improve their fortunes, the players in Squid Game find themselves instead seduced into a bizarre competition, where children’s games are given a deadly edge, making the incentive to win as much about survival as profit. However, this is not explanation enough on its own for the show’s success, and nor – quite – is the snowball effect which hits once a critical number of people begin to enthuse about something. Nor does it explain away some of the show’s weaker moments. Parasite is, for many people, probably one of the sole points of comparison for Squid Game and in many respects, it is a useful one to think about as it, too, tackles South Korea’s significant class divide. For a lot of genre film fans, though, other existing Korean (and other Far Eastern) films may spring to mind, even if these belong more to the horror tradition: the slow-burn cruelty, the artistic gore, the ways in which human behaviour is put under unique pressure, many of the most notable movies which have tackled these over the past twenty years have emerged from an explosion in Eastern Asian cinema, from the fights to the death of Battle Royale (2000) to the fantastical class divisions of Snowpiercer (2013) and to As The Gods Will (2014). These films share some commonality with the likes of the Saw franchise, The Hunger Games, and similar; horror and sci-fi love a fatal contest. So what does Squid Game do which distinguishes itself from these?

The rest of this article discusses the series as a whole and as such contains spoilers.

‘Free will’ and the games

One of the things which the series does really well is to explore the idea of personal choice. When Gi-hun is first approached by the mysterious promoter, it is at a time when he has hit his lowest ebb. Long since made redundant from his job, eking out a living as a driver, living with his elderly mother, estranged from the daughter who is about to be taken to the other side of the world – it seems that he has few options left in his life, and has developed a taste for gambling. He can’t resist the promoter’s too-good-to-be-true patter, and takes the bait, playing his first game, later phoning the number given to him and gaining access to the contest. But the brutality of the first game (a skit on what a lot of us in the UK would probably call Grandmother’s Footsteps, only without the artillery) sickens those who make it across the line. They discuss: what should they do?

By the narrowest of margins, they opt out, and, in one of the series’ first real surprises, the organisers allow them. They are put safely back in mainland Korea, where they are free to go about their lives again. The lesson which the show puts across isn’t an ornate one, but it’s important, because it invites us to wonder – could they, really, resist the lure of the cash to be won in the game? Are they free at all?

Gi-hun is immediately back to where he started, a seeming failure by most measures: still dependent on his ailing parent, making occasional money, blowing most of it. His neighbour and co-entrant, golden boy Sang-woo, may have a great education and a wardrobe full of sharp suits, but he is in no better state – something which is later pointed out to him by a desperate Gi-hun. His phone buzzes with threatening, cajoling messages demanding the money he owes. Elsewhere, Pakistani immigrant Ali has created a dangerous situation for his wife and infant son; the as-yet nameless elderly player, who bumps into Gi-hun by chance outside, is still left wondering if he could have progressed in the game, won the money. As their situations as free citizens come home to them, they feel less and less free. So they decide they want to pursue the tournament after all, and though they have to fight to find their way back inside, this time it seems that it’s set in place, with an expectation that everyone present now plays on, as required; at least, it’s not until close to the series ending that the suggestion of opting out is mentioned again. Whilst it’s less clear as the tournament progresses and the staff have less to say which doesn’t relate to game rules, it seems as though it would be highly difficult to quit a second time; for the players, their options have now run out, in a literal sense. Were the controllers of the game always aware that this would happen? Their certainty that they would get their players back eventually seems reasonable. Again, it’s a subtle point, but the inescapability of the game could stand in for the wider point about the inescapability of debt. It also, to an extent, underlines the ferocity of the competition: the element of choice is called into question, but the end result is kin to any number of brutal, often ‘reality TV’ themed battles. It’s an opt-in torment, at least at first.

‘Gganbu’

If the series does seek to dramatise the desperation felt by people mired in money worries, then it’s significant that you get such a range of players from all walks of life (although only a small number of these are characterised in any depth; it’s still not really clear what Mi-Nyeoh’s deal is, other than a frantic need to form alliances which dissipates just as unexpectedly). But we get white collar, blue collar, criminal underclass, elderly, immigrant and North Korean players, who really are left to their own devices because for the most part, the games are unpredictable. If there is inequality on the outside, then that’s replaced by a different kind of inequality on the inside, because each game requires different skills and strengths. That’s not to say the process isn’t flawed, however, during the period where one of the players gets – and shares – a distinct, if short-lived advantage. For the most part, attempts to predict what game will be played come to nothing, or worse, lead to a disastrous misjudgement.

The earliest games are brutal because they accrue vast numbers of casualties; as the vast majority of players remain nameless, the effect is cumulative and can feel overwhelming, but it’s probably not especially shocking for fans of horror, or other related genres come to that. But the most effective emotional kick is yet to come – an example of perfect timing by the series team.

This episode of Squid Game comes just after we have started to develop a liking for some of our characters and their attempts to work together, even if we might be able to predict the glorious unravelling of Sang-woo, already acting like a hawk amongst the doves. As the characters have already successfully worked together, when they are asked to pair up, they do so expecting to have to represent a united front and the initial clamour is from people trying to find a ‘strong’ pairing, expecting a physical challenge of some kind (which itself leads to a rejection of all the women and older players present; equality quickly dissipates when there’s a potential strength or dexterity contest in the offing). But the game itself is – marbles. This leads to one of the show’s greatest about-face moments, when it turns out that they will have to compete against their partner, not work with them. Titling the show ‘Gganbu’ – which translates roughly to ‘buddies’ or ‘partners’ – is another of the show’s very strong moments, a dramatic irony as the nature of the term is unpicked. Excuse the reference but this is an episode which could have been penned by Arthur Miller – its minute focus on people breaking apart, on nostalgia becoming something toxic in the moment when characters need anything but immersion in nostalgia.

Gi-hun is at first sad and reluctant to partner with the as-yet nameless, elderly man whose illness seems to affect his concentration, as well as leaving him especially vulnerable. Gi-hun is aware, then, that were this a game of physical prowess, he is a dead man, but he also fears that a no-partner situation would make him a dead man too. The trick up the sleeve is that marbles relies on skills of luck and bluff alone. This, when it becomes clear, spreads through the rest of the players like a wave, particularly where people have paired up with someone they know and like, or love. There is a husband and wife team in the game, for instance, and it is understood that only one of any pair will progress to the next game – something alluded to only later, when the entire weight of the episode has already seemingly been felt.

