Keri O'Shea

Horror in Short: Sweet Madness (2015)

Posted on July 16, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll have picked up on the great excitement online regarding the upcoming addition to the Batman series of movies, Suicide Squad. The makers of Suicide Squad aren’t stupid, and they know that a glimpse here or a peek there will do most of their advertising work for them – hence them using the internet to its full potential. Bearing in mind the existing popularity of the Batman universe amongst film fans and the constant drip-drip-drip of tantalising tidbits issuing forth from the team behind Suicide Squad, the safe money would of course be on the new film making a great success. But remember this: director David Ayer is just one man with one vision of how things should pan out. Other fans and other directors may see things differently, and focus on different aspects.

This brings us neatly to filmmaker Peter Dukes: we’ve covered a few of Peter’s earlier short films here on Brutal as Hell, namely Daniel, The Beast and the charming Little Reaper. For his most recent short, he’s donned his fandom hat to take a look at one of the Batman characters who has, to date anyway, never really been given her dues. The character is Harley Quinn – and the film is Sweet Madness:

We can’t say too much at the time of writing about how Margot Robbie is going to play Harley Quinn in the big-budget movie, but you can’t deny Madeleine Wade has charm in her rendition of the character in this snapshot of Harley in action. The film’s mid-action setting – necessary, given the time constraints – places us smack-bang in the middle of a domestic drama, with Harley negotiating for the Joker’s release, offering a straight swap for a kidnapped family. Interestingly, here Harley isn’t a peripheral character; the Joker’s in the film, but rather differently than we’re used to seeing him, and certainly not calling the shots as he usually does with his besotted female sidekick. Stripped of all his make-up and trappings, he even looks a bit less crazy than she does, and she is the one making the decisions. It’s a nice little development to the usual interplay between them.

Although the reach and the budgets of the new Batman franchise continue to sky-rocket, isn’t it nice to be reminded that there’s no single way to have fun with the Batman universe, and that you don’t need a fortune to play with the idea? Peter Dukes’ short film is a nicely-unhinged glimpse into an alternative set of outcomes for the characters. One to tide you over, ahead of 2016…

Horror in Art: Habet! By Simeon Solomon

Posted on July 15, 2015June 10, 2022 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

That lesser-known member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Simeon Solomon, caused quite a stir when he exhibited his painting, entitled Habet! at the Royal Academy in 1865. Up until that point, he had been known for his religious tableaux and his sleepy, rather sexually ambiguous groups of figures – reclining lovers, figures lost in reveries. These had been successful, but Habet was very different indeed, and although Solomon had dallied with Classical scenes before, here he allowed his imagination to find a different kind of focus. Little wonder that a later critic described Solomon’s work as having ‘unmistakeable signs of genius, only run a little mad.’ To our tastes, the painting may not reveal very much – but its power is not in what it shows us, but what it doesn’t.

Rome in particular out of the whole of the Classical world had always afforded ambitious artists free rein to explore less ‘proper’ subject matter: in an often puritanical Victorian social climate, you could always claim a moral message in your art if all the blood and sex got a bit too much for contemporary tastes, but at the same time you didn’t have to scrimp on the good stuff because the histories tell us it happened. That’s not to say the moral message was never authentically there, mind you, but many Victorian artists walked the fine line between prurience and a warning from history, a desire to have fun with stories and characters so very, very far from their own time whilst calling attention to their conduct at the same time. However, Solomon took a very different approach in Habet than you’d see in a William Etty painting, for example. His take on things was very different.

Here, we have a group of wealthy and well-adorned Roman women watching the death-throes of gladiatorial combat: the title of the work, meaning ‘He has it!’ refers to one of the fighters finally having the upper hand, and we know that these women share in the high status required to command the outcome – mercy, or death – because two of them are giving the ‘thumbs down’ signal. Beautiful, young and female they may be, but they are invested in the death scene unfolding in front of them, and they have not called for mercy. But how invested are they, really? The different faces in the group each reveal a different reaction to the scene (with the exception of the servant stood at the rear, who isn’t involved in the group and isn’t even looking at what’s going on.) One of the women has fully fainted away at what she’s just witnessed; one looks with horror, but fascination; one (perhaps the most unsettling figure) is calling for the death blow with a look of rapt hunger and attention in her expression.

Perhaps more shocking still, there is also a child present, and the little girl to the right of the picture may be in the arms of her guardian but she’s being permitted to see everything that’s unfolding, which she does with a bland-eyed look of acceptance. It doesn’t surprise her or upset her. One suspects she’s seen this all before – and the same goes for the central figure in the painting, a woman dressed in all the finery of an empress, who rather than deriving anything from the combat taking place instead just has her hands clasped impassively on the balustrade. Her facial expression presents abject boredom and pitiless indifference. She is not giving the thumbs down, because she doesn’t seem to care. Her eyes are barely focused on the entertainment in front of her; those drowsy pre-Raphaelite lids suggest she’s barely keeping herself awake.

The fact that this was a group of women ‘at play’ would not have been lost on the Victorian audience who first went to see the painting. The burgeoning Victorian middle class had some highly specific ideas on what constituted feminine propriety, and women’s conduct was policed rigorously, with the art world reflecting and promoting these ideals. Seven years earlier, Augustus Egg’s triptych ‘Past & Present’ had illustrated what happened to a middle-class wife and mother who had transgressed the ‘Angel in the House’ role and taken a lover; the first painting, where her husband treads a portrait of the wife’s lover underfoot and crumples her letters in his hand, initiates the woman’s fall from grace. She does well to weep: she ends disinherited, homeless and penniless, losing access to her legitimate offspring – we last see her cowering beneath a bridge with her illegitimate baby in her arms, whilst her innocent daughters suffer under her fall from grace for the rest of their lives.

Victorian sensibilities masked barbs – and as such, Habet may be framed via Ancient Rome, but it displays the debased result of women being allowed such liberty and agency. It would have shocked many visitors to see women – not men – assenting to the death blow, or even not caring about it. Yes, Rome was representative of debasement and perhaps the message is that this sort of behaviour is why it floundered; it embodied all the worst elements of progress, and served as a cautionary tale, perhaps, of a place and time where amongst other things, even women enjoyed barbarism. Hey, there are a fair few people around today who have trouble appreciating that women enjoy watching horror films: in one case we have imagined women watching a real historic event, and in the other we have real women who watch imagined events, but in each case, incredulity and disbelief can follow. Add an innocent child into the mix, even notionally, and then as now this is deemed just cause to restrict and suppress all ‘indecent’ forms of entertainment. The battle cry of ‘children might see it’ is still used to justify censorship in the name of the greater good – UK film censors the BBFC are even today boasting of their ability to ‘grow child protection’ [sic] and they place inordinate weight on the personal verdicts of parents in their poorly-selected focus groups. Where the little girl in Habet looks so calmly at the horror unfolding in front of her, swap the scene for a screen and the anxiety is there still, in the great and the good at least.

