Post-apocalyptic cinema tends to be full of sound and fury. Even if we don’t see the cataclysmic event which overthrows society, we certainly see the aftermath: ruins, road gangs, disease, deprivation. But what if the kind of deprivation shown to us was of a different kind? What if the loss incurred from such an event remained resolutely personal? This is the premise behind Go/Don’t Go, a careful and subtle examination of one man’s loneliness as he struggles to cope with a world which only has him in it.
Adam (director and writer Alex Knapp) is the last man standing in suburbia. It’s a suburbia which seems to have remained fairly comfortable too: the stores are still stocked, the lights are still on. Whatever happened to everyone else, it must have been very fast indeed. So, given this material comfort, this is no survivalist horror; Adam’s chief concern is, from what we see at first, to keep himself sane. This he does by continuing to emulate his old routines, attending work, going shopping, making phonecalls (to himself). Another facet of all this is his meticulous record-keeping. By recording whether a place or a thing still serves its purpose, he is able to determine whether it is worth returning there or not. Clearly his world is getting smaller, his sense of self is getting more and more fragile. Even in the film’s earliest scenes, Knapp is able to generate a kind of pathos for Adam, a sense of ‘what would you do?’ which is eminently relatable, because it is so everyday.
It’s made clear that Adam was a sensitive soul even at the best of times. More context for Adam’s character is added through the use of flashbacks; through these, we see that Adam always found social situations tricky, appearing nervy and awkward in company, though there’s a genuine and sweet series of moments as we see Adam’s first date and gradually-blossoming romance with K (Olivia Luccardi). His yearning for and his search for K seems to be leading him closer to her; at first, it seems as though the film is going to follow Adam to her, too, as he acts on information they had apparently shared before the unspecified event which parted them. However, nothing is as straightforward as that here. Past and present continue to meld, as the narrative focuses in on Adam’s psyche more than it does his physical moments.
Given the post-apocalyptic setting, this is an unusually intimate film, with lots of close-up shots, lots of domestic trappings and of course the domestic routines themselves. There is also a lot of (literal) ground covered as Adam roams, but it’s in the close details that Go/Don’t Go really shines. These same everyday items lose or gain significance as time moves on; the simple sound of a glass against a surface triggers a happy memory of sitting at a bar, for instance, whilst a mobile phone – with no one left to call – dies slowly, and it barely matters. Something else which stands out is the use of sound. The initial shift between (social) noise and silence is very effective in making you notice the latter. It also makes the audience, alongside Adam, jump at the familiar, humdrum sounds which drag him out of himself temporarily. As much as this film reminds me of anything, then I’d say there’s some shades of Jeremy Gardner’s work here: the isolation and wide open spaces of The Battery (2012) and the flashbacks to happier times in love of After Midnight (2019), but – given the lone protagonist – almost completely shorn of dialogue, and with flashes of something altogether more fearful. Elements of fear are doled out very carefully in Go/Don’t Go, and are all the more effective for it.
Essentially, this film is a horror of hoping. The symbolism of the steadily-failing lightbulbs seems to represent Adam’s nostalgia, and how he becomes stifled by it. Nostalgia is another key driver here, one which soon becomes utterly overwhelming, for Adam and for the audience. The end result is a pensive, very subtle piece of filmmaking with a sharp, sensitive central performance.
GO/DON’T GO will be released via Gravitas Ventures on January 12th 2021.
Arkansas, 1999. Mandy (Angela Bettis) is the world’s most disinterested nurse at the local hospital, and we meet her just ahead of a double shift. This isn’t the only reason she’s a little curt, though. To give her credit, her apparent disinclination for nursing is multifaceted: she’s a drug addict who enjoys hoovering up any spare medication she can get her hands on, but more pointedly, she’s also part of a hospital-wide and obviously very illegal trade in human organs. These she retrieves from patients who are on the verge of death anyway – albeit helping them along – puts them in a cooler, and sells them on to her cousin Regina (Chloe Farnworth in a film-carrying role).
Of course, the plot is eked out fairly thinly here; carting human organs around for the purposes of selling them to a local crime syndicate is one thing, but then the treatment of the organs themselves, well – I’m no medic, but I am fairly sure they’d be of no use to anyone having been slung into a carrier bag for what seems like an awfully long time. Let’s just accept that the whole premise and its delivery is cartoonish rather than anything else. Things begin to go badly wrong, when Regina manages to head off from the hospital without the kidney she was sent for. She only realises this when she gets back to the gang who is expecting her (with a blink-and-miss-it cameo by Mick Foley here). Another kidney has to be procured, pronto: Regina returns to the hospital, and when Mandy gives her short shrift she uses her ingenuity (!) to try to get one herself.
This all starts a chain of events in a ‘comedy of errors’ style, with one violent, ill-thought-out and potentially exposing act following hard upon the last. Casual slaughter, corpse mutilation, the presence of grim stereotypes such as the cop-hating serial murderer fresh from jail, a flirtatious and somewhat hapless cop, vengeful gangsters and expendable patients all figure here in a film which ticks along at a fair pace, becoming funnier as it goes along and perhaps as viewers settle into a mode, watching what is next to befall the sullen, far-from-impressed Mandy and wondering how it’ll all pan out. 12 Hour Shift was a big hit on the film festival circuit in 2020, and it’s clear to see why: it has that nifty balance of the ridiculous and the extreme which definitely serves a group watch.