We see two distinct progressions here in the lead characters of Gi-hun and Sang-woo, and this is probably the high point of their character arcs, where everything which follows feels like a direct progression from the events of the marbles game, how they decided to act on that occasion and how they feel about what follows. Does the show’s ending undermine that? Yes, to an extent it does, but Gganbu is nonetheless the show highlight, and still works as a solid foundation, even given the writing decisions which bring the series to a close.

Childhood friendships?

The series starts out following Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae, usually a straightforward hero). And, first impressions of him are far from positive, even whilst slowly taking on board why he behaves as he does. He is childish, erratic and unlikeable, resorting to teenage-like fits of rage and frustration when he is challenged on anything; he steals, he cajoles and – even where the first episode seems to be showing him catching a break – his ineptitude quickly turns his good luck around. It takes time before his struggles with money and the newsworthy way he left his old job at a vehicle factory are revealed. If we feel any real sympathy with him at this stage, it is in his loving, but problematic relationship with his ten year old daughter, whose successful, eminently reasonable stepdad wants her inept biological father out of the way. Even then, though, he messes things up, acts ridiculously. He could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the unreconstructed Dae-Su Oh from Oldboy (2003) and get along with him perfectly well. Whilst it’s clear that Gi-hun’s character will change, this happens in unexpected ways.

It takes time – and exposure to the tournament – before Gi-hun becomes to blossom into a good-hearted man, and much of this comes through his contact with the elderly player, eventually revealed to be called Il-nam, or Player 001. Perhaps they share a father-son dynamic, as the older man speaks a little about his son’s childhood and Gi-hun’s own father is no longer around, but Gi-hun first takes it upon himself to treat Player 001 respectfully, showing deference to him and trying to protect him from the mob rule which quickly takes hold. This protective element in his behaviour soon comes to encompass other players, even the ‘pickpocket’, as he once knew her: defector Sae-Byeok (Jung Hoyeon). It also creates his greatest dilemmas, contributing directly to his failing moral conscience in ‘Gganbu’.

Gi-hun eventually has to confront his old friend and on-paper success story, Sang-woo, and whilst the camera spends slightly less time on the latter’s own journey through the game, they have developed differently. Sang-woo is terrified at the beginning, meek and in every way a man who is not worldly, but he learns fast. This to an extent paints him as a straightforward villain, however, letting him step in for the cartoonish, but no less watchable gangster, Player 101: Sang-woo even emulates his deadly behaviour, minutes afterwards. If this transformation is a little hard to take, then it is given a little more depth back by the finale, where it’s revealed that Sang-woo is still human, and is regretful. It’s as if each of the childhood friends take a different route to their final conflict, but remember enough about themselves to be equally humane, in the midst of it all.

Criticisms: The VIPS

This site won’t be the first to comment on the presence of the ‘very special guests’ at the games, and it won’t be the last, but frankly, the VIPs element of the plot, as we see it, is a misfire. Much of the criticism so far has been around their language and speech, something the actors have already addressed, with some indignation. But it’s a reasonable thing to criticise. The presence of English language sequences in a Korean, or any other non-English language production always has the potential to go awry wherever you have actors who don’t know what they are saying, or a production team who don’t know what they’re saying, or both. It breaks up the plausibility very quickly, and it just sounds…bad. It’s clear that lines have been learned, rather than someone making an organic attempt to converse. However, that’s not my main issue with these characters.

They contribute almost nothing to Squid Game, because it would have been more than enough to believe that South Korea had enough of its own unprincipled rich people getting off on the suffering of their countrymen. As discussed earlier, Squid Game takes for its basis an acutely Korean problem. It is set in Korea, it stars Korean actors and it is a Korean language production; is it so hard to believe that Korea’s rich wouldn’t be in on this universe, without a supporting cast of the almost obligatory fat, unpleasant, unfeeling Europeans and Americans? If their inclusion was an attempt to suggest that ‘the games’ are a global phenomenon of some kind – a sort of Hostel-style in-group, like Elite Hunting – then the VIPs are just not strongly drawn enough, and barely present enough to successfully add this layer to the plot. They are simply there, deliver a few hesitant lines from a chaise longue or two, and then they’re gone.

It would be good to think we’re past having to bung in a couple of Americans etc. to properly have a chance in a global market, and the fact that Squid Game has done so well despite the VIPs would support that. There’s a certain cliché aspect to the ‘evil pervert foreigners’, too, given that the games are usually perfectly well organised from inside Korea, and evil pervert foreigners have had plenty of franchises of their own. Unfortunately, the VIPs are a fairly unnecessary bit of window-dressing from a series which was doing just fine without them, and returns to form when it moves past them.

Criticisms: the ending…

Waiting for a series finale is a toughie if it’s one you’ve enjoyed, and the way in which Squid Game wraps up isn’t perfect. There was always going to be a lot riding on this one, and there are some fundamental issues.

Whilst seeing our main guy win after a final redemptive moment feels like a relief, the series then disrupts expectations. That’s no bad thing, and any expectations of Gi-hun going around simply fulfilling the wishes of his old teammates are dashed by the decision to represent him as a broken man, ill-equipped to go on, with a timeframe spanning another year. This is, though, a reasonable addition, because the money hasn’t been an instant fix; the big problems of life before are not only still in Gi-hun’s life, but they’ve worsened. The episode lulls a little around this time regardless, and it isn’t really clear where we are going next.

Then, how things move forward is divisive, and sadly it’s divisive because it undercuts some of the effective emotional development which came before, notably in ‘Gganbu’. That episode required some real emotional work, so plucking a key character from that and revealing them to be a different character entirely seems more about revealing the trick shot which kept them around, rather than really building anything significant out of it. In fact, by stripping the meaning out of some of the care and consideration which Gi-hun showed at that point, it jeopardises that element of his development, and I’d always prefer consistent writing to the phenomenon of ‘Easter eggs’, which is something which screenwriters seem hard-pressed to leave alone.