To return to the painting’s unusual perspective, then – of the responses of viewers, rather than seeing what they are viewing – it’s not difficult to see how Solomon’s clever move tantalises his audience, then and now, and renders the painting far more evocative than an alternative, more grisly vision would be. It is a technique which has of course been used elsewhere to conjure curiosity and terror, and it’s a technique which is still in use: in modern entertainment, a mainstay of terrifying cinema is the technique of locking us out of whatever is being seen, compelling us to use our imagination (which great painters and directors both know can conjure far greater terrors than their oils or SFX). Indeed, many horror fans complain bitterly that we’re shown ‘too much’ on screen nowadays: give us some mystery, we beg, and don’t spoon-feed us every detail. Trust us: trust us to fill in the blanks.

In doing just this, Simeon Solomon both reflected and continued a tradition of communicating true unease by showing us nothing of it at all. He knew that we have evolved to be excellent readers of facial expressions, and he tells us what we need just by so diligently representing an assortment of reactions to an event so clearly imbued with horror. Whilst his painting may not seem shocking to us now, it still has the power to make us think, it still shows us how mystery can appeal, and the way his art expresses a relationship between imagined worlds and contemporary anxieties is certainly not something we’ve left behind.

Film Review: Miss Meadows (2014)

Posted on July 13, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Well, here’s the thing: although she seems to spend the majority of her time being trailed by the paparazzi while she does mundane things like walking and shopping, apparently Katie Holmes (yes, her) is an actress. Who knew?

Well, you probably all knew, and yeah, okay, I knew too – but (whispers) I’ve never seen her in anything before. Ever. No, not even Batman. No I did not watch Dawson’s Creek; what do you take me for? In fact, Miss Meadows (2014) is the first time I’ve ever seen Katie Holmes in a format other than a photograph. In a way, my pig ignorance has allowed me to come to the film with no preconceptions whatsoever, which is just as well, as this is a bit of a strange project, all told. Even those charged with promoting and selling the film seem a little confused by it. The press materials which accompany the film scream, “KATIE HOLMES is serial killer MISS MEADOWS”, which isn’t the case; one of the film’s one-liners phrases it rather better when they refer to her character as a “Pulp Fiction Mary Poppins”, but even so, it’s said for comedic effect rather than as an accurate representation (duh), and there’s certainly nothing as graphic or challenging as Pulp Fiction in here.

Still, and I don’t think I can be accused of spoilers as the first kill occurs within the first five minutes of film, what we do have is an impossibly saccharin, impeccably-mannered occasional killer, a prissy stickler of a lady vigilante who monitors the correct usage of ‘can I?’ and ‘may I?’ amongst the schoolchildren she teaches, and the adults she encounters along the way (alongside their other ‘quirks’, shall we say). When Miss Meadows begins dating the local sheriff, it even seems like the happy singleton is ready to pair up at last, but unfortunately all is not well in the otherwise perfect-seeming neighbourhood where she lives. Why, a neighbour even declares to Miss Meadows that things aren’t safe around there anymore, because overcrowding in the nearby penitentiary has led to early releases for many criminals who may or may not now be settled in the area. So, folks, the stage is rather sloppily set for Things To Go Wrong. It may or may not do so in the way you expect. It didn’t do so for me.

At around the mid-way point, see, and because the dainty/ditzy script and aesthetics don’t let up whatsoever, I honestly expected the film to give us A History of Violence via The Brady Bunch: surely, all the mentions of ‘criminals who could be in the area’ is the perfect set-up for a particular kind of conclusion involving our titular character, but it doesn’t really go there, and nor does the film ever ditch the chintz for something tonally very different either. The film was crying out to be less bloody nice and more bloody. In fact, and although this film is reasonably diverting in its way, it’s never exactly the paciest ride (though speaking of which, it does have one of the most baffling and awkward sex scenes I’ve seen in a while) but you could have forgiven it all the tap-dancing and grammar lessons if it had the much-needed temerity to actually startle us or challenge us at any point. Some of the slow character reveals are in fact so slow that they stop before they occur, and then the presence of threat when it comes doesn’t feel particularly real because attempts to fill in back stories – which would have given characters their motivation and the film its context – don’t really happen successfully either.

Katie Holmes is clearly this film’s big seller and she’s been given a great deal to do by writer and director Karen Leigh Hopkins. Ms. Holmes is on screen for essentially the whole time: only a handful of scenes don’t have her in them. This just makes me think, wow, if she’d been given something a little meatier here, then it could have really meant something to her ongoing film career, but whatever – what in the very first scenes starts off as a slightly questionable casting decision settles down pretty well (this is an actress in her mid-thirties being asked to enact a sort of twee virginal naivety which you’d sooner associate with a girl half her age, remember). The problems the film has aren’t really down to the lead actress, to be fair. It’s a shame the central idea of the ‘Pulp Fiction Mary Poppins’ mentioned above is so samey and anaemic in its execution…and perhaps the most notably effective thing about Miss Meadows, come to think of it, is the way it weaves its plot around a seemingly perfect pocket of American suburbia; anonymous, nameless and indeed hard to place in a particular time, but one which has an undeniably skeezy underbelly of odd goings-on. It even reminded me of the cult smash It Follows in a few places. It’s a world where sexual abuse and the threat of rape are just around the picket-fence corner – which may have helped justify Miss Meadows’ behaviour – though this isn’t the explanation the director chooses, much less plumping for a supernatural approach. Here, we have only sentimental guff.

Nope, Miss Meadows is an interesting idea, and offers an attempt at crafting a ‘strong female lead’ in an unusual setting which is meant to speak for itself, but the film gets into a terrible tangle by trying to give the audience someone kooky, strong and vulnerable all at the same time – yet all without really establishing anything beyond kookiness, and not rustling up enough sex, shocks or violence to lend weight to the whole. It has some charm and it’s pretty watchable, but without doing anything memorable. It seems more about aesthetics than anything else, all told (that still of Miss Meadows with the gun is clearly the film’s big selling point.) Given that I hadn’t seen Katie Holmes in anything other than a photograph in the first place, this all feels something of a shame.

Miss Meadows is released on DVD and Digital on 27th July 2015.

DVD Review – The Dead 2: India (2013)

Posted on July 11, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

The zombie, one of our most well-worn movie monsters, shows no sign of letting up, and even though zombies have made it into the mainstream, they remain a temptation to indie filmmakers keen to exploit the relatively easy-to-create hordes that bring the horror. All the same, I really wouldn’t want to make a zombie movie these days. The market is just so crowded, and more often than not the end result is not particularly noteworthy – or it’s even worse than that, when even the guy who spawned the whole genre is churning out guff like Survival of the Dead. That said, the movie-buying public certainly haven’t lost their taste for the resurrected dead: when a good film comes along – such as The Dead did in 2010 – it’s a rare pleasure, and it reminds us why we like these films in the first place.

The directorial team of brothers Howard and Jon Ford went through a great deal to make The Dead (as explained in Howard’s book, Surviving the Dead) and so I was curious – well, firstly why they’d put themselves through the trials and tribulations of making another zombie film in foreign climes which may throw up some of the same issues they faced the time before, and also to see what they were going to do differently with their second zombie movie.