There is a little more to it than that. The gritty reality of nursing is addressed in 12 Hour Shift, albeit in darkly comic fashion: suicide attempts, ODs, people sick to death with long-term illness. The film is also very disruptive of the typical idea of nurses as angels; these women are stone cold, deeply flawed, but still to some extent sympathetic, which is a credit to director and writer Brea Grant’s characterisation of them. The impression is of people underpaid and worn out by the job, whilst the presence of a certain ODer throws Mandy into even more of a spin when it’s revealed how she knows him, and what this all means. Still, life lessons are offered up as some context, but the emphasis remains on the macabre farce itself. Integral to that farce is Regina, and her importance increases and increases throughout the film, as she moves from a common-or-garden dumb blonde to a key driver of the chaos which unfolds and, finally, even looks as though she’s learned something (maybe) as she navigates her way to the end of the narrative.
So why is the film set at the end of the nineties? This is the one real quibble I would have with the film, as it felt a little pointless to me (though I would still prefer this approach to the much-imitated ‘timeless’ timeframe which deliberately tries to seem as though it belongs to no specific time at all). Aside from some analogue TVs and some mention of Beanie Babies, the setting has little bearing on the plot; sure, there’s a mention that the police had some officers at a Y2K training event, but it could have been anything keeping them away. If it’s just slightly retro for the sake of it, then it seems a fair amount of trouble to go to for little reward; that said, the lack of mobile phones here certainly allows the film’s misunderstandings to flourish, and perhaps does more for the plot than the singular Y2K reference.
All in all, though, for an as-yet inexperienced director like Brea Grant, 12 Hour Shift is a very entertaining, often creative horror film which makes you realise how grim your sense of humour can get. Some clever casting decisions really help here, and the interplay between Bettis and Farnworth is a pleasure to watch, alongside a decent supporting cast too (including David Arquette!) This is a grotty, grisly horror comedy with much to recommend it.
FrightFest Presents and Signature Entertainment present 12 Hour Shift on Digital Platforms 25th January 2021.
My experience of Mexican cinema tends towards the non-mainstream, admittedly, but even based on the little I do know, it seems that lurching straight into the strange and the bloody unreasonable is a niche national pastime. And so we come to Violent Delights a.k.a Beber de tu Sangre, which certainly starts as it means to go on, i.e. as a rather ungovernable, occasionally charming and always fairly confusing jumble of nudity and (some) horror elements. I counted four sex scenes before the title of the film appeared on screen. Now that is some pioneer spirit.
So much as we have a plot here – and I must stress, plot is not a priority – this is a break up movie, which becomes a tangled web of new relationships movie, which then stops making sense in any clear-cut way soon after that. Oh, and one of the couples is vampiric, although this doesn’t seem to confer many of the special powers we usually associate with vampirism; there’s no ‘time is an abyss’ here, but there is some pretty adventurous blood-letting (this film is very grisly when it wants to be, and doesn’t scrimp on the practical splatter effects). Other than that, the vampirism is just another vainglorious excuse to crowbar more boobs in, and I don’t really buy the script’s occasional excursions into existentialism because the boobs were too much of an utter distraction. But there we have it.
Couple number one, Lizeth and her on-off boyfriend Javier (not a pun), are trying to make a go of it after originally parting ways for some time; the fact that she’s pretty heavily pregnant with his child has rather forced the issue, and there’s a fair amount of second thoughts on his behalf (second thoughts which lead him to almost sleep with someone else during the nanosecond he left Lizeth and her friends at a bar to go to the toilet). The other woman who catches his eye is Alani, a vampire bored of her partner Gabriel after an unspecified amount of time together. All the orgies and the blood-letting just isn’t what it was.
It transpires that Alani and Gabriel are having problems for another reason: she wants a baby, and he doesn’t. This makes it even clearer to us that these are not vampires in a standard-issue kind of a way, as this would usually prohibit conception on account of being dead. Anyway, Javier wends his merry way back to Alani’s side when he gets half a chance, and so these two couples get drawn into a tangled web indeed. Gabriel fancies himself as a bit of an am-dram expert, so he invites Lizeth, Javier, and her friends Vania and Claudia to their house/theatre for dinner and a show. From here, things take a less linear turn, as for the rest of the film each individual actor seems to meander around the house, stopping to sleep with one another, quarrel, drink a bit of blood, or – if it’s Alani – talk about her maternal urges, which she now believes can be assuaged by the new love of her life, Javier; this girl is one big red flag. He seems game as well, which is particularly something given his pregnant partner is actually at this dinner with him. Things get gorier and dafter by turns as the film pushes towards its conclusion, giving the nod to a few other cult exploitation films along the way but feeling for all the world like a kind of tripped-out Coffin Joe story, with the same emphasis on getting the ‘perfect offspring’ by any means, even great sacrifice.