The series also seems to feel under pressure to account for the bleak cruelty of it all, and its method for bringing it all together relies on a blend of ennui and nostalgia, which Sang-woo alludes to far more effectively in one line when he realises aloud that their childhood innocence is gone forever. This is a theme throughout – the arenas are a blend between Disneyland and The Thunderdome – but it unfolds more in the background, an intriguing feature of the tournament which blends horror with childhood throwbacks, a creepy aesthetic choice. It’s more effective left there, frankly, as something to think about but not get a clear answer; the final episode decides it’s time to talk us through a significant part of this, and immediately lays itself open to seeming thinly sentimental. It’s just hard to buy the rationale we get for this character turnaround, and the add-on about ‘people not being kind anymore’ feels unnecessary. We’ve seen what people can do, and we’ve seen them being kind too, at length; this is what has redeemed Gi-hun.

Could it be that all of this is simply to set up a Series 2? Whilst at the time of writing there are no clear indications that a S2 will be happening, some of the issues in the end episode could certainly be cleared up by further address. With the greatest of respect to the series, however, this isn’t the most satisfying way to conclude S1. Gi-hun seems to have work ahead of him; there is potential there for a completely different character arc, and perhaps this is on its way, though it’s a shame that this has come at some cost to the superb writing in what we have already.

Squid Game is, nonetheless, worthy of the attention which has been paid to it. It is aesthetically strong, with moments of absolutely superb writing and acting, fantastic use of spectacle and gripping storylines. In its struggle to finish its story, it perhaps goes astray, and it is unfortunate that some of these moments detract from what has come before. However, it has plenty to recommend it, and if this is the first experience of Korean TV/film for many people, then it’s a solid one which could itself lead on to good things.

Smoke and Mirrors: The Story of Tom Savini

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Horror fans are unusual in the way we know the names of many of the people working behind the scenes in film, and this is particularly true of SFX artists; we can all name a few, and it’s highly likely that Tom Savini will be on that list. In many ways, this documentary film about Savini is a potted history of independent horror movies, as he’s played such an important part in developing what it was possible to see on our screens during our formative decades. There’s plenty to enjoy here, and whilst it doesn’t do anything particularly zany or experimental, it’s nonetheless a decent film with a whole host of big names and some great inclusions.

The opening reel sets up an idea which Savini himself comes back to several times throughout the film – not a controversial one, but a reasonable enough point about cinema resembling a magic show, with a nice guest spot for Doug Bradley as a circus master. From here on in, though, it’s a fairly straightforward, chronological trip through Savini’s early life and experiences, making a few interesting links between events in his childhood and his later career (for instance, his brother spent time training as a mortician). What he seems to have got from his upbringing, as a child of Italian immigrants, is the importance of hard graft, though it was quite surprising to hear Savini say that he also suffered from low self-esteem as a teen, and this drove him to overcompensate in some respects – taking on absolutely everything, from being on the school wrestling team to working in theatre. Time is given over to some key places in his life – notably, the Plaza cinema in downtown Pittsburgh, now apparently a big name coffee shop. It makes perfect sense that seeing Lon Chaney in The Man With a Thousand Faces was an incredibly influential experience, as does discovering that Savini played Dracula in a travelling show, after impressing the rest of the cast when chosen as a ‘boy in the audience’ to get dressed up as Dracula and successfully terrifying the spectators.

Savini’s time in the Army and Vietnam gets covered here, and it’s as grim as you’d imagine, though he manages to lighten the tone with an anecdote about having to open fire on what he took to be the Viet Cong…and, well, it wasn’t them. But as you’d expect, his career as an SFX specialist, actor and stuntman gets featured at the greatest length. Savini’s career in SFX came about almost by accident, surprisingly, and it’s from this point onwards that the documentary shifts into material that most of us would recognise. That all being said, the show reel which features here does demonstrate just how innovative a lot of Savini’s techniques really were, and still are. There are a lot of purists in horror who feel that computer-generated effects should be avoided at all costs; I don’t quite share that view (though bad CGI is certainly enough to ruin an otherwise solid idea) but Savini’s body of work is definitely a good argument for the merits of practical effects. It has underpinned a huge number of classic horror films of the 70s and 80s, though of course Savini is probably best-known for his collaborations with George A. Romero, with whom he started working during the filming of Martin (1976) and continued until Romero’s death (Romero features here, by the way, which tells you that not all of the ‘talking heads’ footage is exactly brand new – but, hey. Nice to see him again.)

With a mixture of interviews, still images, clips and some storyboards/cut scenes which are worthwhile on their own merits, this is a decent film. There’s an impressive array of interviewees, too, and no overreliance on just one or two of them. At ninety minutes, there’s just about enough to hold the attention, and I did learn a few things along the way. The point here isn’t to teach about technique or the more specialist aspects of Savini’s work, but if you would simply like to hear a bit more from an affable, talented fella about his career, then this is worth a watch.

Smoke and Mirrors: The Story of Tom Savini arrives on digital platforms on October 19th 2021.

The Snake Girl and the Silver Haired Witch (1968)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The Snake Girl and the Silver Haired Witch can not be accused of misrepresenting itself with that title; it’s an engaging, fairytale-like film which overlays a warped family dynamic with ‘old dark house’ style horrors, though it never becomes a full-blown horror, balancing its supernatural scares with something far more saccharin. Tonally, it works, and it doesn’t skimp on the snakes or the silver-haired witch, either.

We start as we mean to go on – an unsuspecting maid is scared to death by having a snake hurled at her in the Nanjo household (this isn’t as unlikely as it sounds, as Mr Nanjo is a venomous snake expert and has tanks of them in the house). Into all of this, a child is about to arrive: Sayuri (Yachie Matsui) has been raised in a children’s home, but it’s recently been discovered that she isn’t an orphan after all, and she is in fact the daughter of Mr and Mrs Nanjo. So, she’s packed up and shipped off there, with a warning ringing in her ears that Mrs Nanjo has recently had an accident which has affected her memory. Sayuri is clearly being pitched as the World’s Most Pleasant Child, though, so she obligingly tells her newfound father that there’s nothing to worry about, and she will make the best of it. She bids a farewell to the nuns, and to big brother figure Hayashi (Shin Godzilla’s Sei Hiraizumi).