Moving the action to India, The Dead 2 actually picks up broadly from the same start point as the first film, with a mysterious outbreak in Africa making its way to India (bloody international travel, eh?) where it impacts upon the life of American wind turbine engineer Nicholas (Joseph Millson). Rather inexplicably, Nicholas has been having a relationship with a girl called Ishani (Meenu Mishra) who comes from a poor corner of Mumbai, and whose first words uttered are to inform him by telephone that she’s pregnant: as she imparts this info, helicopters are clustering in the sky above her head and word of a strange outbreak is on the streets. Nicholas has to make his way to her: we learn that this isn’t the first unplanned pregnancy he’s had in his life, and as he bottled it last time, he owes it to Ishani to look after her (which by and large means stopping her getting killed, in the short term anyway).

As he fights to make his way to the city from the sticks where he’s been working, Nicholas picks up with a little orphan boy called Javed (who’s annoyingly chipper given the circumstances), and the kid offers to help him on his journey in return for Nicholas’s protection. The two progress, then stop, then stave off the undead, then continue on their way to Mumbai. Meanwhile, we are also kept up to speed with Ishani in her family home, where she alternates between squabbling with her authoritarian father and inexplicably unbolting the front door to gaze at the zombies in the streets, before closing it again. Still, it allows her to see the chaos that is still happening out there. Will Nicholas reach her safely, and where will they go if he does?

The Dead 2 has a great deal in common with the first film, and as such, can boast a lot of the same strong qualities. Many of these relate to the film’s impressive aesthetics. The Dead 2, like the first, looks rather wonderful, with the same high production values and gorgeous colour palette; if you were ever in any doubt as to whether a zombie film can look beautiful, then both of these films make a strong case for showing that yes, they certainly can. Both in Africa and in Asia, the setting is shown as rich, vibrant and engaging, as well as being shot (and here’s a dreadful word) authentically, not dressed up or prettified for the cameras. The Dead 2 also employs the same sort of slow burn approach for the most part, with its very slow walking dead more about dread than shocks. Clearly again employing a veritable army of locals to portray the zombies, there are many striking, well-realised scenes in the film, with a host of people far from used to our horror traditions really giving their all as the undead.

Unfortunately, because the sequel has so much in common with the first film, it feels in many ways like a straightforward retread of it. The plots are eerily familiar: an American guy abroad pairs up with a local and they both fend off the undead as they make their way to a destination, whilst the theme of family stays at the fore. And then, where The Dead 2 does elect to include new plot elements, these don’t work very well in all honesty, because the writing feels somewhat out of its comfort zone. I’ve mentioned only recently that I find the whole pregnancy motif, the way it’s so commonly used in indie cinema, hackneyed and off-putting: Ishani seems to serve no purpose in the plot except as a rationale for the road trip which serves as the bulk of the film’s action, a means for a guy who’s already bailed out on one pregnancy to get it right this time. Clearly unused to acting (this is Meenu Mishra’s first role) and uncomfortably picking her way through a script in slightly stilted English, little comes of these Mumbai scenes: indeed, having so many of the characters conversing in English for the camera’s sake reduces the believability of the human drama it’s meant to convey: if people aren’t fully sure of their lines, then they won’t deliver them with much gusto. Asides about the reason for the outbreak – be it ‘fate’ or ‘karma’ – are not developed, which is a shame, as these ideas just hover over the film’s finale, but don’t really move our understanding forward.

The Dead was – positively, I feel – more of a mood piece than a plot-driven movie, and I understand that the Ford brothers wanted to do something else plot-wise this time around; although they seem torn, re-framing a lot of the great work they did in The Dead in their second film. However, you can see that atmosphere is what they do best and what they like best, and sadly they’ve lessened the amount of atmosphere generated in the new film by fudging some of the other going concerns. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Ford team are excellent directors. Can’t deny that. But perhaps, and this is just my own feeling here, they’ve fallen foul of the fact they do everything – directing, producing, writing. I’d love to see these guys working with a seriously challenging script to see what they achieve. I’d say they’d be capable of absolute dynamite. The Dead 2 shows us again that they have high production values and masses of ambition, qualities which are lacking in so many filmmakers, but to date, I’d still say The Dead is the film that best showcases their skills.

The Dead 2: India is released by Altitude Film on 13th July 2015.

Film Review: Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence)

Posted on June 14, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Tristan Bishop

The Human Centipede films (of which this third segment is surely the final installment) have surely had one of the strangest progressions in the history of film. From 2009’s Human Centipede: First Sequence, which, despite the buzz generated by the uniquely disgusting premise (I’m sure there isn’t a soul reading this that isn’t aware of the nature of the centipede), and a great performance from Dieter Laser as Dr Heiter, turned out to be a standard mad doctor film with very little in the way of subtext, to the grossly comedic and nightmarish sequel of 2011’s Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence, which featured a wonderfully repulsive central turn from Laurence R Harvey and came across as a self-referential treatise on the idea of ‘harm’ from watching horror films. That Full Sequence garnered so much disgust and was banned in the UK (albeit briefly, and finally passed with a total of thirty cuts) could be testament to how well it works as, variously, a comment on film censorship itself, a middle finger to the critics, and, at the film’s basest level, a truly grim gorefest. When word came out regarding The Human Centipede 3: Final Sequence, those who had seen the previous two were wondering quite where director Tom Six was going to be able to take this one.

Well, this is one strange film indeed. Where the second film was so removed from the original’s slow, eerie feel, bringing instead a monochrome realism to proceedings which brought to mind nothing less than David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977), Final Sequence comes on like Fellini remaking the 1988 Chinese gorefest Men Behind The Sun. This film is bold, brash, and (somewhat ironically for a film set in a prison), takes no prisoners.

Laser and Harvey both appear in this film – both playing completely different characters to the ones they portrayed in the previous instalments. Rather than the quiet, obsessive doctor of the original, Laser here stars as the amusingly named ‘Bill Boss’, a psychotic, foul-mouthed, unpredictably violent German-American in charge of a correctional facility, whilst Harvey plays his long-suffering accountant, Dwight Butler, who is trying to convince Boss, via DVDs of the first two films, that the concept of the Human Centipede will be the next big thing in crime prevention – after all, if prison doesn’t work, surely being part of a 500-man centipede will scare criminals straight?

Boss is not remotely interested in ‘this B-movie crap’ to start with – preferring to spend his days sexually abusing his scantily-clad secretary Daisy (former adult star Bree Olson) whom he charmingly refers to as ‘tits’, torturing the prisoners in ever more inventive ways (“boiling waterboarding! Guantanamo style!”) and constantly spewing (well, screaming, actually) a torrent of racist, sexist and just downright vile dialogue. Eventually Butler manages to bring in Tom Six himself, in an audacious fourth-wall-breaking move, to convince Boss of the ‘100% medically accurate’ claim so famously used as the tag line for the original film, and they conspire together to create the world’s first coprophagic chain gang.

HC3 is a very hard film to like, and this has been reflected in critical response to it so far – it currently holds a score of 1% on Metacritic, which is a pretty impressive achievement in itself. To call it uneven would be a massive understatement. Laser’s dialogue (and he dominates the film) is nearly all screamed out loud in his heavy German accent, and whilst the performance is pretty impressive stuff for a physically-slight 73 year old, it gets wearing very, very quickly. Harvey’s performance meanwhile is so wooden (his broad American accent constantly going wonky) that it must have been intentional, especially given his brilliance in the previous film. Oscar-nominee Eric Roberts (?!?) plays it straight as a visiting governor who is aiming to shut down the pair’s activities, and only Olson really delivers a sensitive and likeable performance, despite being treated like a piece of meat by Boss. The script, when it isn’t being rendered unintelligible by screaming or awful accents, is mostly an excuse to spew taboo-busting dialogue or set up a scene of torture and degradation, and the film runs out of steam way before they get to the centipede – in fact it’s obvious by this point that Six isn’t really interested in the titular creation at all this time around.