The main idea here – of a kind of love triangle (rectangle?) between vampires and non-vampires actually ain’t half bad. It could have been explored in a number of different ways, but the fact is that director/writer/editor Edin Alain Martinez opted to go for a sexploitation route here – by and large, at least – and that’s definitely what you get. There’s a certain scene with a certain cake which made me roar laughing; it was also an obvious ruse to emulate something rather more hardcore than might otherwise have been gotten away with! There is horror though, and there are some gory set pieces which have a bit of expertise behind them; overall, the film looks pretty crisp, with strong colouration and lighting which gives the film a nicely-stylised feel overall. The way in which the film veers from arthouse to exploitation means a mixed bag script-wise (accepting, of course, that things can get lost in translation). Some of the sexy-time dialogue is as laugh-out-loud ridiculous as the cake is; there’s definitely some knowing humour in here. At least, I bloody hope so.
Still, for all that, and it’s something I keep coming back to: at least Violent Delights tries to be different and tries to be entertaining, looks fine (some of the casting notwithstanding) and gets everything done and dusted in ninety minutes, which in itself is only polite. Mesmerisingly trashy, I’d say. And on occasion, you can’t say fairer than that.
Violent Delights is available for your education and edification via Redemption TV, a streaming service which you can find out about here.
Every year when I write up a ‘best of’ list, I can’t help but add a preamble about how things have been, what developments there have been and so on; never has there been a year like 2020, and no preamble can really do justice to the impact of Covid on the arts – for fans and filmmakers alike. With cinemas closed, then open, then closed, and festivals by and large shifting to virtual formats during the course of the year, the experience of film-watching felt incredibly different in 2020. By some fluke, I managed to get out to two in-person film festivals this year – FrightFest Glasgow and Celluloid Screams – but this happened rather more by luck than judgement, and FrightFest beat the first lockdown by a matter of a few days. It’s been a volatile, unpredictable situation for everyone, and time will tell what’ll remain of the film industry in 2021 – it certainly won’t be an easy ride.
That all being said, people have shown themselves to be immensely resourceful throughout this whole time: existing festivals opted to go virtual, new festivals have appeared online, and great films have found their way to an audience. Here’s my Top 10 films of the year, then, posted here in the hopes that, if you’ve missed any of these thus far, you go out and support them, if you can. They are all in their own ways immensely worthwhile.
10. The Droving
An unexpected, subtle horror film which manages to weave together its own mythology, The Droving shows that you don’t need a vast budget and garish effects to tell an effective story. Taking some folk horror elements but disrupting them (Martin is no clueless innocent at the mercy of a closed, cultish community for instance) leads to a stark and involving story of loss and alienation. You can read my full review here.
9. The Invisible Man
H G Wells’ stories have come in for a complete drubbing at the hands of scriptwriters in recent years – I’m still not quite over the experience of the BBC’s War of the Worlds – but happily, Leigh Whannell’s screenplay is superb. Yes, you can modify the existing story and yes, you can update it and yet retain the almost unbearable paranoia of the original tale. Here, it is shifted to the perspective of Cecilia (the magnificent Elisabeth Moss), an escapee from an abusive relationship whose partner, apparently, takes his own life, leaving everything to her and ostensibly freeing her from his presence. Or does he? Cecilia’s growing certainty that someone is watching her is incredibly effectively-handled; the film goes from a nightmare of gaslighting to something altogether more visceral. I watched most of this film from behind my hands. There’s a full review here.
8. Vivarium
It’s a strange thing to behold that so many of the horrors I’ve enjoyed this year have coincidentally been about isolation and confinement. Maybe horror is always like that, and it’s simply more noticeable in 2020. Regardless, Vivarium really got under my skin; it’s a cruel, bizarre scenario whereby a young couple get stranded in an identikit suburbia, watched and exploited by some unseen force which uses them to ‘raise’ a child. It’s very uncomfortable viewing, surreal and sickly (with an excellent creepy child in Sennan Jennings) and a none-too-subtle critique of the trammels which people find themselves in. I review the film here.
7. The Columnist
A razor-sharp ‘what if?’ based on the pitfalls of social media, The Columnist tells the story of Femke, a journalist who is subjected to some incredibly spiteful online trolling. Never be a woman on the internet. At first electing to move away from social media altogether, Femke comes back to it again and again and, when she realises that her new neighbour is responsible for some of the comments, she takes matters into her own hands. Soon the fantasy of dealing with the trolls seems to act as a boon for her writing, but gradually, her behaviour catches up with her. It’s an interesting blend of black humour and quite profound personal breakdown. You can check out a fuller review here.
6. The Stylist
…And another profound personal breakdown, this one blending a garish horror plotline with immensely well-realised characterisation; it works, and more than that, it’s rather affecting to see Claire (Najarra Townsend) painfully losing her grasp on reality, in the pursuit of a life and a friendship which was never really hers to begin with. Claire fantasises about belonging; she emulates people who cross into her orbit in the most graphic way imaginable, by taking their scalps. When she’s approached by regular customer Olivia (Brea Grant) and when this friendly, affable young woman makes overtures of friendship to Claire, Claire begins to spin out of control – growing obsessive, paranoid and dangerous. But you can never hate Claire; she comes across as so frail and damaged, you can only feel that crushing sense of things about to go terribly wrong for her. The final act of this film is genuinely excruciating. You can check out a full review here.
