Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

The Endless (2017)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

I’ve followed the careers of directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead with interest ever since I covered their challenging and innovative feature debut, Resolution, back in 2012. I loved the way that the film combined interesting characters, plausible dialogue and a type of slow-burn horror which was quite unlike anything else I’d seen. It’s rare to see filmmakers do something quite so unpredictable on a shoestring, and their second feature, Spring (2014) was just as ambitious. These guys have never felt the need to make a string of tester short films to find their own style, and although they work together very closely, manning most of the key development roles in their own films, they’ve thus far avoided the affliction of the indie filmmaker: an inability to edit their own work. Their films are economical in many respects but achieve a great deal, and consequently I had high hopes for The Endless, their new, third feature-length. Here, the two directors are taking on yet another role – actually starring in their film, but this works well; I soon forgot I was watching the directors directing themselves and got absorbed by events on screen.

Justin and Aaron (as in the characters) are living the dream. You know, that awful dream where you work your fingers to the bone to make minimum wage cleaning up after other people simply to eke out an existence. Justin seems to have made peace with this; his brother, Aaron, has not. Admittedly, their lives have never been easy or straightforward: ten years ago, they escaped from a place called Camp Arcadia, a cult where they had both been raised. Justin masterminded their escape with the best of intentions, but Aaron is struggling with his so-called freedom. Receiving a mysterious video through the post – where one of the inmates of the camp seems to be alluding to some sort of suicide pact – only helps to drive Aaron towards a decision: he wants to go back. Not to stay, he insists, but to say a proper goodbye. Justin reluctantly agrees to go with him, and so they make the long drive into the back of beyond.

When I first saw that there was an ominous circle motif being repeated, then a huge circular pit at the camp, I thought: Jug Face. Was this going to be another tale about an isolated community gone rogue, playing by its own rules? Well, in a way that’s true, but any expectations of blank-eyed backwoods folk were not to be fulfilled. Jug Face is a superb film, but this particular cult isn’t savage. Far from it.

Things at the camp are…fine. Better than fine. There’s been no Kool Aid incident, and if anything, life at Camp Arcadia compares all too favourably with life on the outside. Sure, it’s a little remote, but all that fresh air, fresh food and homemade beer seems like a far better deal than snacking on ready meals in-between cleaning jobs. The people who live there seem quite normal, too, and with the exception of ‘Smiling Dave’, no one appears particularly happy-clappy. Hal, the leader of the group (though he protests otherwise) seems pleased to see the two brothers, and they’re made welcome. So far, so good. Thing is, when they ask a girl called Anna why she sent them that strange video message, she (plausibly) denies all knowledge of it. The most obvious question – the question of who really sent it – soon breeds others. There seems to be some sort of malign force at play which has brought the brothers back to Camp Arcadia, for some as-of-yet inexplicable reason. As Justin and Aaron begin to understand all of this, the fabric of everything seems about to rend in two: at the camp, time and place are not what they seem.

I really feel that saying much more about the plot would spoil it, so please forgive all the following abstractions…

The Endless is not shy of grappling with themes which are terrifying enough in their complexity at the best of times, adding its palpable sense of unease by slow, expertly-wrought degrees. Our vulnerability to something vast and humbling like time itself has long been a source of horror, so the addition of – potentially – a pernicious unknown behind the scenes is both unsettling and ambitious. Linked to this is the idea that personal freedom itself is dubious – something else we don’t like to dwell on, something else that scares us. It would be easy to throw in the word ‘Lovecraftian’ here, and yes, there are a few key moments where that author comes to mind; I’d argue there are some links with his short story, The Unnamable [sic] amongst others. And, like Lovecraft, The Endless knows better than to straightforwardly show its hand. Retaining elements of mystery is key to the film’s success.

To leave it at that would undersell the film, though. Unlike Lovecraft, slivers of (intentional) humour underpin the growing sense of alienation throughout without undermining the darker elements. Sympathetic portrayals of Aaron and Justin, a first starring role for Benson and Moorhead, also allow a more relaxed, relatable feel to the film. The Endless is beautifully shot, too, with a sense of space and place which dwarfs its characters.

Benson and Moorhead have past form with this kind of ambitious handling. I credited Spring (2014) with how successfully it realised a lofty aim: creating a brand new mythology. Here, by linking in with other themes Moorhead and Benson have explored on film previously – and I’ll say no more about that here – The Endless successfully merges a study of family dynamics with something altogether more horrific. It’s believably realistic at the same time that it’s abstract and alienating. A lot of that stems from the terrors of analogue technology, used to subtle but compelling effect here once again. I think people of a certain age – namely those growing up in the Eighties and Nineties – will appreciate the fact that the visual distortions and audio disturbances on old video and audio tapes could be very creepy indeed. This theme appeared in Resolution, and it’s used to superb effect in The Endless.

Honestly, in many ways this has been a tough review to write – not because I have nothing to say, clearly – all these words in – but because I’m struggling to think of ways to balance out all the praise. But then, the first two films each made my top three films of their release year, so I suppose there’s no real reason to play coy now. The Endless is an intricate and subtle horror which never quite shows its hand. Messrs Benson and Moorhouse should be known absolutely everywhere by now; that they’re not is disappointing, no doubt more for them than for us, but while we live in a world where huge studios effectively buy people’s admiration, it makes this kind of unique cinema all the more compelling. See it if you can. In fact, see all of their films, and don’t skimp on Resolution. They all deserve your time.

I Remember You (2017)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Being a tiny nation, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Iceland hasn’t yet featured very prominently, in its own right, in cinema. Its stunning and evocative landscapes have been used a thousand times in films which simply seek a striking location, but it’s comparatively rare to see Icelandic people, language and stories making their own way to the screen – at least for audiences outside of the country. For this reason alone, it’s welcome to see I Remember You (Ég man þig) – an Icelandic thriller which unites the noir stylings of popular TV shows like The Killing and The Bridge with something altogether more supernatural, more intangible. To achieve this – which it does, largely effectively – it relays an extensive story via two seemingly separate narrative arcs. 

We first encounter a doctor, Freyr, apparently a psychiatrist (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson) but enrolled to attend a death scene out of sheer necessity, when an elderly woman commits suicide in a remote church. She’d clearly died in some distress, having trashed the church’s interior and carved numerous crosses into the walls before hanging herself. The mystery deepens; the crosses carved into the walls have also been carved into her flesh, by whom we do not know: it’s something which has apparently been taking place for years given the differing degrees of scarring. Alongside detective Dagný (Sara Dögg Ásgeirsdóttir) Freyr becomes embroiled in trying to understand the reason for this death. Examinations of her background reveal that a number of people from her childhood have also died in strange circumstances – in fact, only two of the children from an ominously defaced group photograph are still alive, whilst another boy disappeared decades previously, never to be seen again. This would all be troubling enough, but when the elderly survivors seem to know something about Freyr’s son Benny – himself long missing, presumed dead – then Freyr has to follow the mystery to its origins. 