There’s a line of dialogue near the end of the film that gives the game away for me – Laser says/screams ‘I don’t want ANYONE to like this’. He’s referring to the centipede, of course, but one also feels this is Tom Six speaking about the film – He has gone out to make a film which is so meticulous in trying to offend everyone that it works – Not just in, say, sexist, racist or violent content (which is actually so liberally applied as to hardly be offensive at all) but also in terms of it being a massive ‘screw you’ not just to critics of the first two films, but also those who championed them. Anyone expecting a tonal continuation of the previous Centipede movies will instead be faced with a scattershot satire on right wing American politics which feels like being smashed over the head with a fridge whilst an old man shouts at you.

So on one hand we have to hand it to Six; he’s made a film that not even a mother could love, one where any sick enjoyment of the on-screen antics (and I did laugh several times in the first half hour before boredom took over) will be crushed by the weight of its own extremity. Impressive in its ballsy attitude, but impossible to enjoy, it will certainly ensure that fans are not clamouring for part 4 any time soon.

The Human Centipede 3: Final Sequence comes to Blu-ray and DVD in the UK on 13th July, from Monster Pictures.

Editorial: Five Shitty Modern Horror Tropes (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on June 10, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

(Editor’s note: for the first part of Keri’s kvetching, please click here.)

Right, where was I? I’d finished talking about the hideously wronged catwalk models who can thenceforth magically bend girders and all the Keepers of Knowledge who fall out of (or leap from) high buildings, or otherwise race to their deaths in their dog-collars. Now, to move on to another cliche which has become ubiquitous so fast, it’s basically become a convenient ice-breaker when talking to other horror fans. Most fans will, to be fair, agree on this one, and you can get a few moment’s conversation out of it before moving on. That, in and of itself, says a lot about its value and popularity. I mean, of course…

3) He or She Who Films Fucking Constantly

I’ll freely admit, I’ve spoken at some length about my issues with the found-footage sub-genre already, so here, like in so many of these damned films, there’s a risk I’ll be repeating myself (though perhaps differently to so many of the filmmakers in question, I don’t expect this rant will be the stepping-stone to great things, an impressive budget, an enviable career and the means to dismiss everything I’ve done before). It still bears comment, though. Whilst it’s hard to pick out one detestable trope from a sub-genre which shows no signs of letting up yet, you can surely point the finger of blame for so many nausea-inducing, plot-lite travesties at the little fucker responsible for doing all of the filming in the first place (followed closely by whoever it is that adds explanatory credits explaining how and where the footage was found, but doesn’t bother to do any other editing whatsoever. Ooh, you’ll get yours.)

Yes, so obnoxious and inexplicable is the behaviour of He or She Who Films Fucking Constantly that even the other ‘characters’ in the film feel the need to allude to it – or more often than that, they’ll openly challenge the person about it, on camera, more than once. What does that tell you? How hard to swallow must this bullshit be, that we have to be told that everyone else even within the growing horrors of the film is getting as annoyed as we are? Hey, the inane question fills some more footage, I guess. It’s also a kind of ever-decreasing circle, this thing: a person (or persons) querying what is happening via the medium it’s happening on – more or less voting the film out of existence, only not getting their wish. And even if He or She… can ever be convinced to “stop filming” or “put the damn camera away” then they just start again, apparently only moments later, with still no reason for doing so. Apemen, aliens and spectres are one thing, but they barely stretch believability more than our not-so-convenient camera operatives.

Stupid behaviour in horror is far from novel, of course, and we’ve had decades of women falling over fresh air, wet-behind-the-ears travellers upsetting the locals in taverns and people picking up sinister looking antiques at bargain prices, and for the short-term feeling smug that they have. It happens enough that we can talk about its presence. None of these rather trite devices bother me as much, though, as those pillocks with their relentless, aimless and pinballing camerawork. Sure, people can be obsessed with filming things in real life, phones are a constant, laptops are a given – but the likes of Snapchat have by now won out over protracted filming sessions, surely, and one thing you often notice now is that even idiots can hold a phone still.

Look, if you’re struggling to justify your shooting style on camera, then maybe it’s time to buy a tripod and do it differently.

Worst offender: Trish (Abigail Schrader) in Tape 407 (2012). Look, I feel almost bad for picking on one He or She Who Who Films.., but having a sickly-sweet pre-teen in charge of a camera just pushed me too far. Still, as you can see from the image, what you lack in charisma you make up in great quality elsewhere.

4) The New-Old Rednecks

Again, prejudices amongst filmmakers against the inhabitants of the Southern states of the USA are nothing new. There’s a lengthy history here, and in a vast country which still often seems to be fractured along that old fault line between North and South, representations of Southerners have long been hyperbolic. Interestingly, it’s gone far and wide: English-speakers all over the world can probably recognise a term like ‘redneck’ now, even if it once derived from a reasonably specific geographical location and time; for horror audiences certainly, rural Southerners are definitively dangerous and not to be trusted, with all of their blithe protestations about ‘family’ and ‘hospitality’ really a barely-maintained front that will give way in due bloody course. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the majority of America’s lunatics were in the bottom half of the nation; well, some are, but certainly not all of them, though them stereotypes keep on comin’.

However, what feels distinctly new is the level of sheer, unmitigated glee which seems to accompany depictions of obligatorily racist, sexist, homophobic Southerners in cinema in recent years. It’s almost as if hurling a ‘redneck’ into your movie gives you a water-tight excuse to have your characters mouth a million things you’d never, ever get away with having anything but an ogre say (and God forbid any character intended to be at all ambiguous or nuanced utters even a fraction of this stuff – they’re done, and so is the filmmaker if this happens. In fact, imagine what would happen to you, if you said it. Every social set has its own blasphemy.)

All the disparaging slurs you can think of – and maybe more – come out of the mouths of these conveniently Southern monsters. A word which has euphemistically become ‘the N-word’ more or less everywhere else, for instance, reverts right back to ‘nigger’ when these people are around, and they don’t just say the word once. They shout it, they scream it, and they add a few other choice terms for good measure – usually about sex and sexuality, ‘cunts’ and ‘queers’. Never mind whether any of this fits or even seems plausible; it’s quite common for a lot of this dialogue to sound as forced as a teenager’s first attempt to drop ‘fuck’ into a sentence. The sheer garrulousness of these two-dimensional yee-haw characters, and their determination to say everything that no one is allowed to say is, well, weird and modern, in a way which I find pretty abhorrent and childish.

Look, I’m not saying no one uses this language. This isn’t about censorship either. But the decision to cram as much manufactured outrage into a movie via otherwise poorly delineated characters switches me off very quickly. Not only does it serve as a particularly tawdry ‘get out of jail free’ card whereby you can never be critiqued for having your characters speak like this because that’s just how they are – if your critics have a problem with it, then it’s on them to rationalise it – but it’s a very lazy way to make a villain. Make someone poor and/or unattractive and put a tonne of racist language in their mouths: do no other work. Hope and pray viewers can see irony or subtlety in your writing that in all likelihood, isn’t there in the first place.