5. Bleed With Me
Yet another film about female alienation? Bleed With Me is a super-subtle take on the perils of female friendships; come to think of it, there’s a few points of overlap with The Stylist, right up to the escalating sense that Rowan (Lee Marshall) is not all she seems. Invited to go along with her friend Emily to her cabin for the weekend, all seems to be well – Rowan is a little of a spare wheel given that Emily’s boyfriend is present too – but then Rowan begins to suspect that someone or something is drawing blood from her whilst she sleeps. There are mysterious wounds on her arm, spots of blood on her nightdress. She becomes paranoid and defensive; meanwhile, her relationship with Emily begins to feel very strange and discomfiting. The film deliberately keeps its secrets, never really allowing the audience the clarity of knowing what exactly is going on – is Rowan disturbed? Or is someone injuring her? It’s an incredibly uncomfortable watch which escalates into a very engaging, if distressing head trip. You can check out my review here.
4. My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To
Oh man, this was a heartbreaker. My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To is the story of a family unit in crisis. Three siblings, Dwight, Jessie and younger brother Thomas live a strange life, avoiding the outside world and – crucially – committing murders in order to ‘feed’ Thomas. Dwight, who has to shoulder the most part of this burden by finding and delivering people to the house, is clearly craving an existence beyond this, and draws closer to a prostitute – this Jessie will not tolerate, as she is wracked with fear that Dwight is going to leave her and Thomas – but all three of these people are afraid, and crave friends and connections. The collision course is clearly set – how we get there is via a quiet sort of agony with impeccable performances throughout. You can take a look at my review here.
3. A Ghost Waits
When Jack has to stay overnight in a house which he is renovating, he realises there’s something rather bizarre about this place. It seems it’s haunted – by Muriel, a ghost who has been employed for the purpose. This is her house, and she is good at her job. Thing is, Jack becomes drawn to this woman and seeks to know her better, which causes conflict with the agency; but he begins to fall for her. It’s a brilliant, gentle story which draws together its own afterlife mythology and performs a charming, sympathetic character study on both Jack and Muriel. It’s one of those rare films which shows exactly what independent film can achieve. Take a look at the full review here.
2. The Swerve
Holly (Azura Skye) is a woman whom, we quickly determine, is on the verge of a personal crisis. Papering over the cracks with medication is only providing her with so much; her dismissive husband and children don’t really seem to see her, and the only attention which she does get is from a male student, which in itself is a source of chaos and concern. When Holly takes a stand during a dreadful family gathering and drives herself, alone, back to her house, she begins to fantasise that she swerved her car into another vehicle, killing or injuring the driver. Similarly, she sees a mouse in her kitchen which she begins to obsess over, almost as if this creature’s arrival has disrupted her ability to feel secure in her own home. Watching Holly’s world begin to spiral out of control is honestly painful to watch, and Skye is incredible. The film escalates into, and I choose this word carefully, a full-blown tragedy. Please check out my review here.
1. Saint Maud
Maud (Morfydd Clark) is a nurse who gets a job looking after the terminally-ill Amanda Kohl at her home; she’s a quiet, gentle character who takes her duties seriously, as well as sheltering behind her born-again Christianity. Kohl (Jennifer Ehle) seems to genuinely take an interest in Maud, but she’s a complex character who isn’t willing to accept her illness with grace. Some of her behaviours are very troubling to Maud. Maud, in her distress, begins to feel that she has been sent to Kohl to save her soul; we also gather that Maud is not all she seems either, and has desperately been trying to close the door on a troubled past. The story which unfolds is incredibly involving and unsettling; again, despite Maud being a fallible, flawed character, we feel for her, and the more she throws herself into her faith, the more she seems to be at breaking point. Saint Maud is meticulously realised, a film which exudes its own sense of doom and loss.
It’s very sad to hear of the passing of Great Britain’s very own pulp horror legend Guy N. Smith. And yes, I do think that ‘legend’ is an appropriate term here. I’m ready to believe that Smith’s long writing career never made him a particularly rich man even if he did, happily, do well from the 70s horror paperback boom, but his fan following was and is a very dedicated one, and for good reason. Many of us think we’re quite something for turning out a book, or maybe a few books; Smith penned over a hundred titles throughout his career, many of them incredibly lurid, often wacky horror tales which balanced entertainment against creativity.
On more than one occasion, Smith’s writing style has been held aloft as an example of crass or insensitive work; certainly, some of his sexy-time dialogue between men and women could raise an eyebrow, and once you’ve gone for the full Sucking Pit experience, you never go back. But my god, isn’t that preferable to being bored by what you’re reading? Books and horror are allowed to be fun, and these are fun. They’re stories which move at pace, too. Nor can I really name a genre of horror to which he didn’t turn his hand at some point – werewolves, insects, zombies, witchcraft, slime beasts… I somehow amassed a sizeable collection of the most glorious 70s and 80s paperback editions of Smith’s when they were (shamefully) about to be thrown away, and I still have all of them. You know what you’re going to get when the book is titled Night of the Crabs. You’re going to get skinny dippers, obviously, and these will be killed by…killer crabs. It’s a glorious certainty in a world which offers sadly few certainties, or indeed killer crabs.