Elsewhere, husband and wife Garðar and Katrín (Thor Kristjansson and Anna Gunndís Guðmundsdóttir) arrive in a weathered corner of the country with the goal of renovating a dilapidated shack in what was once a whaling village, long since abandoned. Katrín’s friend Líf has come along to help out, and on the surface, they seem a happy trio who aren’t afraid of the hard work ahead; there’s money to be made from the tourism which summer will bring, Katrín asserts. However, the ulterior motive behind all of this also pertains to a lost child. Katrín recently gave birth to a stillborn son, and the resulting pressure on the marriage caused a rift which is only just healing. Things are not as promising as they seem, however, and the cracks are soon to show, but Katrín seems to be prone to seeing and hearing things which seem to be supernatural in origin. The more she seems affected, the more issues between her and Garðar come to the fore; is she seeing the ghost of a little boy in the property because of her own trauma and her own situation? Or is there something else at play?

How these two stories will intertwine is kept quiet for a large share of the film, with each story generating its own interest (and several low-key scares); course, you can probably gather that they will, eventually, overlap, and to give credit to writer/director Óskar Thór Axelsson, it’s quite hard to predict the process. That said, it feels like a long road to get to this point: the film runs at 105 minutes, which in today’s climate is not that long at all, but given the deliberation and pace of I Remember You, it feels somewhat longer. If you have patience for these kinds of slow-burn thrillers, then I would say there’s plenty there to reward it, but if you prefer your films more tightly-wrought then you may also feel that this film meanders in places.

Still, what a place to meander: part of the joy (if that’s the right term) of so much of this scandi noir comes simply from looking at the Scandinavian locations where these various shades of hell are unfolding. Like its neighbours, on one hand Iceland is neat, orderly and picturesque, and on the other it’s stark, barren and oddly colourless: these places look like nowhere else on earth. In fact, it’s a wonder more specifically supernatural cinema isn’t coming from Scandinavia, as the whole ethos of order being overshadowed by something sublime and terrifying is right there in the landscapes and the towns in equal part. I Remember You also has decent performances throughout, which underpins the unsettling horror at its core: lost, dead children, and the impact this has on their surviving relatives, especially parents. Still, this has been done elsewhere in recent years: the stark locations notwithstanding, I Remember You is thematically quite similar to The Orphanage, with a similar balance of mystery and supernatural phenomena (mercifully brought to the screen with a minimum amount of jump scares, though a few black-eyed child ghosts, which seem irresistible to filmmakers everywhere). The problem is, once you spot this similarity, many of the mysteries may lose a little something, but this is to be expected when there are comparatively so few modern ghost stories which rely on this kind of mystery-solving.

All in all, however, I Remember You is a well-shot film which shows us that ghosts inhabit the bleakest corners. It lingers over its exposition in ways which may challenge the patience of some viewers, but those who enjoy things to move a little slower and quieter will find plenty here. Not an instant classic perhaps, but an aesthetically-pleasing slow burn chiller nonetheless.

 

Borley Rectory (2017)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

For many of us growing up in the Seventies and Eighties, being terrified by the Borley Rectory hauntings was practically a rite of passage. For my part, I must have been around nine years old, I’d guess, and found out about ‘the most haunted house in England’ from a Readers’ Digest Mysteries of the Unexplained compendium. There were other tales of ghostly phenomena which also fascinated and appalled me – the Matthew Manning story, the Bell Witch case – but the allegedly ghostly scrawls addressed to ‘Marianne’ really fixed themselves in my imagination. I couldn’t bring myself to re-read the section on Borley Rectory for weeks at a time, but thought about it constantly, even beginning to practise my own automatic writing after I read about its use in Borley – thus, terrifying myself even more.

I’m clearly not alone in this; many people of around my age need only hear the phrase ‘Usborne Book of Ghosts’ and they’re off into a kind of traumatic nostalgia trip – the kind which seems uniquely beloved of horror fans, this drive towards recapturing the halcyon terrors of childhood. This makes it all the more unusual that a cinematic take on the Borley Rectory hauntings has been so long in coming, Haunting at the Rectory (2015) notwithstanding, and even if several superb haunted house movies (such as The Legend of Hell House) have already taken their cues from the case. Director Ashley Thorpe originally intended to make his Borley Rectory a short film; years have ensued, the project has grown, and the resultant film is a feature length offering.

Some sort of potted history would seem to make sense here, given the framework used in the film itself, but then the history of Borley Rectory, in Essex, England, is a convoluted, complex one. Originally built on the site during the Victorian era, the first inhabitants of the house – the Bull family – soon reported ghostly phenomena, such as footsteps, and the apparition of what seemed to be a nun, walking in the grounds. A combination of local rumours and the literary imaginations of the Bull daughters no doubt fuelled an atmosphere of suggestibility, but it seems that the people involved were very earnest about what they had seen. By the time that the Bull family vacated the living, with Harry Bull dying in the late 1920s, the rectory’s reputation was firmly established.

In 1929, Mr and Mrs Smith became the new incumbents, and the supernatural phenomena persisted; the family eventually contacted The Daily Mirror newspaper, asking for their help in contacting the Society for Psychical Research, and a series of sensationalist articles duly appeared before the newspaper facilitated the involvement of Harry Price, a notorious ‘ghost hunter’ of his day. After the Smiths left and the Foysters moved in during 1930, Price maintained his interest, and in many ways the phenomena seemed to intensify around the Foysters, particularly Mrs Marianne Foyster. Allegations of faking phenomena dogged Price throughout his professional life and Borley was no exception, but certainly Price’s involvement helped to cement a public interest in the place which has endured for the best part of a century, and after the Foysters, too, left Borley Rectory, Price and his team even took the unusual step of leasing the property for a year. Further spirit messages were communicated to members of his team during this time, including the prophecy that the Rectory would soon burn to the ground: this it did, in 1939, with at least one witness claiming to have seen a ghostly nun at an upstairs window…

Borley Rectory (2017) is unusually framed as a documentary film, exploring and discussing the events mentioned above in largely linear order with the help of a narrator – none other than Julian Sands. Ashley Thorpe explained at the screening that his film had been heavily influenced by his own childhood nostalgia for spooky 70s TV, such as the works of Lawrence Gordon Clark and the Armchair Thriller series, which had a scary ghost nun of its own. I’m sure I saw some Ghost Story for Christmas artwork tucked away in one of the sequences, too. However, Thorpe also mentioned a love of 1920s and 30s Hollywood horror, which seems altogether heavier in the mix: Borley Rectory is shot entirely in black and white, and the actors wear the heavily stylised costumes and make-up beloved of, say, early James Whale cinema. Whilst it’s somewhat engaging to see some well-beloved actors both dressed in period costume and acting accordingly – with Reece Shearsmith as the Daily Mirror reporter, Nicholas Vince as Reverend Smith and author Jonathan Rigby as Price himself, the rather studied delivery somewhat dwarfs any stylistic links to the barely-glimpsed horrors of Gordon Clark.