Worst offender: Jed (Ronnie Gene Blevins) in Avenged (2013): great actor, reprehensible and unimaginative role.

5) Pregnant Pariahs

Now, my final trope is one that makes my blood boil and my eyes roll so hard that years of countless films all put together has given me a sort of haunted look; I’ll explain why. Nothing makes me disengage with a plot more quickly or more finally than the revealed presence of the Pregnant Pariah.

Now, I’ll freely admit that filmmakers, like many folk, often plump for the consensus attitude that enthrones ‘the young family’ above all else, because it’s a kind of social currency that can be cashed in everywhere. There is also evidence that the whole kid idea really does work on people. I’ve even heard from friends that, having had kids of their own, they can never again watch any scene containing threat to an infant without bawling, wanting to vomit or feeling the need to leave the room, pronto. Be that biology, decades of inescapable social enculturation or a blend of the two, it’s definitely a real factor in many people’s lives which is utilised as a failsafe by filmmakers wanting to inject some human drama into proceedings without getting too bogged down in intricacies. Just as the evil redneck is given certain things to say to make him evil, so many female characters are given the magic words to say to make them special. Huh.

Thing is, there are millions of us, men and women, who look with incredulity at films which decide that a woman needs that certain something – a pregnancy, duh – to really come into her own as a character. It’s the surprise twist which contains no surprises whatsoever. Just a regular woman escaping a masked killer would be shitty (unless she wheeled around on her heels and miraculously kicked him to death – see 1) but a woman carrying a baby; now there’s a girl who has a real cause to fight back. I mean, what else is there? There’s a reason women are routinely described as ‘mother-of-one’ or ‘mother-of-two’ after the real big event in her life happens, rather than ‘full time nurse of ten years’ or ‘medal-winner’: this shit, this shit is what’s really important. Sigh. I’m not sure if art’s imitating life or vice versa here, but my god, in life and in art it’s boring.

To get the holy grail of pregnancy into their films, though, filmmakers don’t just throw the non-surprise in there, but play fast and loose with the whole idea of childbearing from the outset. (This approach is rather different to making the pregnancy itself the bedrock of the horror, of course.) Having decided to use pregnancy in this way in the first place, I guess there’s little incentive to actually look too far into the realities of the subject; if you’re lazy in one respect then you’re likely to be lazy in another. For one thing, unless you’re Michelle ‘Clown Car’ Duggar, pregnancy isn’t all that common in the developed world anymore where we have the (free, in the UK) option to space things out, stop after a few children or hey, forgo it altogether. Yet women in films are always ‘just’ aware they’re pregnant, even if it’s miraculously early. Sometimes you even see women throwing up with morning sickness after a one-night stand, as if that happens so soon because of pregnancy in all but the rarest of cases (but yay for getting sex and pregnancy into a few salacious, inaccurate minutes). Any forced, equally inaccurate and downright insulting means of introducing this element to the plot is apparently fair game and has been used many times over the years. But worst of all, perhaps, is this idea that women get a sudden passion for survival on account of an embryo, when they would presumably have been far more expendable or even lain down and died? Thanks for reducing us to our reproductive biology again there, world.

Worst offender: Christine (Katie Lowes) in Bear (2010): oh, you want to live because you’re pregnant and not because there’s a huge bear on the bonnet of your broken-down car? I actually wanted the bear to eat her more, just to shut her up.

Editorial: Five Shitty Modern Horror Tropes (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on June 6, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

It probably goes with out saying (but then, so do a lot of things and it doesn’t seem to stop anyone) – we watch a hell of a lot of horror here at the site. A hell of a lot. Screeners, shorts, trailers, festival releases, mainstream releases, Netflix et al…the list goes on. As such, it becomes easier and easier to get annoyed by the persistent characterisation failures we see in them and those lazy, silly trends which seem to sweep through filmmaking like a series of memes, year upon year. Each further dilution of an already-forced idea piles insult upon injury. Sure, there are nearly always other factors at work in the making of any film, but from my perspective, this doesn’t distract me from the fact that the same stock characters appearing again and again is tedious. It’s mysterious too. Why are some characters so seemingly irresistible? Emperor’s New Clothes? Horror writers feel like their product won’t be well-received unless they select from a very short list of possibilities? Perhaps there’s a positive aspect to this – namely, that when you’re a fan writer finally faced with something decent and well-handled, you dissolve with gratitude – but, all in all, seeing the same shit being unveiled in a succession of films makes me bitey.

To get some of these grievances off my chest, I’d like to share with you my current shitlist. This is by no means an exhaustive shitlist. These may not be your choices for a shitlist – but I bet if you think about it, you have a shitlist. More may follow from me, then – but for now, may I introduce you to…

1) The Eight Stone Titans

As ordeal horror and its love of inflicting physical agony has spread like wildfire through horror movies in recent years, it’s become more important to have characters in those movies who can withstand it for…well, around forty minutes of screen time, preferably, so that the wronged party can unstrap themselves from the chair/kick their way out of the barn/practice some sort of escapology and then right those wrongs, often returning to find the antagonists and tearing them a new one with some ever-handy DIY implements. This begins to become more problematic when you also consider horror’s monomania for pretty, petite twentysomethings, and how all of the above so often gets crowbarred into the same damn movie. Whilst this isn’t a new thing, routinely matching these Megs fighting against the sorts of physical endurance missions which would fell a Marine means that the already-flimsy believability begins to fray to a ridiculous degree.

Oh, sure. The human body can withstand some ridiculous shit. People get lost in the wilderness, people get imprisoned, people survive horrendous injuries and yet somehow live to tell the tale; horror readily buys into this kind of outlandish possibility and extends it into its own fantasy, I get it – but when it seems to be happening again and again and again, it not only feels lazy, it seems as if the filmmakers have lost all grasp of basic physics. This all becomes more problematic when rape is casually hurled into a low to mid-budget horror film – as it is often enough, with the appearance of a new I Spit On Your Grave prequel/sequel/reimagining now seemingly as frequent as a Hallmark holiday. The girls in these films are always petite, even frail. They undergo vile, protracted attacks. And then what happens is – they rally. They seethe and they plot. They survive. And then they overcome physics to go sardonically deliver some of the rapists’ lines back to them, as if that balances things out in a plausible way.

In many ways these girls are the descendents of the old ‘final girls’, only a few other things are happening here. The first is that they’ve revved up to suit the context of modern, OTT tastes – tedious in itself – and the second is that these characters are being assembled by their writers purposely to quell the cries of ‘misogyny!’ which often emanate from critics. This way, filmmakers can keep the torture and feel contented that they’ve also done enough to restore that Philosopher’s Stone of gender equality to their own particular fictional world. If you have your would-be final girl going through hell, surely you can offset all of that by having this size zero model throwing grown men around like they’re shop mannequins? You can keep your shit lazy plot so long as you throw a bit of unlikely ass-kicking in there? I mean, forget the fact that even fantasy films ultimately need to have some sense of internal logic and plausibility in order to engage an audience. That’ll do, right?