In his somewhat quieter later years – there was another Crabs sequel last year, after all – Smith was probably better known (in a mark of true British eccentricity, one might say) as an aficionado of pipe-smoking. Not only are you just now probably learning that Britain has a pipe-smoking championship, but know this: Smith won it in 2003, by keeping his pipe lit for 98 minutes in total. He wrote about his passion for smoking, as well as contributing to The Shooting Times and The Countryman’s Weekly during the years when print media, particularly pulp print media, dropped out of fashion. It will be to my regret that I never made it to any of the Guy N. Smith conventions – held at his family home, no less.
By all accounts a decent, hardworking man who valued his fans immensely, Guy N. Smith’s horror writing perhaps belongs to a simpler time, when you could just tell a rollicking story and be done with it. Now that nearly his entire body of work is available on eBooks, more people can come to it and appreciate it on its own terms, and I sincerely hope they do. More Guy N. Smith, less 2020 please. Incidentally, his last blog post reminds us that he once wrote a novel about the spread of a dangerous disease which spread via bats…
I’m afraid Matt Glasby’s book came to me via a place of great perplexity, but one which hasn’t ultimately done it any harm. When first approached to cover it, I happened upon an inexplicably angry review of the book by a woman who, in a similar vein, had angrily reviewed a Kate Summerscale book because it had ‘knocked her belief in poltergeists’. The internet is a fascinating place, let’s agree, and somehow the scathing review piqued my curiosity more than a positive review would have done; happily to say, The Book of Horror is a fine read with much to recommend it. There are lots of horror reference books and there’s lots of fan writing, but The Book of Horror distinguishes itself by trying to get to grips with what, exactly, horror is and how we relate to it.
This is done through a series of 34 film articles; these are, for reasons which are explained, all post-WWII titles, though actually the majority of them are post-2000, and otherwise a mixed range of styles and genres. Glasby spends time explaining his rationale for inclusions in the introduction, and there is a list of ground rules which he elected to follow. This is fair; having a process is an interesting approach which goes beyond liking/not liking a film, though that said, the emphasis on pure scares is relaxed when we come to the suggested further viewing which appears beneath each major inclusion – with titles like Red, White and Blue being recommended. There are some really interesting films in the suggested viewing, though, which go beyond the more ‘classic’ horror titles reserved for the main features: this ensures variety, and whilst I think you could quibble on some additions in terms of links to horror itself – okay, Red, White and Blue as an example – overall, we get a solid range of horror titles.
So how, therefore, do you evaluate the kind of horror itself, and its effects on viewers? This is a central feature of the book, and Glasby has devised an intriguing infographic-style approach to help to ascertain this, introducing seven ‘scare tactics’. These relate to the structure of the films themselves (such as how shots are composed and how this makes audiences respond), visual and aural cues, and other aspects which impact upon certain emotional responses. These then appear alongside each film in varying balance. Of course, tastes in horror are always in the eye of the beholder – but this is a considered exploration of method, and a worthwhile attempt to stratify and support the films which have been chosen. Additionally, with each concise, knowledgeable and well-written article comes a unique timeline indicating key moments in each film. Plot reveals are included, mind, so be careful if any of these are as-yet unseen titles (unlikely, but you never know). As a final note here, it was great to see Lake Mungo (2008) getting such a warm mention.
The Book of Horror: the Anatomy of Fear in Film is an interesting, entertaining read which condenses a lot of information with some novel approaches and means of doing it. You can find out more about the book, including how to purchase a copy, here.
Alongside the Borley Rectory haunting, the story of the ‘Bell Witch’ (or the ‘Tennessee demon’) is one of those stories which made a big impression on me when I was a child, something I first encountered in a ‘mysteries of the unexplained’ compendium and which I’ve reflected on ever since with a mixture of fascination and horror. But just what is it about this story which has given it such longevity? Such reach? Documentary film The Mark of the Bell Witch (2020) both explores the story and attempts to answer that question, and it makes for an engaging watch overall.
The film itself starts with the deathbed scene of John Bell in 1820, a gentleman farmer whose family had for years been apparently afflicted by a peculiar kind of haunting. It’s chaptered – every independent film seems to be chaptered these days – but the film goes back to the birth of the phenomena, from the knocks and rapping which the family first noticed, to the appearance of strange animals on the farm and then the disembodied voice of what came to be known as ‘Kate’, an entity which could apparently discourse on scripture with members of the community, as well as taking an active interest in the activities of the family. There really isn’t a story quite like this, in the sense that the Bell Witch haunting seems to draw in key supernatural tropes but then builds on them, extending them in ways which seem completely implausible. The ‘witch’ is by turns a poltergeist and an omniscient being, a recognisable ghost which behaves like ghosts are renowned to do, and then again the phenomena also encompasses cryptids, the whole ‘Indian burial ground’ folklore and notions of a generational curse. Describing all of this we have a range of local experts, authors and folklorists who offer insights as to how the story has survived and thrived as part of the fabric of Tennessee culture.