This brings me to my biggest gripe with Borley Rectory, something concomitant with the chosen acting approach. It’s the animation. Rather than a conventional shoot, the film was shot entirely on green-screen and then pieced together; the actors themselves were never shot on any location, it was all done and dusted in a few days, and then the film was built around them. I don’t doubt that this is a meticulous process, and doubly so for sequences such as the pop-up book, which I acknowledge was built on the back of careful research and application. I also know that there are other forces at work and other considerations to be made in judging how best to put a film together, made all the more difficult by the vastness of the Borley history. Some viewers may love this painstaking approach. However, the effect for me was to make me feel doubly distanced from the events taking place on screen. An altogether quieter, more conventional framework would, I feel, have better served the story. The ambition here is clear, but ultimately, the flashy visuals engulfed the haunting.

That all aside, it was certainly enjoyable to see something so oddly beloved finally make the leap from the printed page to the screen. Perhaps the most salient point which Borley Rectory successfully communicates, is that a haunting seems to be very much like a relationship; people, with all of their flaws and ulterior motives, imprint upon the phenomena they report; in some cases, their flaws make the phenomena altogether. This is one of the most confounding but fascinating aspects to any alleged haunting, and Borley Rectory – the place –  seems to have been an example of this par excellence. It’s fitting that Borley Rectory – the film – successfully makes this point, whatever my misgivings about its visual style.

 

Doubleplusungood (2017)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The legacy of Catholicism in French and Belgian left-field cinema seems to mean a strange predilection for Christian themes, although it finds its form in curious ways. In recent years we’ve had Calvaire, made in 2004 (retitled ‘The Ordeal’ for English audiences, which neatly strips it of its Biblical meaning), the Christmas creation horrors of Satan (2006) and of course Martyrs (2008). Now, ten years later, we have something which merges crime drama with something altogether more spiritual and not a little gonzo: voila, Doubleplusungood.

Doubleplusungood (and I’m using the one-word form here after IMDb) at least ostensibly looks like a very different deal to the films aforementioned: we start with a gritty Man Bites Dog-looking black and white intro and meet our key character, whilst a voiceover regales the audience with the pleasures of operating in the criminal underworld. But we move on, fifteen years (and into sharp colour) to pick up with the narrative and narrator again. Yep, it’s the same guy, same dark streets in an unspecified location, and now he’s on a specific mission. He’s on a theologically-tinged quest to terminate the so-called Twelve Apostles of Lucifer; organised into a so-called ‘Pyramid of Power’, our guy proceeds to ‘climb’ said pyramid, dismantling the apostles’ hold on his society as he goes.

The film therefore follows the pattern of our protagonist, Dago Cassandra, working steadily through a hitlist; the apostles he’s seeking are a disparate bunch, but overall, they appear to be low grade crooks, and (hopefully no spoilers here) they get offed in a series of increasingly grisly ways – whilst all the while, a mysterious key player seems to be monitoring proceedings from a shady office, and you get the distinct impression that he will figure prominently over the course of things. The involvement of a character called Eve is a further complicating presence, but this allows further asides about the nature of religion and morality – this is all context which clearly underpins Doubleplusungood throughout.

In this recognisable, but unnamed country, with an apparently supernatural frame and a heavy reliance on dialogue (or more often, monologue) in order to explicate all of this, one thing leaps to mind here: Tarkovsky. Like Tarkovsky, the presence of fantasy (or in the more established director’s case, sci-fi) elements is more a means of allowing us to explore characters and how they behave under extreme, unexpected circumstances than a means to study the fantastical – it’s all about the melting pot of human drama. There’s definitely something of this in Doubleplusungood. However, as the film takes place on the streets of what at least looks like a conventional European city setting, it’s far more streetwise than Tarkovsky, and there are some elements of worldly, or at least world-weary humour along the way here.

The film, for all its unusual contextual factors, is however broadly linear: it takes its unconventional elements on a pretty straightforward journey through a series of kills, which can feel repetitive, despite the film’s efforts to draw down interest via its inventively-nasty sequences. The film certainly steers away from conventional style or approach throughout: it’s thoughtfully shot, with a wide range of locales and lots of artistic, experimental detail (even veering into psychedelia on occasion). There is undeniably something of the new-wave of French/Belgian horror cinema in the way Doubleplusungood looks, with lots of that blueish colourisation, though it’s still far more of a crime thriller overall. That said, we do see a bit of ‘implement torture’ going on here, which also chimes with those new wave horrors.

This brings me to another of the film’s features, and probably the one I have most problem with: the voiceover technique employed. Doubleplusungood makes heavy use of a voiceover (by the central protagonist) to explain most of its goings-on, which – considering the mysterious elements in the film – it could have dialled back, leaving the situations to speak for themselves. Having all the elements of the plot explained along the way felt like heavy going at times, and the heavy American accent being attempted, whilst possibly intended to further the film’s sense of rootlessness, was an oddly jarring decision which raises as many questions as it answers.

Still, Doubleplusungood is stylish throughout, even if it’s a little too free-floating at times in the way it draws all its action from a largely straightforward journey (once we accept the divine calling behind the killing spree, that is). This is undoubtedly an experimental, attractive and ambitious film in anyone’s book, though perhaps needs a few more moments of key dramatic development to justify and sustain the wide range of creative styles it uses.

Torso (1973)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Honestly, I’m the sort of reviewer who thinks that the vast majority of slashers (and many gialli) are better enjoyed as still images than films – being largely an array of stylish, bloody set pieces only loosely linked by some sort of plot – so watching Sergio Martino’s crossover film Torso was an opportunity for me to test my misgivings about this type of catch ’em and kill ’em horror. His other work has been pretty diverse fare in its way, after all, and a who’s who of cult film stars helps to underpin the potential of the film under discussion. Worth a shot, right?