Erm, no. This is a massively irritating fantasy, and I bury my head in my hands when I see some woman who’s just almost bled to death going towards the people who almost killed her to engage in some stupid, unbelievable, trite ‘vengeance’. It doesn’t make me feel vindicated, it makes me feel patronised. I forget which comedian it was who said ‘half of women’s self-defence classes should be about running away’, but do you know what? It’s true. Do you know what happens when you get punched in the head by someone a lot bigger than you? I do. You fold up like a concertina and you don’t bounce back up to brandish an axe at anyone. You certainly don’t feel like delivering smart-arse jibes at anyone. This nonsense on-screen? It’s supernatural horror, quite simply, which doesn’t even have the good grace to give us any ghosts. Funnily enough, though, nothing scares me quite as much as the people who think this shite is in some way progressive.

Worst offender: Jennifer (Sarah Hills) in I Spit on Your Grave (2010). A woman who would have died of exposure is presented to us as a superhuman. Thanks, that’s dandy.

2) The Expendable Clerics/Occultists

Now, perhaps it seems an odd choice to lump in the men of the cloth with the heathens here, what with them backing different teams and all, but they often serve exactly the same purpose in horror films, even if the latter is usually wearing a more colourful outfit. Essentially, they’re mostly there in an advisory capacity: no sooner have they got talking to the principle characters, and no sooner have the principle characters found themselves in the sort of situation which can’t be fixed with ordinary means (usually within about fifteen minutes of screen time) than our friendly keeper of the Occult Knowledge is at hand to condense a swathe of plot points into a helpful monologue which both contextualises, and ups the ante for our heroes. Living in the old Ford residence? Waking to find strange symbols carved into your walls? Seemingly being nixed by a multitude of demons who could disguise themselves as anything, but always seem to favour the growly voice and the mad eyes, so they’re easily recognised? Excellent. What could be an array of potentially confusing phenomena can be explained to the audience, possible via flashback, or otherwise just through the amiable gravitas of the character – saving the afflicted party the heinous task of trying to find anything out for themselves. Then everyone can get on with being terrified and knowing what they’re terrified of. A bit later, things can get out of hand and then we can have an exorcism or something and all will be well again. Our main characters can reflect on the Journey they’ve taken. Gentle music rolls…

But there’s a snag. What sort of malignant supernatural presence is content to just rock up, slam a few doors and then piss off back to Hell, without so much as one casualty to brag about? None worth mentioning, to be honest. Some filmmakers are pretty stupid, but they’re not that stupid – they know that if they’re plumping for one tried-and-tested plot development, then they owe another. And, come to think of it, that non-twentysomething with the arcane knowledge is a bit weird, all told. Couldn’t they be the ones to die, so that the real protagonists are there to look wistfully off-screen as the film grinds to a close? The answer would be yes – always bloody yes – often enough that a dog collar essentially = death. Ditto the woman in the fringed headscarf with the suspicious amount of books; let’s fling these people against the side of a tree and have done with it. Having illustrated the altruistic and perchance even Christ-like acceptance of self-sacrifice, there’s only one way they can really go.

I’m not religious whatsoever, and in my experience those people wearing hemp and headscarves are usually terrified of ‘big pharma’ in ways which could rival the terror medieval folk felt about hell, but it comes to something when anyone you see in the role of ‘wise elder’ is apparently doomed to die on-screen. Not only is the idea itself lazy, but the expected expendability of these characters also seems to curtail their characterisation altogether. After all, what’s the point in caring too much about these founts of knowledge? Establishing the back story; establishing the strength of the baddie and then dying that others may live – that’s deemed quite enough.

Worst offender: Evelyn (Alfre Woodard) from Annabelle (2014) A dreadful film which gives us both a priest and a ‘knowing woman’, here a load of toss about sacrifice and demons essentially does away with ‘book store owner’ Evelyn, in a gallingly stupid and predictable outing.

Read on for part 2 of Keri’s editorial here…

Comic Review: Broken World #1

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Svetlana Fedotov

What would you do if there was rock the size of Baltimore hurtling towards Earth with the ill-intent to destroy everything in its path? Well, if you are one of the citizens of the Broken World universe, you better figure it out quick because in 48 hours, there won’t be any decisions left to make. A pre-to-post apocalyptic comic focused around one woman’s struggle to keep her family together, Broken World is not just a sci-fi comic, but a testament to one persons attempt to hold on to everything dear in the face of tremendous odds. I know, it sounds like some preachy, love thy family bullshit, but it mostly pans out to be a pretty intense ride with plenty of death, sadness, and rocket ships to the stars. It’s what dreams are made of!

As stated, the earth of Broken World is 48 hours away from complete and utter annihilation and for our protagonist, Elena Marlowe, the meteor is but one of her many worries. The world’s governments have provided passages to space ships for those deemed worthy and she, unlike her family, was not going to get on. Driven by a secret that has prevented her from a ticket, she desperately looks for a way on to the last rocket. As her and the rest of the citizens count down the clock, the crazy starts coming out of the woodwork and we soon see how the rest of the world is dealing with the impending doom. Let’s just say, it’s not that well.

Broken World is billed as the only original release by writer Frank J. Barbiere of 2015, indicating he must have a pretty busy year ahead. Having written for practically every major comic company in the industry, his original world skills are just as sharp as his established universe ones. He creates a story that doesn’t only harp on crazy people facing death from above, but explores what’s driving these people as well. The comic sweeps through panels crowded with religious fanatics, existentialist fuddy-duddies, and the blind hope of children in an attempt to create a connection between you and its doomed world. It’s definitely a work that, while using a pretty common trope of ‘comet coming at the Earth,’ takes it one step further and shows you the overwhelming hopelessness of facing the upcoming apocalypse.

The one drawback I would consider is perhaps that it’s a bit too obvious of a story. I found myself spacing out a bit when I hit the explanatory walls of text every time someone talked about their plans for the comet. Of course the religious followers are going to kill themselves and of course there are going to be riots; notions as old as time. While I’m sure the point of the comic is to be somewhat deeper than your average hack and slash, it’s not anything that hasn’t been done before. That being said, I suggest sticking it out just for the interesting ending. Build-up wise, you really don’t see it coming. Either way, Broken World is good for what it is and leads to a pretty serious ending, but lacks the originality to make it outstanding. But as I always say, first issues are only launching pads.

DVD Review: Stonehearst Asylum (2014)

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

When I see ‘based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe’ attached to a film, I can’t be the only person who goes through a few different emotions. Ditto ‘based on a story by HP Lovecraft’, actually, as each writer has had such a mixed history in film – when they’re good, they’re very very good, and when they’re bad… Still, I’m always on the look-out for interesting adaptations of Poe’s stories, so my first feeling is usually pleased, then a bit more reserved, and then finally I find myself saying over and over, ‘Please don’t mess this up’.