The film is decently-edited, blending interviews with period re-enactments (which largely work well, one curious wig notwithstanding), illustrations (contemporary and modern) and photos, which contribute towards the sense of place which is a vital plank of the film overall. There’s some narration too, with some accounts written by members of the Bell family being read aloud. In a nutshell, there’s plenty here to keep the attention and a few scenes worthy of a horror film. The film’s dispassionate treatment of its subject matter actually makes it very unsettling, actually, and it is still a scary tale. Some of the scenes – the point in the story where the Bell family reported hearing choking and gurgling at the foot of their beds, for example – are genuinely unpleasant; how could they not be? All of that being said, I do feel that the film’s attempts to really get under the skin of what makes this legend so enduring isn’t wholly there, and there is still a great deal of scope to explore it further. For instance, there are so many contemporary accounts of people visiting the farm and conversing with the ‘witch’ herself; was this a mass delusion of some kind? How did people at the time account for it? There are still questions to explore, and whilst the film does touch on these, there are still some points where I would love to know more.
However, regardless of the fact that The Mark of the Bell Witch doesn’t quite get to the heart of the story, it’s a diverting watch nonetheless and it was certainly interesting to hear it being explored from a folklorist perspective, as it is here. If you have an interest in the legend, then you could do far worse than give this film an hour and a half of your time.
If you could have back a moment in time – to say something differently, or to ask something you never asked – would you? Or, if you could tell someone in the here-and-now what you really think of them, or what they did to you – would you? That is the central premise behind short film Proxy (2020), a subtle, clever and cruel film which teases out ideas and dilemmas which are certainly not a million miles away from our day to day lives now. In this sense, it’s not quite a dystopia; it’s too current and, in its way, too plausible for that.
We are filled in on the fact that ‘Proxies’ are real people trained to assume, for a short time, any necessary personae needed in their clients’ lives. Mothers, ex-partners, current partners – you name it. By 2024, when the film is set, this is a global brand, now offering its services in LA. One such Proxy is known as number #7527 (Emma Booth). When we are introduced to her, she’s sat in a room in disarray, the trappings of assumed personalities strewn all over, and she’s learning lines: Proxies learn scripts for sessions with their clients. #7527’s clients are only known to her by scenarios and first names: ‘Christopher’, Stanley’. She performs this live-action therapy in a consummately-professional manner; day on day, these mini-tragedies unfold with stark regularity. A script learned. A memory faked. A session over.
The Proxy herself almost inevitably skirts close to harm given all these moments of high intensity being played out, but it’s clear that when a certain big job comes along with a special request boundaries get blurred in a potentially dangerous way. Proxy is a film which, despite its novel elements, plays nonetheless with age-old concerns of selfhood and authenticity; if you make your living on ‘bad faith’, then where are you – and is there an undisputed version of you? How do you tell?
The detached demeanour of actor Emma Booth during this film is quite something to behold. When she mouths her lines and prepares herself for sessions with clients, she has little more emotion that the female being in Under The Skin (2013). In-role, she emotes, sure, but in a creepy, stylised way. It’s clear that there’s nothing of her personhood in her job, and it takes an off-script experience to get a glimpse of anything deeper down; this, in itself, causes a crisis. Clever little touches in the film – such as a doctored photo in a frame, changed to present the revised normality the client wishes to believe in – bolsters this feeling of unreality.
In some ways reminiscent of Black Mirror, Proxy shares with that TV series a sense of ever-diminishing distance between reality and fiction. And it’s perfect for a short-film format, offering just enough to its audience to leave a few questions – just as good short films always should. This is a dark, well-constructed glimpse into a disturbing, plausible world.
If ever you’ve wondered, deep in your heart, what an experimental/arthouse spin on The Fall of the House of Usher would look like, then wonder no further: The Bloodhound explores similar themes of warped family dynamics, fatalism and isolation, though by coming at it in an ultra-modern location with a low-exposition, dialogue-lite story. A first feature film by director Patrick Picard, this clearly isn’t the style of film you make by accident. Accordingly, I don’t know whether to applaud his single-mindedness, or ask more questions.
As per House of Usher, a young man, Francis (Liam Aiken) arrives at a large house after hearing from his old friend Jean-Paul (Joe Adler), who wrote him a note requesting his company. He’s a little perturbed by the front door standing wide open, but he’s soon reunited with J.P. and they talk…warmly? They talk. And, as they talk, it’s revealed that these two haven’t seen each other in a decade. J. P. reached out in a fit of loneliness; it seems he’s been labouring under various neuroses, alongside his hitherto-unseen twin sister, Vivian (Annalise Basso). If anything, J. P. explains, Vivian is even worse. It’s a strange set-up, but Francis agrees to stay.
It’s quite a house – that kind of vast, minimalist space which always makes me side-eye my stacks of books and papers a little guiltily – and it soon has an impact on Francis which makes him feel as disorientated as his companion seems to be. The divide between sleeping and waking becomes blurry here; J. P. seems to encourage this confusion, but then again, it’s never truly made clear whether the house does have some sort of life beyond itself which has an impact on its inmates, or if it’s all the inmates. Events take a turn when J. P. reveals that he’s had all of Francis’s worldly possessions brought out of storage and to the house, without being asked to do it. Curiouser and curiouser. The two men’s relationship seems to grow more off-key, with more questions than answers, and it’s unclear who’s duping who; meanwhile, Vivian remains an unseen, intangible presence in this place.