Well, the heady mix of sex and death promised by the film’s subtitle (‘Carnal Horror’) is present and correct straight away, so at least false advertising is not a charge we can comfortably bring against Torso. We’re straight in with the nudity, albeit with some strategic creepy doll placement which not only spares the lady in question’s blushes, but seems likely to be Plot Relevant. Creepy dolls in Italian horror tend to be there for a reason, I find. The opening sex scene quickly turns into a soft-focus tableau, but something sinister is going on in the background. Someone’s snapping away with a camera – an example of voyeurism which will recur throughout Torso. Following this, we’re taken on in time to an art lecture in Perugia, Italy, and a lecture on what the lecturer believes to be the unconvincing torments of arguably an early vision of torture porn, Saint Sebastian, as imagined by artist Peregino: after discussing the finer points of Saint Sebastian’s representation, the largely hot and pouty student body make time for play, which soon gives way to yet more surveillance: this time, a masked figure watches a couple unbelievably manage to get it on in a Mini (and an old Mini, too) before dispatching the lovers in a gruesome manner. Shock ripples through the campus, and as a group of friends try to solve the mystery, it seems as if there’s a large number of potential suspects at hand.

This is possible – and plausible – because, my word, director Martino has made practically all of his eligible bachelors here completely nightmarish. Scrub that; it’s all but maybe one or two of the male characters in the film. The men are by turns sinister, lowering, socially awkward (which on its own would be fine) and completely unable to appreciate that women might have plans of their own which don’t involve accommodating them. Oh, and there’s that whole thing where at least one man is so repressed that he’d rather maim a beautiful girl than accept her on her own terms. This network of weasels pops up throughout the film, and whilst a good share of what they do or say is obviously designed to repel, you can’t help feeling that a lot of the dialogue was scripted and spoken in good faith – it simply happens to sound positively creepy now. Torso also falls into the slasher/giallo trope of trying very hard to be liberated – lots of flesh on display throughout – but ultimately, it still often feels rather arch and prim in that its transgressions need to be paid for with restorative violence. Of course, it’s unfair to criticise a single film for clearly following a generic formula, as Martino intended for Torso, but by the same token, knowing that any boobs on screen will probably be followed up with some sort of assault isn’t necessarily that engaging for the most part, either.

All of that said, Torso does achieve many things which distinguish it against a crowded field of carved-up nubile flesh. It boasts beautiful locations (mind, Italian cities seem to do the hard work by themselves) and some scenes border on the supernatural, in ways beloved of Martino’s near-contemporary Michele Soavi. It’s also an incredibly tactile film, with close attention to small details; whilst the gore FX haven’t aged particularly well, they’re very brief, whilst interesting, unusual shots (such as a woman’s hands palpating mud) show artistic flair. And, after moving all of its pieces into position for benefit of the big whodunnit, the film generates tension very effectively: yes, this takes time, but the closing twenty minutes or so give a good pay-off for all that has come before, resulting in a genuinely gripping finale. I’m not sure I can say that Torso has won me over fully to this style of filmmaking, but certainly, this is an arresting example of its genre, which manages some real surprises, in amongst the various nods to Bava et al.

Shameless Films have gone the extra distance in putting together this Blu-ray edition, splicing hitherto missing footage (subtitled rather than dubbed) into a well-presented, well-packaged release. Alongside the standard Shameless trailers, there’s also an extra feature starring Sergio Martino. You can find out more purchasing Torso here. 

 

Willard (1971) and Ben (1972)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

1970s cinema has many noteworthy qualities, but amongst these, the decade is certainly remarkable for its brief, but intriguing phase of imagining animals ‘going rogue’ and attacking humans; some of the resulting films were breakthrough hits, such as Jaws (1975), whereas some, such as Day of the Animals (1977) would be long-lost to obscurity if the DVD age hadn’t decided seeing Leslie Nielsen wrestling a grizzly bear was too good to pass up. Before sharks, bears and other beasts were redressing the natural balance, however, there was Willard (1971) – a film where it’s the humble rat who’s up to no good, though all at the behest of a rather lonely young man. I suppose the initial premise makes some sense: compare the number of people killed by sharks to the number killed by rats over the centuries, and the rat is definitely king – though to be fair to rats, they’ve simply been clearing up after Man for millennia, fighting over the same resources, often dying of the same things, whilst not being particularly deferential along the way.

Willard himself is a rather feckless young man: he has a white-collar job as a cashier at the ultimate blue-collar business, a steel mill: he clearly doesn’t fit in there, and when he returns to the sprawling but tumble-down home which he shares with his mother (Elsa Lanchester), he’s frequently surrounded by elderly family members and family friends who can’t understand why he doesn’t use his initiative at work to get further on in life. The plant once belonged to his father, after all. After a particularly abortive 27th birthday party, Willard – miserable and brow-beaten – disappears outside. He sees a rat out there, but rather than call Rentokill, he throws the creature a few crumbs, which – being a rat – it happily eats. As escapism goes, it’s not orthodox, but Willard continues to feed the rats he sees, lying to his mother that he’s got rid of them. He even tries to obey her command to kill them off on one occasion, but he can’t face it: soon, Willard is spending more time with his growing cabal of rats, training them to perform simple commands.

To state the bleeding obvious, anyone with a rat phobia is going to have problems with Willard: the rat cast is actually quite large, though these are of course fancy rats (the tame variety) rather than wild rats. They’re quite well-trained, too, which makes the film’s initial premise seem more plausible than it might otherwise; I used to keep fancy rats myself, and I can verify that they’re surprisingly bright little critters who can learn basic commands, even if they then choose to do the opposite of what they’re meant to be doing at twice the speed. Course, I’ve never (yet) tried to train a rat to take vengeance on a malingering boss, as Willard eventually does: as his life begins to unravel, the command he exerts on his rat posse becomes more and more unlikely. The film is chiefly about a man losing control over his life, however: the rats are an engaging sideshow, but the spotlight is very much on Willard.

With these rather gentler kinds of exploitation films – y’know, where the goings-on are incredibly unlikely but there’s a story behind it – it’s completely possible to take them on face value. You can do that with Willard: sad loser wreaks havoc on an unfair world. It’s interesting, though, if you can be persuaded to look a little further, to see a young man up against a system which seems completely stacked against the young. The only people who own anything are resolutely much, much older: the Willard family business has gone to an opportunistic post-World War II businessman; Willard’s remaining family are ageing; he has no siblings; even the people meant to care for him or about him are ludicrously out of touch. The 1970s inhabited by our main character is a very lonely place – lonely enough for him to make friends with creatures usually considered vermin. He has no control over who comes and goes at his own home, either: let me potentially be the first person to compare Willard to mother! (2017) in that he continually finds people letting themselves in, talking about helping themselves to his house, and there’s even an impromptu funeral bash which he hasn’t organised.