Poe is always appealing to filmmakers, but it hasn’t always proved so easy to transmit his strange aesthetics, warped protagonists and yeah, sickly humour to the screen. It was gratifying, though, to see that the director attached to Stonehearst Asylum, Brad Anderson, was the guy who directed The Machinist ten years previously – a film whose tortured lead character wouldn’t have gone amiss in a premature burial or undergoing the agonies of the Spanish Inquisition. Hell, he already had the persecution mania and the mental debility, so he was most of the way there. Anderson has some good pedigree as a TV director, too, so with his prior experience and a strong, high-profile cast – with the decent budget to match, I’d bet – the pieces were in place for a worthwhile watch. The resulting film is undeniably well made; it looks glossy, the locations are excellent (though clearly not shot in England where it’s set!) and by and large, the performances are decent. So why does this film fall short of the mark?

The plot is as follows: we’re taken to a post-Poe era, but a very interesting one considering the subject matter of the screenplay – 1899, where we start by witnessing a demonstrative lecture on female hysteria for the benefit of trainee ‘alienists’, a term which used to mean doctors specialising in insanity. (The first alienist we encounter here, by the way, is Brendan Gleeson, and it’s bloody criminal that he only gets what amounts to a cameo in the film, as he’s one of the best things in it.) One of the newly-qualified doctors, an Edward Newgate (Jim Sturgess) wants to make a career in alienism, so to further his clinical experience, he travels to the imposing Stonehearst Asylum. He’s met there by an equally imposing and unfriendly bunch, but once they identify that he’s in earnest, they invite him to stay, with the superintendent Dr. Lamb taking him under his wing. Incidentally, Ben Kingsley (Lamb) must like the feel of the white coat, because he played a very similar role to this in Shutter Island…

Dr. Lamb introduces Dr. Newgate to the unorthodox system of care at the asylum: no one is confined to their rooms, and they can entertain themselves as they see fit. This, Lamb believes, will help the inmates to find happiness, though he accepts that this isn’t so much a cure as containment. It’s progressive, yes, but a bit hopeless too. Newgate is guarded in accepting all of this, but he agrees to work with Lamb, and begins to interact with the patients. One who really catches his eye is a Mrs. Eliza Graves (Kate Beckinsale), the woman we saw at the beginning in a ‘hysteric fit’ (this seemed to be a catch-all diagnosis in the Victorian era for any woman using her body for purposes beyond pliantly knitting or giving birth). She certainly seems calm enough now, though, and ethics be damned – Dr. Newgate soon takes a bit of a shine to our Eliza. She’s not so sure, herself, and begs him to leave, leave! Bloody hysterics. Confused, Dr. Newgate wants to know why she would be so keen to send him away; well, he soon discovers exactly why, and it seems that the civilised facade of the asylum is just that – a facade.

So far, so serious: perhaps in keeping with the darkly-comic Poe story used as the basis for this screenplay (‘The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether’) it seems in certain places like we’re encouraged to giggle at the patients – like the man who thinks he’s a racehorse, for instance – but when the lead actors are on screen, the film mostly sheds any ironic or comedic aspects. Kingsley and Sturgess discuss treatments, and do their rounds, and talk shop. Equally serious is Michael Caine, turning on one of the strongest performances here, though again – somewhat frustratingly – in little more than a cameo role, although he does at least contribute to the film’s first ‘big twist’. And then there’s Kate Beckinsale, who’s front-and-centre in the publicity material, but spends rather less time on-screen than you may expect, particularly given that ‘Eliza Graves’ was the film’s original title. She’s…she’s not exactly in her element here, enacting every emotional state the script demands by simply being breathy and open-mouthed; it’s a lesser case of Keira Knightley Jaw, that absurd bloody pout that no one did back then. It doesn’t half mitigate her believability.

As for the aesthetics of the film, which ought to be bang on for such a well-documented era that overlapped with the burgeoning age of photography and film and in whose houses we often still live – well, it starts reasonably strong, but very quickly I began to see a kind of picturesque, sanitised Victoriana creeping in. At first, the imposing location for Stonehearst looks good; get indoors, though, and it’s all too neat and clean, more Arkham Asylum for gamers than House of Usher. It just needs more gloom and rot – or, it needs to go fully in the other direction and embrace a sort of lurid, Corman-style colour palette and OTT stylistics. ‘The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether’ was originally adapted as a Grand Guignol performance in Paris: that says it all for me. There’s little of that approach here. The vision we get of an insane asylum is altogether just too cosy, quaint and accessible, which – together with the actually very tame, Certificate 15 adult content – keeps any real horror at bay. Furthermore, there’s ample missed opportunity here to really pass comment on the barbarism inflicted against mental health patients during the era; we’re not really asked to think about it in too great a depth. Some questions are raised in the script, sure, and the question of ‘what constitutes a lunatic’ pops up, but ultimately treatments are invoked simply to add more drama, not because we’re meant to fully engage with the plight of the characters.

I think it’s such a shame that Stonehearst Asylum isn’t a far better film than it is. It’s an okay film. It’s pretty easy on the eye, and it has some decent performances. But given a bit more sparkle, a bit more atmosphere, it could have been great. Unfortunately, it’s far too much in the ‘mild peril’ category; pretty, yeah, but too light-touch, and as such any real links to the sardonic energy of Poe are few and far-between.

Stonehearst Asylum is out in DVD and Blu-ray on 22nd June 2015. Trailer contains spoilers.

TV Review: The Enfield Haunting (2015)

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Do you believe in ghosts? Personally, I don’t, but I don’t think it’s any less of a big deal to acknowledge the incredible interplay between human imagination and perceived phenomena which gives rise to tales of ghostly goings-on. It doesn’t strip the magic out of it, for me, to suggest that electromagnetic sensitivity (for instance) can have a metaphysical impact on people; hey, the effects are no less important and no less terrifying, when it comes down to it. Like many sceptics, though, I’ve made a life’s habit of seeking out ghost stories, and supernatural horror is one of my favourite things. But why? Well, perhaps beyond the fact of these being some damn good stories, and the part of me that quite likes being scared within the safe-space of horror, part of me wants to be challenged. Not to quote a certain 90s TV show or anything, perhaps to an extent “I want to believe”, hence I’m so happy to pore over alleged ‘real life’ hauntings, wondering at how seemingly average folk can apparently find themselves under siege by something which doesn’t seem to operate according to any known laws. I may come out and dismiss what I’ve read, but still, by the next time it’s like a moth to a flame all over again.

This brings us to the series of phenomena occurring between 1977 and 1979 in an ordinary terraced house in Enfield, England; phenomena which seemed to focus chiefly on the eleven year old daughter of the family, Janet. Now known chiefly as the ‘Enfield poltergeist’ haunting, during this time the family heard ghostly rappings, were pelted by objects, and Janet bore the brunt of what seemed to be physical attacks before beginning to channel ‘voices’ of the dead. I first read an account of all of this is a compendium of ‘The Unexplained’ belonging to my grandmother: The Unexplained was divided up into chapters, with one for UFOs, one for Divination, and so on – until the chapter on Poltergeists, those ‘mischievous spirits’ associated with notorious cases worldwide – the Bell Witch, the Matthew Manning story, Borley Rectory. I remember feeling a tad underwhelmed by the photos of Janet ostensibly being flung across the room (had she been upside down instead of clearly springing into space, that would have really been something) but the finer details of the story were definitely intriguing. How far were Janet, and to a lesser extent her older sister, responsible for what was going on? Was there really some malignant entity perpetrating some of the phenomena in the house? And why were so many ordinarily po-faced adults so willing to go on record to say that they had witnessed the phenomena take place?