The Bloodhound is what I’d call ‘a peculiarity’. It’s languid, it never gives us any denouement and as such, it’s quite difficult to call it a narrative as such. Tantalising hints – the symbolism of ‘the bloodhound’ himself – are quite easily explained away in the end, whereas the conversations between Francis and J. P. never seem to reveal very much at all. There’s nothing naturalistic about the way they talk and what they say is, essentially, the entire film: high in the mix, the speech dominates the rest of the sound design. So it’s dialled up, but also quite ponderous, even turgid. Again, this was obviously a directorial decision, and I rather wonder if Picard was going for the kind of stylised conversation which you often encounter in arthouse cinema. Fair enough, if so. This kind of thing isn’t for everyone, and it pushed my tolerance in places. Probably the film’s most interesting aspect is in how it questions whether, in these hyper-connected times where a person has access to everything they could ever need, a person could ever again be as cut off as, let’s say, the Ushers. And of course, they can: J.P.’s rationale for never leaving the house comes at least partly from the horrors which he hears on the news; he talks a few times about ‘connectivity’, even though he eschews it. We never see anyone here accessing the internet or similar, but it’s clearly there.
There’s no doubt that The Bloodhound is an attractive film with a keen eye for attractive shots and lighting. The two male leads do fine, albeit they are not given a tremendous amount with which to grapple, and it’s a shame that actress Annalise Basso is more or less absent (though, yes, I get it). This is, though, primarily a dour mood piece, and your engagement with it will likely come in large part from your knowledge of and your enjoyment of Poe.
Anything for Jackson is a horror film which clearly starts as it means to go on – offering drastic, sometimes bizarre contrasts between humdrum suburban life and an occult storyline which is recognisable, but no less OTT for it. The resulting film is like a mash-up between Hereditary (2018) and Inside (2007) – make of that what you will. For me, despite the fact that it becomes less able to keep the surprises coming as it nears its close, it’s nonetheless a very entertaining, grisly feature with more than enough ideas to hold interest. It manages that rare skill of balancing dark humour against some pretty gruesome content, too, achieving that tonal balancing act which gets away from so many films.
The older couple whom we meet as the film begins – Doctor Henry Walsh (Julian Richings) and his wife Audrey (Sheila McCarthy) seem to be at that stage in their lives of humdrum domestic happiness – that is, until their morning is disrupted by the delivery of a distraught, heavily-pregnant woman, whom they gag and chain to a bed upstairs; this is clearly part of a plan which they’ve been formulating for some time. Hmm. This being done, they’re back to dignified ‘normal’, or at least, the appearance of it. Reading a statement to the young woman, Henry’s patient Shannon (Konstantina Mantelos), they explain that their plan is to bring their deceased grandson, Jackson, back. Back? Shannon queries who the little boy sitting in the room is, then. It seems that, even before the plan is put into action, something is not right with this house – and the occult content of the film’s plot is about to take a significant hike upwards, as it transpires that the Walshes are going to invoke demonic forces, to try and reincarnate Jackson into the body of Shannon’s unborn baby.
Of course, the film doesn’t exist where intoning in an archaic language from a mysterious book ends well, and cinema would be the poorer if it did. The film fills us in on elements of the back story after the event we begin with, and if done well as it is here, it’s a pleasing way to structure a plot. It also allows the film to mete out its nastiness – which is very definitely in there – mixing it in with more humorous aspects, and the more humanising aspects too. Whilst the film doesn’t dig too deeply into the human psyche, there’s enough characterisation here to assert that there is more going on here than simply a re-tread of Evil Dead-style tomfoolery (a film which we all love, sure, but which lacks anything really resembling a back story). As the film unfolds, the growing evidence of what this loving, if deeply-damaged pair has done badly wrong leads to some genuinely appealing horror sequences, and where the film initially leads with its occult horror tropes (the grimoires, the pentagrams, the rituals) it transforms into more of a ‘haunted house’ movie, but this doesn’t feel like a bad fit at all. Rather, thanks to a handy plot reveal, the haunted house motif makes sense. A few of the successive scenes successfully made me squirm, too, being as they are a solid blend of splatter and spooky.
It’s interesting seeing how this pans out around three main characters who have barely any concept of what’s going on. Motivated by grief, the film successfully gives the impression that Henry and Audrey have never done anything illegal or immoral in their lives before this point; now, driven by their grief, they are an odd fit for the lunacy unfolding in their home. In places, some of the shifts between chintzy normality and the forces of hell are a little obvious (Audrey making tea straight after a demonic encounter is really driving that point) but, largely speaking, they’re plausibly bewildered, desperate people who are also dangerous, and – essentially – to blame. The film’s more serious subtext is absent families, whether through bereavement or estrangement, just played out with the kind of grotesque excess at which horror excels. And at the heart of all of this is Shannon: I will admit raising an eyebrow at yet another woman in horror whose impending motherhood conveniently eclipses her personhood. I’m also surprised that I’ve read some reviews of this film commenting warmly on its novel plot, as for me this is hardly a film without some precedent. Rather like Rosemary’s Baby (1968) we’ve another horror here which rests on the proprietorial treatment of a pregnant woman. Thankfully, Shannon has enough about her to fight her corner – or, at least, it seems that way; I’d be interested to see what other viewers made of some of the final ambiguity…
Minor quibbles aside (I didn’t really get started on the metal-incel-occult stereotype who pops up) I really did enjoy this film. It’s a kind of gory parable, a cautionary tale about meddling with those pesky demons which more than deserves its place amongst the best of the horror films which have followed a similar story arc.