Still, for all the extremes of unlikelihood which ensue, with rats eventually rebelling against their master, Willard is by and large a fairly quiet film, with only one or two scenes which go beyond this. Really speaking, Willard is an interesting oddity in the ‘careful what you wish for’ category, an engagingly dismal look at 70s America.

Clearly, it was modestly successful enough to give rise to a sequel: Ben (1972) appeared just the next year, this time named for the particularly intelligent rat rather than for yet another lonely human whom he would ‘work alongside’. Ben therefore shifts focus, escalating the horror which only constituted a fragment of the earlier film and adding extra rat attacks on humans. And yes, it’s a bloody weird quirk of history that the late Michael Jackson sang on the film’s soundtrack: perhaps people don’t realise that the King of Pop was in fact serenading a hyper-intelligent killer rat, but there we go.

In the sequel, Willard’s rat posse have escaped and decided to go it alone, moving into the sewers beneath the city. Forging a link to Willard before it, people establish that Ben is the leader of the rats via some pages from Willard’s diary (which we never saw him keep, but hey.) This eventually throws them into the path of a young lad, Danny, who is being bullied and suffers from a heart condition: Danny befriends Ben in particular, and Ben – who is already rather comfortable with people – becomes his best mate/avenging angel, protecting him from the bullies. Thing is, Ben the rat isn’t always a force for good. Ben and his crew aren’t too keen on human intervention in their now-habitat, and anyone making the mistake gets attacked by a whirlwind of flying rodents; again, probably not safe terrain for a phobic.

Ben (1972) feels as rushed as it no doubt was, but it’s interesting in how it manages to generate some sympathy for a pack of occasionally hostile rats led by an oddly prescient rat. It retains the same half-eye on the underbelly of America, too, with lots of clambering about in the tunnels beneath the streets. The performance given by Danny (Lee Harcourt Montgomery) swings the focus, though, now that we have a victimised child in the frame, rather than an isolated adult. By the end, you even find yourself gunning for the child/rat combo rather than the people meant to be sorting things out, which happens despite all of the film’s flaws and overdependence on simply chucking more rats into the mix. Their friendship is even a little Disney, considering all that’s gone before – which includes the addition of flamethrowers.

Truth be told, neither Willard nor Ben are superb films and Ben is the weaker, but they’re certainly quite unlike anything else, and they have had some influence elsewhere. Willard even got a fairly glossy remake/’reimagining’ in the Noughties featuring cult actor Crispin Hellion Glover, so its reach was definitely there. Willard, in particular, is also notable for a surprising cast featuring ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ Elsa Lanchester in one of her last roles, alongside Ernest Borgnine as the execrable boss. There’s enough here to entertain and some material which can surprise. Well, you can now own this ratsploitation double bill in an attractive limited edition Blu-Ray box set: the good folk at Second Sight are about to release this, and you can find out more about it here.

Sneak Peak: Adam Mason’s Empire of Dirt

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Few modern directors have such a distinctive, visceral style as Adam Mason, and it’s fair to say that I’ve taken a keen interest in his career so far: over the years I’ve reviewed his feature films Blood River, Pig, Luster, Junkie, and Hangman, and also interviewed Adam (together with collaborator Simon Boyes). I’ve always felt excited and challenged by his work. So obviously, when I got the opportunity to take a look at his brand new short film, Empire of Dirt, I jumped at it.

Rather than a straightforward stand-alone short film, Empire of Dirt is intended to introduce characters and themes which will be explored fully in a feature-length offering. As such, no time is wasted: we’re shown, briefly, that these events are taking place in Manilla, 1997, and then we’re straight in to a frantic shootout, followed by a skirmish in a dilapidated building. It seems as though our protagonist is coming to the aid of a desperate, terrified woman, at least on first impressions: whatever his loyalty to her is, he pitches himself into some gritty, bloody and physical action, killing those he finds, with the violence happening both on and off screen. It’s a testament to Mason’s directorial abilities here that, even in a few short minutes, you feel as disturbed by the violence taking place off-screen as you do the violence in front of you.

However, any resolution to all of this is withheld: the film executes a radical shift, revealing to us that there is far more here than meets the eye. Our main character is acting under duress; supernatural elements are briefly introduced and we see enough to appreciate that that this isn’t some standard hitman, and the girl he’s saving? The first glance didn’t reveal everything about her, and she isn’t what she seems to be. Quickly, the film moves from its harsh realism into nightmare.

As a taster of a potentially full-length film, Empire of Dirt merges enough of the raw and the bizarre to suggest a deeply-intriguing and engaging tale could follow. It is full of that vivid claustrophobia which Mason does so well, and it looks superb, with strong palates of reds, blues and greens. The resonant music keeps up the emotional weight throughout, and the introduction of those otherworldly elements, even in a few short minutes, raises the tension of the film to an almost unbearable level, suggesting that we can expect a particularly grisly spin on haunting, conscience and revenge. I’m certainly curious…

There’s a great deal within Empire of Dirt which would reward development into a feature length format, and I look forward to being able to comment on the whole story.

IT (2017)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Few writers have had their work adapted for the screen half so much as Stephen King, nor with such variable results, but then this is exactly to be expected when the man himself’s work has varied so wildly over the years. When it comes to the huge tomes from his early days, such as The Stand and IT, the TV miniseries has often seemed to be the way to go, rather than making a feature film. Particularly bearing in mind that epic-length films are really more a contemporary domain, it no doubt made sense, even if for manageability alone, to serialise the events of the books over a period of weeks. The resulting TV version of IT, made in 1990, for all its (now apparent) flaws cemented itself as a formative experience for many viewers, particularly those of us in our thirties. Look at it now, and what you mainly see are the awkward birth pangs of CGI; back then, though, everyone – very few of whom had read the book, and many of whom were children themselves – were frightened of Pennywise the Clown.

Of course, knowing this, the new, epic-length film version of IT has repositioned itself so that the Losers Club are actually growing up in the late 80s, not the 50s; the nostalgists which the film is depending on now see their own childhoods reflected within the story, rather than seeing their childhoods simply in the memory of watching the series. The snake is eating its own tale: series like Stranger Things come along and commemorate the creepy 80s, then a film comes along which casts some of the same kids in a newly 80s story. But then, in a film about children’s fears, this approach is completely in keeping with things as a whole.