They weren’t kidding about her mother being a little confused; when she greets Sayuri, she calls her ‘Tamami’, and has trouble recognising her daughter. The fact that Mr Nanjo is soon thereafter called away to Africa to study a rare venomous snake seems to trouble her, too. He’s not gone long when Sayuri notices someone seems to be hidden in the house; no one will believe her when she explains what she’s seen, but she sees Mrs Nanjo leaving food for someone at night, and sees a strange, hybrid-looking girl in her bedroom. It’s explained to her that this is Tamami – her secret older sister, who will now be staying with Sayuri – well, until father gets back, that is. Tamami isn’t too keen on having competition for affection in the house, and soon takes to doing the usual, sisterly things, like threatening to dissolve Sayuri in acid, displacing her from her room and forcing her to live in the attic, dismembering her toys and so on. As the situation escalates, Tamami’s disturbing background is explored further, and this is just the beginning of the ordeal for Sayuri…

Like so many Japanese films, The Snake Girl and the Silver Haired Witch is based on a popular shoujo manga, which more or less guarantees that the film will stick very closely to Sayuri’s personal perspective given that these manga chiefly concern themselves with young female protagonists. In fact, the film frequently uses Sayuri as a narrator, as she mentally unpacks what is going on around her: this is also done with Tamami, though only very briefly. It all feels very storybook in the way it is done; the plot gives us the lonely orphan/stranger in a new household, things which go bump in the dark. a mysterious house, apparently secret rooms and locked doors and a child who must navigate all of the secrets and plots which threaten her. It feels a little like The Reptile via Enid Blyton in some respects, with a lot of the slightly earlier film’s menacing atmosphere though – given there’s a child star in the lead role – the film is mainly atmospheric and suggestive, rather than genuinely frightening, graphic or bloody (with the exception of one scene towards the end of the film, which really is an unsettling moment of peril). Sayuri plays this throughout with wide-eyed innocence, and Tamami is an excellent foil to her character; Mayumi Takahashi has a genuinely eerie presence and looks the part, as well as very plausibly enacting being a nadsty piece of work; Sayuri is sickly sweet, but it’s hard not to empathise with her as she gets put through the mill by her domineering, snake-obsessed sister.

The Snake Girl and the Silver Haired Witch does an excellent job of showing us what’s going on being refracted through an impressionable child’s point of view, and it becomes steadily more clear that a lot of the phenomena Sayuri witnesses is embellished by her imagination: this allows the film to plump for some nicely experimental special effects. Some of these place the film squarely in the late 60s, which is no bad thing – a dream sequence wouldn’t be a dream sequence without a swirling spiral and a theremin, after all – but others are very innovative, and have held up very well. And as for the plot, well, by the hour mark you may have begun to guess at what is going on here, but it’s all nicely-paced and looks gorgeous on screen, doing plenty to reward the interest. It even carries a hint of the modernising Japan of the 60s around the edges, with the lowering high-rise which is being built nearby finding its way into the action.

For fans of the likes of Hausu, there is plenty to love in The Snake Girl and the Silver Haired Witch. It’s an attractive film (looking fabulous on the transfer here) and an atmospheric little time capsule in its own right.

The Snake Girl and the Silver Haired Witch (1968) is available now via Arrow Films. For more information, please click here.

Win Belzebuth on Blu-ray…

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Hell’s teeth – quite literally, as it happens; two competitions in one week? Well, lucky you, as we also have a copy of Belzebuth to give away. For fans of Mexican horror (which always seems to be ramped up to a level that evades non-Mexican horror), Belzebuth melds the tragedy of a school massacre with a decidedly occult potential explanation for the massacre, as the recently-traumatised Detective Ritter (Joaquín Cosio) investigates. Then the Vatican shows up – something which rarely bodes well in horror, let’s be honest.

UK readers: to win a copy, simply email the site with ‘Belzebuth’ as the email title. It couldn’t be simpler to potentially get some Latin American-flavoured demonic darkness into your lives.

If you are successful, you will be contacted after 12pm (GMT) on Thursday, 23rd September. (GDPR compliance: all identifying information will be removed from our server after the competition closes.)

Good luck, again!

Win a copy of Terrified!

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Out now from Acorn Media International, and yours to win on Blu-ray comes Terrified, a Shudder Original title set in Buenos Aires. When a cop calls in two paranormal investigators to explore the strange goings-on on this city street, things go from bad to worse as they attempt to untangle this flurry of manifestations. This supernatural horror plays with the ‘haunted house’ motif, focalising its scares into separate stories (and houses on the street) and showing the importance of personal perspective on how these phenomena are perceived. It’s very atmospheric and choc-ful of eerie, unsettling supernatural content, and all UK readers need to do to win a copy of the film is to answer one simple question:

What is the Argentinian title of Terrified?

Email your answers to the site email address by no later than 12pm (GMT) on 21st September, 2021.

GDPR compliance: correct entries will be chosen at random and all personal details will be deleted immediately after the competition closes.

Good luck!

Interview: Tony Hipwell, director of Standing Woman

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

At the risk of repeating myself, as I’m sure I have down through the years on the site, short films are often where it’s at in terms of promising new ideas, styles and approaches. When I watched Standing Woman as part of FrightFest’s recent short films digital package, I thought how well the film encapsulated all of that, taking a novel idea and addressing some fundamental human concerns in its brief but effective dystopian vision.

It’s often said that ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’, and that is very true in the world of the film. Here, the government have decided on a novel approach to punish prisoners, not imprisoning them anymore, but by making them part of a new environmental campaign – literally turning them into plant matter, planting them in the ground and using a new process to change them. What happens to a person’s humanity in this brave new world? Once again, in a theme which is finding its way onto our screens more and more regularly, this is a piece of eco-horror as well as an unsettling vision of a world moving from the ridiculous to the sublime, and all in an ostensibly good cause.

I was delighted to connect with the director of Standing Woman, Tony Hipwell, who kindly answered a few of my questions.