Anything for Jackson (2020) is available to watch now on Shudder. For more information on how, please click here.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from a film with a title like Girl With No Mouth (2019). It sounds like something from exploitation cinema, akin to They Call Her One Eye (1973) or even some kind of body horror. Given that this film is directed by Turkish director Can Evrenol – who brought us the lurid, squalid terrors of Baskin (2015) – it seemed even more likely that this newer film would wind up being horror, or sci-fi, or something similar. Almost needless to say, given this preamble, Girl With No Mouth has little to nothing to do with exploitation cinema, or horror. Nor, even once the dystopian setting is explained, does it feel particularly like a dystopian film either. I sincerely hope that neither the title nor the lack of post-apocalyptic sprawl (nor the presence of a talented horror director, for that matter) will mean this film lands with the wrong audiences, because that would be a shame: this is a quirky, often sensitive adventure movie, an oddly warm take on a dystopian setting where the dystopia could almost be totally excised. Let me explain.
The post-apocalyptic setting is explained first and foremost by some on-screen text, which tells us that the usual things have been going on which bring a situation from pre- to post-apocalypse: foreign wars, a corrupt, powerful Corporation which has foisted itself upon Turkey, and a ‘great explosion’, which seems to be behind a spate of birth defects. In a remote house, little Perihan (Elif Sevinç) lives alone with her father (Sermet Yesil). Peri herself has a birth defect – yep, she’s the girl with no mouth, a facial deformity which she hides beneath a red face covering. Her father has taught her three key rules to keep her safe: never cross the river; keep your bag with you; run if you see people. This is advice which she can soon only partly follow thanks to the arrival of Corporation employee, uncle Kemal (Mehmet Yilmaz Ak). He warns her father that the Corporation have a master plan to impose a new ‘peace’; it involves purging those with defects like the one Peri has. Baba has the option to hand her over, and save himself. Needless to say, this he cannot do.
Peri has to flee across the river which she was warned about, but she cannot avoid other people for long. Luckily for her, it’s a group of children, the ‘Pirates’, all of whom have some kind of physical defect themselves. Now a team, those who wish to impose this new peace – led by Peri’s uncle – soon pursue them out of their hiding place, forcing them to head for the so-called ‘Lost City’ to find safety.
The plot here is a fairly simple one, and facial deformities notwithstanding (the film stretches itself very thinly when it tries to show us its SFX) this could take place anywhere in time or in any place where children are unprotected and so must look after themselves. I mean, Peter Pan, duh. One of the first films which came to mind, albeit minus the magic realism aspect, was Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017), a very recent film where, largely, the same thing happens: a little girl flees into an alien, contested space where she needs the friendship and trust of a group of other rootless children, themselves the targets of a group of corrupt, cruel adults. There are countless other films where children’s friendship and adults’ wickedness are brought into conflict. Do we really need the dystopian aspect here? Well, it’s an attempt to add interest to to the framing narrative. It also creates a reason why each child is deficient in a sense, whether sight, speech, smell or hearing, which adds to the notion that, by working together, they create a unanimous whole – but the wicked uncle, the unfair fight, the chase – these are as old as the hills. In terms of how the setting looks, much of it is actually sylvan, pleasantly green rather than Fallout 3. When the children move on, they do encounter ruined buildings, but it’s not in some towering metropolis and still looks rather gentle.
So much for that. But there are some real strengths here, things which make this film an engaging watch. Evrenol knows how to direct, and he certainly knows how to frame a shot, pick a location, and cast a film: Girl With No Mouth belongs to its young cast, and full credit to Elif Sevinç who plays her part non-verbally, but still manages a convincing, often touching performance – as do the rest of the ‘Pirates’, and there are some very warm scenes; a blind boy reading to his friends from a book which is anything but the history of Pirate exploits which he’s ad-libbing establishes a nice dynamic between them all. Likewise, nice guys need a good foil, and Mehmet Yilmaz Ak is a solid villain, just about preventing himself from spilling over into melodrama in places but full of menace elsewhere, a brooding figure who adds just enough tension to the film. By the end, despite the film’s low budget never quite disappearing from view, I was on board with the film’s industry, economy and raw sort of charm. Sure, it’s not the first of its kind, nor will it be the last, but it does have value; its moral is simple and straightforward, but it’s an adventure story with enough attention paid to key elements to mean it still has plenty to recommend it. Can Evrenol is showing versatility here, which is cool; I half wish he could be versatile on that title…