We start on familiar territory, and one of the many iconic scenes we saw first in 1990, only made more savage, more jagged for our jaded post torture porn palates (if that phrase gets into The Guardian, you saw it here first, and I’m very sorry.) On a stormy afternoon in Derry, Maine, older brother Billy (Jaeden Lieberher) is helping his kid brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) to wax a paper boat, so that Georgie can go and sail it along the flooded gutters. The boat sails really well, so much so that little Georgie can’t keep up, and the boat disappears down a drain – but someone catches it. Georgie is amazed to see a clown deep within the sewer, who promises him his boat back, if he’ll only reach out and take it…

Months go by. Billy and his family are not alone in having children missing, but as devastating as this is, Billy and his friends have enough hell from their day to day lives: bullying, isolation, puberty, indifferent or downright wicked adults. It’s a combination of all of this which presses the so-called ‘Losers Club’ into the dual world of escapism and danger which solving these mysteries entails; slowly, they begin to piece together a unique puzzle, and they throw themselves into the path of something bizarre, demonic and very hungry which has long been hiding in the sewers beneath their home town.

This is not the full picture, and indeed, what turns out to be IT: Chapter One only concerns itself with the flashbacks to childhood, which link the Losers Club back together as adults in the novel. It’s clearly explained that more is to follow, and the way in which the story has been chaptered here actually works well – or at least, the first film does, so I hope subsequent films do likewise. There are certainly a fair few questions about Pennywise and his actions which could be explored at some point; perhaps there’s some assumption that viewers will already appreciate the extra dimensional elements already, which is fair – or, the film also works perfectly well as a straightforward horror staple, the omnipotent bad guy who knows just what you fear. It would however be interesting to see how much exposition is going to follow.

IT also uses its now thirty-years-old setting, a world before health and safety, safeguarding and more concerted efforts to tackle bullying, to present childhood itself as horrific. Sure, these kids didn’t have to prefix ‘bullying’ with ‘cyber’, but no one was tranquilised by mobile phones and social media, either: it plain didn’t exist. Your plight was your own, and your world ended at the edge of town, or went as far as your friendship group – if you had one. It seems to me that knowing all of this – seeing these changes – has also been used to add to the impact of the supernatural horror. (This would have been as much the case had they left the setting in the mid-twentieth century, mind, but fewer of us would now recognise that in the same degree of detail.) As for the adults in IT, and bearing in mind that many viewers are now approximately the same age as them and not the kids, they’re represented as negligent at best, incestuous at worst: they cajole, they medicate, they exploit but most of all, they ignore their offspring completely. Their children are ripe pickings for any sinister force which might come along.

Whilst the sinister force itself relies on jump scares and a brand new toolbag of terrifying antics, the end result is definitely entertaining, with some ingenious new scenes – and no one could level the charge that the SFX here is lacking, though how they’ll feel in another twenty-seven years remains to be seen. The film moves at a fast pace, doesn’t skimp on the gruesome carnival of Pennywise’s tricks, and ramps up the splatter throughout, giving rise to complaints from some quarters that the genuine otherworldliness of the novel has been sacrificed. It’s certainly true that IT (2017) takes its cues from the likes of Insidious as much as it does the old miniseries, and it looks every inch the modern horror, with more fast-moving, snarling antagonists, heavy use of shadow and even the odd moment you catch yourself recalling from the many Far Eastern horrors which have emerged in the past twenty years or so. Still, considering he only gets a few moments of screen time, Bill Skarsgård does a decent job as Pennywise, a challenging role for someone themselves only in their twenties. I feel that the nu-Pennywise lacks something of the innocence which Tim Curry was able to convey (and then shed, to great effect) but this he makes up for, with the aid of clever special effects assistance, in scenes which are brand new and now very much his own. It’s probably fairly unlikely anyway, but I never want to see a slide projector again.

So, it’s been simplified, it’s been dressed up in new clothes, and it’s been (perhaps slightly cynically) repackaged, but it would be difficult to deny that the new, faster, sleeker and even more monstrous IT isn’t vastly entertaining anyway. Decisions have to be made whenever turning to Stephen King for source material, but I think that, largely, the right decisions outweigh the more questionable ones here.

IT is on general release in cinemas now.

 

Celluloid Screams 2017

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Festival season is upon us once more, and one by one, the best horror and genre film festivals of the UK are revealing what they have lined up. Myself and co-editor Ben often take ourselves down to Sheffield’s Showroom Cinema for Celluloid Screams: now in its ninth year, it has introduced us to a range of excellent films during the years we’ve been attending, and films we see there have often wound up on our ‘Best Of’ lists at the end of the year – proving that festivals are where it’s at for film fans. This year looks to be no different, with an absolutely stellar line-up coming our way. Whilst there’s often a bit of overlap between festivals of this nature (no bad thing, in my opinion, meaning that most people will be able to get to at least one of the screenings they’re after) Celluloid Screams has also got the steal on some intriguing and exciting new films.

Here’s some of the highlights for me:

The Endless (Friday 20th October)

We’ve been big advocates of filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead here at Warped Perspective (or rather, back in the Brutal as Hell days) and there’s a good reason for that. Benson/Moorhead blend clarity of vision with sharp characterisation and masses of imagination; they never feel they need to give the audience a safe journey, and both of their films so far (Resolution and Spring) rank amongst some of the most memorable films I’ve personally seen in recent years. I cannot wait for The Endless. Engage copy and past mode:

A decade after leaving their home at Camp Arcadia, an isolated new age cult, brothers Justin and Aaron (directors Benson and Moorhead stepping in front of the camera this time) struggle to make ends meet in their normal lives. When a videotape arrives containing an invitation to revisit the camp, the two brothers are drawn back towards their previous life, initially enamoured once more with the seemingly idyllic existence that they used to share. The longer they stay however, the more it becomes apparent that the retreat and its surroundings are governed by strange and indescribable forces that threaten the very existence of those who dwell within it.

Borley Rectory (Friday 20th October)

…And breathe. Anyone who is interested in ghostly phenomena will likely have heard of Borley Rectory, once vaunted as “the most haunted house in England”. As a child, poring over investigator Harry Price’s accounts of this place terrified me so much that I had to sleep with the lights on for weeks. I’m beyond excited, therefore, to see this story – over six years in the making – making it to the screen. Director Ashley Thorpe calls his film an ‘ultrasound of a haunting’ and I anticipate great things. The involvement of League of Gentlemen/Psychoville actor and writer Reece Shearsmith is another element in its favour; alongside the other Gents, two of whom are going to be present at the festival (see below), Shearsmith has been integral in scooping up all manner of horror tropes and presenting them to us in bleakly comic form. It takes know-how to blend terror and comedy, but of course Shearsmith has carved a career as a horror and genre actor of some calibre, so appearing in a piece of work which picks at the seams of the ghastly British consciousness is exactly the kind of progression I’d both hope for and expect from him.