WP: Firstly, more a comment than a question, but congratulations on Standing Woman. It is a fantastic piece of work, communicating so much in such a short running time. Tell us how you came to be involved in the film – an adaptation of a Japanese novelist’s work, if I’m correct?

TH: I became involved with Standing Woman when a friend of mine, Max Gee, sent me a screenplay she was working on as part of her PhD. She had come across a short story by Yasutaka Tsutsui and adapted it largely for personal enjoyment. She sent it to me for feedback and because she thought I’d enjoy it. She was right. I was immediately enraptured by the world it presented.

I knew we could make it despite the challenges of creating the tree people and so Max and I began a passionate pitch to Yasutaka Tsutsui to acquire the screen rights and produce the film. His work has been adapted into acclaimed anime films in the past, so we were nervous of being able to achieve our goal; but after many months of careful negotiation we were granted the rights. What followed was several years of script development and deep conceptual design to develop the look of the tree people and build a budget, while we assembled an incredibly talented crew.

WP: Standing Woman has been screening at a few acclaimed film festivals this year, such as Fantasia and FrightFest. How has that been going?

TH: The festivals have been great. Fantasia was digital for many, but they did an amazing job of creating social spaces for filmmakers to meet online and provided an incredible selection of films to view. I don’t think I’ve ever watched as many films in as short a time frame as I did with Fantasia. FrightFest was especially enjoyable as it was our UK premiere and the first time we’d been able to see the film on the big screen ourselves. It was also the first major film festival to be back at full capacity in the UK and the atmosphere was fantastic. It also meant I could meet other filmmakers in person, which was a treat after the last 18 months! We’re excited to see where the rest of the run takes us!

WP: As mentioned above, the film could be said to fall broadly under the category ‘eco-horror’ – a dystopian vision of the near future where care and concern for the environment takes a dark turn. Could you tell us any more about that – did you draw inspiration from any other films or TV, or any other sources other than the screenplay?

TH: The chief inspiration for the film was the screenplay and short story. It was a rare case where practically everything you needed was on the page. That said, there were a lot of stylistic and aesthetic inspirations that drove the approach. Given the source material, I was very keen to bring a Japanese voice to the film and that came through some of the cast and crew as well as the vast amount of anime and Japanese cinema, material that I’ve been influenced by for most of my life. Broader inspiration came from filmmakers like David Cronenberg and Paul Verhoeven. Their approaches to body horror and political satire had a huge impact on me when I was growing up and I couldn’t imagine another way of tackling the tone that didn’t harken back to their work.

There was of course the political climate. The film took five years to produce and the world saw a great deal of upheaval in that time. What went from quite a far-fetched scenario suddenly started to feel very possible, should the technology become real. It’s been interesting that we’ve had a lot of comparisons to Black Mirror, which is very flattering, but it was not something we were trying to copy as I felt it was something many had tried to do and failed. We simply tried to focus on the drama and reality of the story and characters rather than force a style on them.

WP: How challenging is it to generate empathy and to make an audience care for your characters in a short film format? You’re an experienced short film maker – what have you learned along the way?

TH: The simplest thing I’ve learned in terms of empathy is to focus on character. It’s something that I’m always trying to improve, be it on the page, how I work with an actor or place the camera and time the edit around them. It is always challenging to generate empathy because it needs to feel effortless. You don’t want the audience to feel the mechanisms at work that are coaxing them to feel something in particular. It should all feel natural and somewhat inevitable and a large part of that comes from life experience. The longer you’ve been around, the more people you encounter and the more that feeds into the stories you tell. As long as the audience can recognise something of themselves in the characters, you will gain their empathy. Hopefully we have succeeded in that with Standing Woman.

WP: Short films, in my opinion, are often unfairly under-viewed as they tend to screen at festivals, and then go without a wider release. Do you have anything to say regarding that? How do we get people to see the film?

TH: The issue of discovering short films is something I’m actively discussing right now. There does seem to be a frustrating inability to readily find them. There are of course platforms like YouTube, but that feels like a complete lottery for discovery and other platforms like Vimeo suffer from a small audience footprint. There are some great channels like DUST and ALTER or Arrow which champion Sci-Fi & Horror work. If you can get acquired by those channels, it gives you better visibility which is what shorts are often designed for – be it to boost your profile or that of a project. There is also the anthology route, which seems to be something audiences enjoy, albeit within specific genres. There is sadly no one-size-fits-all approach. For our part, we are very interested in either of those routes mentioned if we can and it will be something we’ll be considering very carefully as we move forward.

WP: Finally, you have recently completed what I think is your first feature-length, which I believe will be screening at Dead Northern here in York, UK later this month. Tell us a little about that…

TH: My feature playing at Dead Northern is actually my second. Both are co-writing and directing efforts. The first was Whoops! about an accidental serial killer, which premiered at Raindance and was the only British film selected that year for Raindance on Tour. My new feature, Zomblogalypse, is based on a web series I started with Hannah Bungard and Miles Watts back in 2008. A film version is something we’ve been wanting to make for a long time and we finally hit on an idea that we felt worked for a feature.

The film follows the same characters as the web series and picks them up ten years into the apocalypse where they have become so bored by it, they decide to make a film to commemorate their exploits and pass the time. Little do they realise that making a film at the end of the world is even more difficult than it was before. It’s essentially an apocalyptic mockumentary. If you crossed Shaun of the Dead with Tropic Thunder you’re halfway there. It was shot entirely in Yorkshire with a local crew and is the complete opposite of Standing Woman in terms of tone and style.

WP: Thank you very much for your time!

TH: I hope those answers work for you! Thanks!

Keep your eyes peeled on the autumn film festival schedule to stand a good chance of seeing Tony’s work and as/when we know more, we’ll say so on social media.

FrightFest 2021: Gaia

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

It’s perhaps little surprise, as discourse about man’s relationship with the natural world becomes more and more urgent, that the phenomenon of ‘eco-horror’ is appearing more on screens, too. Whilst audiences have long been warned not to go into the woods, it’s the natural world itself which now poses the threat. But Gaia (2021) is a little more complicated than that, offering a mysterious culture and practices of its own, navigable only by a tiny number of adherents to a new, pantheistic system. The worldview which it weaves is by turns beautiful and ghastly.