68 Kill (midnight showing, Friday 20th October)

Much has already been said of 68 Kill, the vast majority of which has been glowingly positive, and this sounds like a great film to pick for the late night slot. Trent Haaga is a safe pair of hands when it comes to what the blurb describes as ‘outrageous’ cinema:

Chip (Matthew Gray Gubler) is a sucker for a pretty face. Dominated by his dangerously beautiful girlfriend Liza (AnnaLynne McCord), he duly accedes to her every whim. However, poor Chip lands himself in a whole heap of trouble when he reluctantly agrees to assist Liza with the robbery of $68,000 from her sugar daddy. This theft leads to a blood-splattered and increasingly outrageous sequence of events, as Chip tries desperately to find a way out of his chaotic situation and return to the simple life he once knew.

I Remember You (Saturday 21st October)

An Icelandic supernatural noir/horror? Sign me up; this tiny nation is (accordingly) something of a rarity on the genre and horror circuits, but has a culture, folklore and outlook all its own which is ripe for on-screen exploration:

Based on Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s best-selling novel, this supernatural scandi-noir is certain to send a shiver down your spine. An elderly woman hangs herself inside a church in the remote Westfjords of Iceland, which leads to an investigation into a number of strange deaths of elderly people in the region. Freyr, the new psychiatrist in town discovers that the deceased woman was obsessed with the disappearance of his 7-year-old son, who vanished without a trace three years prior. Across the bay in an abandoned village, three city dwellers are restoring a house when a series of supernatural occurrences begin to unfold. These two stories gradually intertwine and it turns out that the disappearance of a young boy decades earlier may hold the key to uncovering the truth.

Tragedy Girls (Saturday 21st October)

Been hearing good things about this one, and any skits on the pervasiveness of the ‘likes’ culture of social media (by the way, please ‘like’ and share this post for our edification) and our mordant preoccupation with celebrity deserve to be seen and enjoyed. This one will no doubt make us laugh at it all, too, which is exactly the reaction we need in greater abundance:

Meet Sadie and McKayla, aka the ‘Tragedy Girls’. Together, they run a website devoted to true crime. Their fascination with the subject is boundless, and the girls soon find they’re no longer satisfied with merely writing about violence, and decide to embark on a more ‘hands-on’ approach. Comedy ensues as the delightfully gruesome killings end up looking like accidents, much to the girls’ frustration, as they crave recognition for their murderous prowess. As their exploits attract attention to their small town, the Tragedy Girls quickly become engulfed in the social media fame they always dreamed of – but will their relationship survive it?

Special Event: Inside Number 9 (Special Anthology Screening – Saturday 21st October)

Remember how I said The League of Gentlemen and Psychoville wrought horror into uncomfortable laughter? Add Inside Number 9 to that list: it’s another piece of genius writing and storytelling for television which calls to the late, great horror telly of years gone by. With this special anthology screening of a selection of episodes, writers Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith will be in attendance both to introduce their work, and answer questions afterwards.

M. F. A (Sunday 22nd October)

I’d expect this to be the most harrowing piece of work on the bill. However, these are often the films we need the most; weave a story out of something disturbing and possibly relatable, and you can explore the feelings it engenders in a way which often just fails to materialise when you simply look at news or statistics:

Noelle (Francesca Eastwood) is a shy and withdrawn art student. She has a hard time fitting in with her peers, so she’s thrilled when she receives an invitation to a party from handsome classmate Luke. However, the evening takes a devastating turn when Noelle is brutally raped.

After seeking help from various sources, Noelle encounters hypocrisy, injustice, and a total unwillingness to address the situation. Her frustration soon turns to anger, and Noelle decides to take matters into her own hands. She sets out to avenge rape survivors whilst channelling her rage into her artwork, creating dark and affecting pieces for her thesis. With a mesmerising performance by Eastwood, this captivating revenge thriller tackles rape culture in modern society head-on with a fierce and unflinching intensity. Though it does contain scenes that some viewers may find upsetting, it deftly tackles the tough subject matter to shine a spotlight on a very real issue.

This is just a snapshot of the weekend to come: there’s plenty more at the website, including a staggering array of short films, which are always given their fair dues at Celluloid Screams (and often make for the most unusual and innovative pieces of film you’ll see during the year). Also, look out for some classic screenings of Suspiria (which is turning 40) and Hellraiser (which is turning 30!)

Passes for the whole festival are priced at £85 (or a tenner less for concessions) or, if you’re a young whippersnapper between the ages of 18-26, you could get a £60 pass as part of Showroom Cinema’s Cine26 membership scheme. Individual tickets go on sale on the 22nd September. We’ll see you there!

The Guardians (2017)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Though a few notable films have bucked the trend, it’s still comparatively rare, at least in Western cinema, that we see so much of a mention of Stalin or the Soviets whilst Nazi bad guys are ten a penny in all manner of horror, sci-fi and exploitation cinema. So, when I saw the promo material for Guardians – a modest budget Russian sci-fi – it seemed that here we’d have a film to buck the trend, what with all the mentions of Stalin taking action in response to the Nazis developing ‘super soldiers’ and what-have-you. It turns out that this context is mainly for the press information and doesn’t really feature in the film at all, however, so aside from some black and white images relative to the Cold War in the opening credits, the film is set squarely in modern-day Russia.

Still, we do find out early on that there’s a super-secret Russian military project called Patriot, which, during the early part of the Cold War, used Bad Science in an attempt to one-up the enemy by creating a select few shapeshifting soldiers called – you’ve guessed it – the Guardians. But after the head honcho scientist August Kuratov goes power-mad, tweaking himself (if you’ll excuse the expression) into some sort of super-mutant whilst rigging up his laboratory to explode whenever anyone tries to thwart him, then the by-now disparate Guardians have to be reunited. Yes, we’re in the modern day by now, but time does not affect either creator or Guardian in a normal way. Their aim? To stop Dr. Kuratov doing something faintly confusing which involves taking control of all the machines in ze vorld! (See! I’m used to this being the Germans…)

The Guardians themselves, once back together, need to use their slightly odd array of skills to defeat their erstwhile engineer. So we have: Ksenia, a woman who becomes transparent in water, and is impervious to extremes of temperature; Khan, a guy who can move very fast and has some equally speedy swords; Ler, who can make stones move, and (my obvious personal favourite) Arsus, who can turn into a half man, half bear (the top half) or if he’s really up against it, an ENTIRE BEAR, replete with Incredible Hulk style magic reappearing trousers when he becomes a man again. The rest of the film prioritises a number of what look like reasonably budgeted fight/action scenes, with a fair few head-scratching moments regarding the plot: it feels rather as if things are being raced through here, simply in order to introduce some action heroes who are clearly being set up for a sequel by the end credits – which is okay, but if you’re expecting a detailed story, best forget it. In fact, you’re probably already thinking of a certain other franchise at this point, and yes, the similarities to X-Men are manifest, albeit the latter takes more time (or more time makes it to screen) to establish character and motivation. It’s as if director Sarik Andreasyan has looked at all the X-Men movies and got a little ahead of himself, wondering how he could propel his own characters to those heights. This is clearly a film made by a team cognisant of the rage for superheroes ongoing in cinema. Guardians goes at a run throughout, where perhaps it would have established itself better by taking a breath.

Still, given these similarities, it’s interesting to see where it does differ from that other film about a taskforce with superhuman mutations, and I think it’s interesting that Guardians has a Russian threatening Russia – at least as his first port of call – whilst the Guardians are from/have been scattered to the far corners of what once was the USSR. It is, I suppose, an idealised spin on history, where an evil globalist marches on Moscow and has to be suppressed by the Old Guard. Or, of course, I’m reading far too much into a film which revels in its cartoon strip, sci-fi lite substance, because I will say this: I rather enjoyed it, even though Marvel et al tends to leave me cold. It’s aesthetically pleasing, blends well-choreographed action with suitable cartoony CGI sequences, and plumps for the more family-friendly route through things, so – if watching the slightly jarring broad American dubbed version, of course, which is also fun – everyone gets to play. If you’re prepared to park your brain at the door, and you know you’re going to be getting something akin to a video game with fight sequences and cutscenes, then yeah, Guardians feels oddly tried-and-tested, but there’s enough here for simple entertainment. Ultimately, any film which uses the phrase “FULL BEAR MODE” has done enough. Frankenstein’s Army this ain’t, but it does what you’d expect, on its own terms.

The Guardians is available on DVD and Blu-ray now.

A Ghost Story (2017)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The way that I first found out about its existence no doubt did a great disservice to A Ghost Story. Remember that Guardian newspaper article from July, which argued for something called ‘post-horror’? Post-horror is, of course, simply the latest in a long line of terms invented by people who can’t quite accept that they may have liked or made some horror: we’ve had dark fantasy, social thrillers, and now we have post-horror; Nia has already debunked this more succinctly than I could do here. But the fact is, this was my first introduction to David Lowery’s film, and it could easily have poisoned the well. To anyone in a similar position, I’d say – see the film. It may be the case that it isn’t to your tastes: it’s a quiet, subtle and almost voiceless film, with minimal action and the majority of its quite devastating messages left to audience imagination. But it also manages to be one of the most horrific stories about time that I have ever seen, adding a different perspective to the old staple idea of ‘a haunting’ which has the potential to really get under your skin. It’s certainly got under mine.

The nameless couple at the heart of the story (played by Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara) seem to be deeply in love – we start by seeing them cuddled intimately and sharing stories, with ‘M’ (Mara) describing how, as a child, she moved around a lot and would always write and hide small pieces of paper bearing messages – so that she left a little of herself wherever she’d been. Moving forward, the couple now seem to be planning a move of their own, away from the small house which will go on to figure hugely in the film. M seems more engaged by all of this than her partner, ‘C’, but in the rapid-fire way which is a hallmark of this film, we move forward again: C has been killed in an accident, right outside the house. His partner has to identify his body, which she does, in an understated but moving scene. All of this is traumatic in its own right; she pulls the sheet back over his face, and leaves his body behind.

At this point, C sits bolt upright. The sheet which covers him stays in place, referencing the old idea of ghosts wearing shrouds (see the alleged ghost photograph taken at Newby Church in the UK as an example) and also the prevalent idea in Western culture that ghosts remain because of some sort of unfinished business. Instead of walking through what looks like an exit, which is incidentally the only slightest nod to conventional ideas about the afterlife in the film, he walks home. From now, the character is mute and invisible. Whereas in a book like The Lovely Bones, where the deceased narrator is again drawn back towards their loved ones, in the novel we have just that – a narrator. Here. we have to read the ghost’s actions, even gestures, and we can do no more. We do know, however, that C’s ghost is fascinated by M, and desperate to reach out to her. Here. it could easily have segued into something which feels familiar – a Ghost (1990) for the Tumblr generation, where things seem bleaker but more picturesque as a rule. However, the key moment comes when M moves out; the ghost remains, trapped, waiting for her. Weeks – or years, decades? – go by. He observes life unfolding, but it is intermittent; a moment gives way to a different season, different residents. Still the ghost is there, (usually) invisible and unable to voice his thoughts. In this, A Ghost Story is indeed a horror story, because there can be few things more horrifying than the prospect of an eternity in this state.

And it’s time – not any evident God or other force – which drives the quiet horror of the film. C’s ghost is fixated on achieving something in the house, but seems to forget, or time runs away from him, or he begins to observe things around him, which are distracting. The mundane holds sway, he observes day upon day upon day of it, yet he seemingly lacks the ability to focus on things of his choosing. We accompany him in this confused, unsettlingly non-linear state, allowed to tune in only at certain moments; the effect of this is very eerie, almost unpalatable. Things which we see or hear only underline the great powerlessness of this key, yet unspeaking, faceless being, and by proxy, us (though a particularly overt nihilistic speech takes a moment to hammer that powerlessness home). And time is huge – it can wipe everything away, or do worse. The film forces us to contemplate how time is doing the very same thing to us, with some key scenes in particular showing just how tenuous it all is, and how the mundane can easily shift to something cataclysmic. It’s all presented in such picturesque fashion, too, that this only underlines the deep sadness here.

A Ghost Story presents age-old concerns and truisms in an artistic, innovative and finely-detailed form. It takes away many of the markers audiences might be expecting, but in so doing, it casts us adrift in the same settings and states as C, which allows the film to cast a very sombre spell. As I said earlier in the review, its low-pitched approach will be too quiet for some (I heard someone bemoaning this as the credits rolled) but after expecting something rather smug, something deliberately ‘post-horror’, instead I found a film which is imaginative, sophisticated and incredibly affecting. It’s rare – rarer than I’d like – that I see a film which I keep returning to in my head, days after the fact: A Ghost Story definitively achieves this, with next to no dialogue and only little exposition. Sometimes that which speaks least speaks the loudest, and there are no easy answers to be had.

A Ghost Story is now showing in selected UK cinemas.