Two rangers, Gabi (Monique Rockman) and Winston (Anthony Oseyemi) are undertaking surveillance in an unexplored area of forest in a region of South Africa. Their use of a drone to record and explore – right up until this technology fails them – is a useful indicator of what’s to follow. The two rangers become separated and it seems they’re not alone here, either: Gabi accidentally sets off an animal trap set by father and son Barend (Carel Nel) and the nearly-mute Stefan (Alex van Dyk). Her leg is badly injured, but when they realise what has happened, Barend and Stefan take her in. Theirs is a strange, insular lifestyle; it’s an extreme version of living off grid, something triggered by the loss of Stefan’s mother to cancer some years before. But the forest is more than beloved to them for her memory’s sake, as it seems these two have a belief system of their own out here, and Gabi’s presence is very soon a complicating factor. Before she can heal up and move on, though, something which Barend is very keen on, Gabi is confronted by what is out there in the forest, and the claims it makes on Barend and Stefan.

Gaia could have worked perfectly well as an intense character study, looking at what isolation has brought to bear on these two men and the implications of welcoming an outsider – particularly given the impact of sex and sexuality here, a theme which persists throughout. But there is a great deal more here, a very meticulous and appealing, if horrific mythos where the forest itself dictates human behaviour, demanding sacrifices, or very literally consuming people. This process resembles those eco-friendly ‘mushroom suits’, a great idea which is nonetheless very creepy, or in some respects the Arcimboldo paintings from the Renaissance era, but with a much headier, trippier and nastier edge to it – the unwilling absorption of body and mind is not a pleasant thing to see.

It seems that as we learn more about the impact of fungal spores on ecosystems, we find ourselves with more scope to interpret this process as invidious, and a great opportunity for a horror story; the cultural links between mushrooms and poisons, as well as hallucinogenics, are also ripe for use. It’s no doubt just unfortunate timing that Gaia has appeared so soon after Ben Wheatley’s film In The Earth; on paper, and in some respects in how they are directed, there are many similarities. However, where In The Earth is quite raw in places, with black humour cropping up throughout, Gaia is altogether more intricate and intimate, with nature itself choc-full of that blind, pitiless indifference we’re so afraid of – a Mother Nature who exploits, as well as nurtures. By the end of the film, you’ve been shown a worldview where people are fast becoming obsolete. It takes its time, but it’s pretty damning.

Gaia (2021) screened as part of Arrow Video FrightFest 2021.

Phantasmagoria (2017)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Phantasmagoria is a film which shows, from the very beginning, that it has no truck with conventional storytelling. And how you feel about that will depend on your taste for this level of experimental fare – not just in the sense of a film dispensing with signposted narrative, or character, but also in how you deal with films that shift in tone from one thing to another, at least initially. For example: at the beginning of Phantasmagoria, and in a none-too-subtle nod to Twin Peaks, ‘Diane Cooper’ (Rachel Audrey) records herself about to go on a trip to Poland to investigate some mysterious phenomena. Except it looks as though she’s already in Poland…and the airport she rocks up to is not an airport…then she chooses some washing detergent as a tasty in-flight beverage, before looking straight to screen and joining in with the canned laughter. There’s no question here of being allowed to settle in to the viewing experience. It’s not meant to be comfortable.

That all being said, that early dark comedy largely passes away as the film progresses, and horror elements move to the fore, providing something very strange and visually-strong. I can see entirely why director Cosmotropia de Xam’s music and film have been enthusiastically snapped up by Nigel Wingrove at Redemption/Salvation, as Phantasmagoria chimes perfectly with Salvation. And so to what actually happens here: once in ‘Poland’, Diane begins looking for the strange phenomena she’s heard about. At first, there’s nothing – she thinks this may all be the proverbial ‘something in the water’, and she’s mystified by the almost empty streets and dilapidated buildings (as a paean to Brutalism, the film is quite something in its own right).

But then Diane encounters a strange young woman in a case of ‘who’s investigating who?’ The girl is called Valentina (an unashamed love-letter, in name and appearance, to the Valentina comics of Guido Crepax). Valentina tries to explain that there is something evil here, making claims of a ‘beast’ which has not only followed her for years, but threatens everyone else as well. Diane is at first nonplussed by this claim, but madness is contagious, and Diane soon gets swept up in it too.

How best to define all of this? It’s not easy. The first thing which springs to mind is, given that the film doesn’t rely on dialogue very much, but rather opts to put a lot of very striking visuals front and centre, you could almost dispense with the dialogue that is here and just stick with the Mater Suspiria Vision soundtrack as an accompaniment (MSV being the director’s musical project, so unsurprisingly a very good fit here). You can read the situation via the actresses and their increasingly nightmarish visions and asides rather well. In terms of film, Phantasmagoria is somewhere between the very early experimental short films of David Lynch and Jean Rollin, had Rollin ever directed a Coil video. The Gothic or horror elements – bloodied women, nuns’ habits, a presence in the woods – are all present here, interwoven through a bizarre sequence of events and riddles. It is also worth saying that, where a thousand indie directors have tried – and failed – to make their films look authentically like some 70s reel found in an attic somewhere, Cosmotropia de Xam has done it very successfully.

Phantasmagoria is very much a piece of outsider art which defies easy categorisation, but may be of interest to those amongst you who enjoy films which are more sensory than perfunctory, so with all that in mind – go for it. I also recommend Mater Suspiria Vision for anyone whose tastes turn to abstract, dark instrumental music.

Phantasmagoria is available via Salvation Films: click here for more information.

Candyman (2021)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

News of a new Candyman film came as quite a surprise; the 1992 film, like a good ghost story itself refracted over time through a Clive Barker short story and a novel before becoming a screenplay, has over the years become a classic, a piece of supernatural cinema which has deeper significance seething underneath all of its gruesome horror. Besides a brand-new Candyman film being a surprise, the nature of the film was a little hard to catch, too; it’s not quite a remake, but positioned in real time, thirty (!) years or so after the ’92 story; it’s not quite a reimagining, as there is significant overlap with Bernard Rose’s screenplay; perhaps the best description of the new film is as an add-on to the mythos of the original film – an expansion pack, if you like. The result is a perfectly watchable horror yarn with some very good features and solid performances, though there are issues here, too. One is the sheer weight of ambition. By opting to explore a certain aspect of the Candyman folklore, the film gives itself far too much to do in its final act. Its other key issue is in its determination to explore race and racism not as a subtext, but as a primary calling – but then, Jordan Peele is involved, and he trusts his audience less and less to get ‘the message’, let alone to get a subtle message.

Painter Anthony (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and his curator girlfriend Brianna (Teyonah Parris) live in an affluent area of Chicago which, as a visitor points out to them as they are railing against the evils of white-driven gentrification, is itself part of a gentrified Cabrini Green, a formerly-deprived borough of the city. (This is one of the few moments in the film when there is any deviation from the narrative that white people are sinister bastards and perhaps social class is a consideration, by the way, so it’s worth bringing up). Anthony is struggling to create new work; motivation finally strikes after Brianna’s comic-relief brother Troy tells them a version of the Candyman story after dinner one evening.

Engaged by the mixture of urban legend and the prospect of seeking out something authentic, Anthony heads off into what’s left of the old Cabrini Green with his camera. Here he encounters a local, Burke (Colman Domingo) who has been there longer than the encroaching high-rises, a friendly, helpful guy who fills him in on the changes to Cabrini over the years. However, his information begins to draw Anthony further into the mythos. In a similar way to how Helen Lyle’s academic ambitions drew her closer to the ruinous attentions of Candyman, Anthony’s artistic ambitions prove a kind of devil’s bargain, whereby he gets his inspiration and begins creating new work, but at the expense of the lives of people in his orbit. And again, he has to decipher his role in all of this if he is to protect people he cares about.

Anthony’s direction of travel in this film contains few surprises, really. In this respect, it emulates the 1992 film, right down to an overlap with Helen Lyle and her grisly fate as Anthony’s research brings him into contact with her file. Helen’s fate, after all of the misery entailed upon her by stumbling into a mythos and a community interesting at first only as ‘research’, contains far more pause for thought than anything in the new film, by the way. But the 2021 film does have some interesting, creative aspects to it too, with some fantastic shots which generate unease; the mirror-writing in the opening credits, that upside-down view of the skyscrapers – repeated throughout – which gives the impression of drifting or being dragged backwards. These are good, stylish touches. I also liked the use of reflection throughout the film (mirror reflection, that is). Director Nia DaCosta shows a good appreciation both of horror tropes and more creative uses of the motif, which is encouraging, given her filmography has limited horror in it. But perhaps the most original aspect of this film is also one of its key snags.

Candyman ’92 raises the idea that the Candyman mythos stems at least in part from the needs of an overlooked community to deal with hardship – providing stories, rules, rituals, things to hold people together. Candyman ’21 picks up on this idea and extends it, developing the relationship between folklore, history and community, coming close to suggesting that the figure of the Candyman – in all the various permutations which the film briefly suggests – offers a variant of folk horror, incarnating down through the years, a kind of obligatory presence. It’s an intriguing premise, providing some neat tie-ins to the original, though sadly the film does not have enough time to develop this very much. There are questions left dangling throughout; not in a way which suggests that Peele wanted to tantalise us, but more in the sense of these points being overlooked in the rush to get to a big finale. By the final scenes, several necessary plot points had been left out altogether, leading to a lurch towards grotesque body horror which needed to take a short cut in order to approach the gruesome, but fulfilling end scenes of the ’92 story. In the rush, questions about Anthony and Brianna’s family background, suggested to be relevant to their characterisation and the plot, were brushed aside. Together with the sudden shift in Anthony’s character come the final act, the rush feels like it has a significant impact.

Perhaps devoting less time to characterising every single white character variously as a chancer, a creep, a bully or a murderer – whilst giving over a fair wad of the film’s run time to have them announce as much in their spell-it-all-out lines – would have allowed more attention to be paid to the film’s more interesting supernatural content. Peele can’t help himself, and in a different article it could be interesting to unpick this approach from this particular filmmaker. This film is far more about acrimony than allegory, and it makes for a crude element of ‘Candyman-as-avenger’ which detracts from Candyman’s better qualities. Still, production values here are decent overall, and there is enough going on to make this a perfectly watchable, entertaining film, albeit one which throws the merits of the original into even sharper relief.

Candyman (2021) is in cinemas now.

Fantasia 2021: Blue Whale

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Blue Whale is a film which very much starts as it means to go on, throwing the audience into a high-paced, often frenetic online world where we quickly meet two teenage sisters – Yulya and Dana – who are fighting over a device, dropping it and breaking the screen as their long-suffering mother attempts to keep the peace. There we have it: the importance of an online presence, the need for secrecy, the pros and cons of living this way and the generation gap between these teens and everyone else, which encapsulates several of the film’s themes in a few seconds. Everything we see in the film is refracted through software – social media platforms, live videos and direct messages. But to shift things along, the time frame of the film suddenly skips forward by a few months.

Yulya is not laughing now. She begins a livecast and films herself, committing suicide by train. We whoosh through the online tributes and then we’re back to Dana (Anna Potebnya), who now wants to find out why her sister did this. Quickly she uncovers a secret, sexualised account and a run of interactions which are themselves a little threatening – but that’s not it. Dana spots a mention of some kind of online game called ‘Blue Whale’, something which has been linked to these kinds of suicides. Alongside mutual friend Vika, Dana begins to investigate, starting with a video clip of another shock teen suicide, which she finds on Yulya’s own desktop. Tracking down an online alias of someone whose avatar keeps on cropping up, Dana gets hold of a folder which contains the ‘rules’ of the Blue Whale game. This escalates a chain of events, leading Dana further into the game and its increasingly harmful tasks. Fifty tasks, fifty days…

This film is fast, fast, fast. This could be a tribute to the kinds of multi-tasking short attention spans which are prominent in the online generation, or indeed just due to the sheer weight of what this film wants to get across. The film unfolds in quick-fire succession on screens, taking its cues from the surprisingly successful early-entrant digital horror Unfriended (2014), and I gather Blue Whale comes to us from the same production company, which makes a lot of sense. This shooting style has its pros and cons wherever it is used, and Blue Whale is no exception. The realism is, for the most part, communicated successfully, and the immediacy of this format is a definite benefit, though it’s a bit of a shock to the system at first. It takes a little while to bed in because you rarely get a good look at the key protagonists when phones and webcams are dancing around, pointing here, there and everywhere. It’s a similar feeling to watching found footage, when this was done on cameras of course, this is an update of same, with the same pitfalls – though Dana does effectively develop as a character as the film progresses.

There’s also that minor issue, seen elsewhere too, where there’s no explanation within the world of the film for why all of these Russian teenagers speak in Russian, but type exclusively in English; outside the world of the film, the issue of international saleability is the clear motivation, but then it is a slight ‘dip’ in the artifice as a whole even when events in the film stretch plausibility elsewhere. Again, perhaps this is in keeping with the basis for Blue Whale, which does take its cues from a real, or rumoured online game which was linked to teenage suicides back in 2016. That swirling mix of fact, fiction and everything in-between reflects that world of rumour and hearsay which often surrounds online mythologies.

The film is equally as hectic with fairly obvious references to pre-existing horrors, from Ring (1998) to Suicide Club (2001) and any number of slasher flicks – but there is a backbone of something original here, in its rate of movement, in the way it captures a specific melee of paranoia and fear and in its sensory and overwhelming approach. Also, in how it captures the transient nature of online relationships, with friendships being made and broken based on a few typed lines, the film does an excellent job: in many ways, this vulnerability is what forms the real basis of the horror. The fantasy elements just help to define it.

Certainly, by the last act, Blue Whale is beginning to overreach, but overall, it’s an exhausting, but compelling story to follow. Even if hardened horror fans soon have their suspicions about what’s going on here, watching it all unfold in its own dizzying way is a lot of fun.

Blue Whale features as part of the Fantasia Film Festival.

Fantasia 2021: Martyrs Lane

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Any expectations I had for Martyrs Lane (2021) were very quickly blown out of the water; it’s a ghostly tale which in many ways feels like it comes from an earlier time, having more in common with the subtle horrors of the 60s and 70s than the flashier, quick edits of modern cinema. This is a heartbreaking and very intimate domestic drama, centred plausibly and sensitively on the experiences of children, perhaps between Paperhouse (1988) and The Others (2001) in terms of its content and tone. But it is very much its own story, too.

Leah (the superb Kiera Thompson) is an isolated little girl who seems to be troubled by a fear of the dark and ominous dreams at night. By day, she seems to exist as something between invisible and a nuisance to the adults in her life. She’s about to be Confirmed at the local church, where her father is the minister, but there are early hints that her religious feelings are quite genuine and not just part and parcel of her father’s role, family pressure, or anything like that. She believes in angels, or what she perceives to be angels, and seems fascinated by stories about them.

One day, this bright but conflicted little girl sees another child in the woods near her house – not long after big sister Bex has been trying to scare her with stories of Tudor ghosts who walk again at night. This isn’t scary, though; the little girl seems to be about her own age, and, innocently, Leah tells her she can come to her house, if she wants to. That evening, she does, tapping on Leah’s bedroom window and asking for her help.

A different filmmaker might have continued the Wuthering Heights similarity here in grisly fashion, just like the novel, but Martyrs Lane director Ruth Platt isn’t about that. No blood washes down the window panes here. The new friendship between the two children – and what ensues – makes for a deeply sophisticated story, blending familiar aspects of ghost lore with cultural beliefs about the special abilities which children have to see things which, as adults, we say aren’t there. Think of all those stories we share about ‘invisible friends’, and what they could be. But it isn’t just a ghost story. It’s underpinned by other plot devices, and these work together to make Leah’s story a rich, intricate and often unbearably tense one. For example, the family dynamic here is incredibly strained, particularly between Leah, mother Sarah (Denise Gough) and Bex (Hannah Rae). There’s an unpleasant, simmering tension which manifests itself in a variety of ways, said and unsaid. At first, the conversation between the two little girls is very open and natural by comparison; it makes a pleasant change to some of the other exchanges which take place, even if it doesn’t remain that way.

The film really excels in its representation of that gap between adults and children; it’s a representation which, in places, makes for difficult viewing. It’s not comfortable to watch. Firstly, this is because it can be difficult to recall the specific nature and intensity of childhood fears: we’re largely socialised out of them. Martyrs Lane brings them back, doing so from the perspective of a little girl you can’t help but empathise with, whether she is anxiously using a torch to look for whatever might be making a noise in the dark, or (most poignantly of all) struggling to gain any recognition from the people in her life who should love her. Again, the film handles this brilliantly. The camera frequently stays at Leah’s height, or at least it does early on in the film, which helps to demonstrate the physical distance between her and the adults. It also often peers down at her, making her seem all the more vulnerable. The sound design is really important too, as it keeps adult conversations distant, a miserable babble which breaks off here and there only to scold Leah, or at best to trot out all the usual things people say to kids to get them to behave. It feels genuinely like relief when an adult is kind to her.

Leah, does, thankfully, get a little more interaction as the film moves on, though that tension and distance is always there on the periphery, in much the same way as Leah is – always on the threshold, looking in. So Martyrs Lane successfully captures both a child’s susceptibility to strange phenomena but also aspects of their powerlessness, but it also knows it’s being watched by adults: some of the moments of peril make you cringe as any adult would, watching a child steadily putting themselves at more and more risk.

As the film progresses, you may be able to make an educated guess at the backbone of the plot, but that does not take anything away from how the story unfolds. Elements of mystery, particularly the use of objects and clues, are used carefully as scares and revelations are doled out just as carefully, but they’re no less unsettling for that; some developments here are deeply unpleasant and unsettling. Ultimately, Martyrs Lane takes an oblique, almost delicate approach to grief, family and childhood in a thoughtful, confident way. It never misses a beat, and it sticks with you perhaps a little uncomfortably after viewing.

The World Premiere of Martyrs Lane will take place at the 25th Fantasia Film Festival.