Looking into the case again, having just watched the enjoyable recent three-part series The Enfield Haunting and had my interest in the case rekindled, it seems to me that the real story in Enfield was an incredibly tangled, convoluted combination of elements: childhood trauma (the children’s father had walked out on them), adolescence, related adolescent attention seeking, credibility, group hysteria, various kinds of suggestibility, ulterior motives – and maybe, just maybe, a nub of something genuinely inexplicable, which gave rise to all of the above. The great thing about The Enfield Haunting is that it plays with several of these possibilities. Although of course giving credence to the events as recorded at the time, as well as adding extra elements to them (it wouldn’t be much of a supernatural story, in terms of entertainment, if it didn’t) it also takes a step back on occasion, and allows us to see children acting up to what was expected of ‘the poltergeist’, deliberately faking phenomena for effect. These moments keep you hovering as an audience member, because it reminds you that the ‘real life events’ (which are almost routinely vaunted at the beginning of any new horror yarn on-screen) are far from cut-and-dried here. You’re encouraged to question, as well as to immerse yourself in what is being presented.

Framed from the point of view of paranormal investigator Maurice Grosse (Timothy Spall), the larger-than-life real life character is played rather quieter here, with Grosse a man broken by the death of his daughter and evidently searching for tangible proof of the afterlife. He finds this in Enfield, when he picks up on the media buzz surrounding the alleged haunting (Mrs. Hodgson had called in the Daily Mirror newspaper as a first port-of-call when the haunting began). Soon installing himself in the family home alongside fellow investigator Guy Playfair (Matthew MacFadyen), Grosse forges a close relationship with the spirited, impertinent Janet (played brilliantly by Eleanor Worthington-Cox) but being a clever girl, Janet does manipulate Grosse: she’s depicted on several occasions as a rather needy pre-teen who has bottled up a lot of rage about her current circumstances, and enjoys the attention bestowed upon her. Maurice and Janet become rather symbiotic, each needing the other, with the phenomena increasing the more oblique encouragement Janet receives from the adults in her life. There does seem to have been an element of this in the original case, and it’s a credit to the series for debating the effects of this here. However, we are also shown a multitude of events from Janet’s point-of-view, which would imply that she isn’t simply faking what happens when she needs to do so: it’s no sober debunking, this series, and in fact it adds several elements to the story for the purposes of building some very effective dread.

The story diverges from the 70s case by becoming more of an investigation narrative; developing claims made by the real Janet that she was speaking for one entity in particular – an old man called Bill – we see psychic mediums, seances and detective work employed to find out who he is, what he wants and how to get rid of him. Some of the sequences involving The Enfield Haunting’s ‘Joe’ (with regards the name change, this is probably to break any links between the work of fiction and the very real former inhabitant of the Hodgson family home whom Janet allegedly channeled) are truly horrific – even if they move more towards Hollywood scares than the more understated style scenes. Where Janet plays with her sister Margaret’s View-Finder toy and sees the old man creep up on her via the pictures she’s looking at – well, it may resonate with Stephen King’s It to an extent, but it’s still bloody effective. Likewise, some of the more flashy, higher-action scenes are more derivative of the body of work which came before the new series, but they’re nicely handled here, and really drew me in. I wonder if some of the impact comes from the odd recognisability of the Hodgson home; I can remember a lot of the styles of furniture from my own home growing up, and even recognised a few pieces wholesale. I’ve definitely crept into very similar-looking rooms as a child, as equally petrified as Janet of whatever might be lurking in the dark there, and perhaps this evocative touch makes the series all the more successful for people of a similar age. And doesn’t that tie in with what many of us want from supernatural horror – to feel the type of enervating scares we felt as kids?

Doing a good job of honouring the source material whilst going somewhere new with it, not dwelling for too long on mainstream horror cliche, The Enfield Haunting balances a story of the effects of bereavement alongside its more visceral scares. Neither thing feels compromised by the other, and the end result definitely makes for engaging telly. Add to this an excellent and plausible cast, and this leads me to hope that more like this series may be on the way.

Film Review: Horsehead (2014)

Posted on May 26, 2015July 7, 2017 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Dreams are curious things; they can be a distillation of the deepest anxieties and fears which leave people cold long after waking, or they can be pure wish fulfillment – but in either incarnation, the way the brain can weave elements into a narrative is clearly always going to be appealing, fertile terrain for movies. Capturing dreams on film, though, has often proved difficult – they’re so deeply personal, so anchored to a million things which make us unique that even the most precise teller often finds it impossible to communicate to someone else just what it was, exactly, that scared them so much about a dream: it always sounds innocuous, or else plain silly. Many filmmakers have shot dream sequences, particularly in horror, with varying success – but one early compliment I’ll pay to Horsehead (2014) is that its heavy use of dreams throughout avoids feeling either innocuous or silly, and by-the-by I enjoyed the early nod to Fuseli’s 1781 painting The Nightmare in the very first dream-scene. However, due to the fact that the lead character spends most of the time asleep and lucid-dreaming, this creates its own issues for the way in which the film plays out.

A young twentysomething, Jessica (Lilly-Fleur Pointeaux) returns to the homestead at the request of her mother Catelyn (Catriona MacColl) after the death of her maternal grandmother. It seems that Jessica’s life away from home – as a student of the science of lucid dreaming, following her lifetime’s experience of the phenomenon – is a lot less problematic than things seem there, as her mother is cold and snippy from the outset, and doesn’t seem to want to talk much about the deceased grandmother currently propped up on pillows in the bedroom adjoining Jessica’s, where she’s looking for all the world like the grand-mere in Amer (which isn’t the first or the last time that the Amer comparison springs to mind, incidentally). Jessica takes refuge from these frosty maternal relations by seeking to find out more about Rose, her grandmother: it transpires that Rose committed suicide, and had laboured under apparently declining mental health just prior to her death (leaving behind a body of work which looks like all insanity-doodles look in films – black and grey artwork and mysterious bold text aplenty). By practicing her lucid dream technique, Jessica is quickly able to ‘speak’ with Rose – whose insistence that Jessica help her find ‘the key’ throws her granddaughter onto the trail of some family secrets.

At some early stage in the creation of Horsehead, a deliberate decision was made to explore the story almost completely via dreams and altered states. There’s a certain boldness to that which I admire, and to give credit to the film – under first-time feature director Romain Basset – it looks amazing, beautifully coloured and framed throughout, whilst the droning, evocative soundtrack fits very well. I’ll just mention Amer again here – and maybe Livide (2011) too. Since Jessica spends a lot of her time dreaming, and fever-dreaming no less (well hello, carte blanche!) strangeness pervades throughout the entire film, even when all the protagonists are awake; interiors in particular always look like they could always give way to a monster in the corner of the room (although they don’t) and the slightly stilted conversation between actors, whether or not it was intended to be stilted like this, all adds to the atmosphere – of the impression that nothing is working perfectly well in this world. It’s not just the script, either; the fact that we have a cut glass-accented mother and stepfather in Catriona MacColl and Murray Head, living in France, with a daughter who herself has a distinct French drawl to her spoken English – well, it all makes the film feel like it’s part of that pan-European tradition which has held sway over some of the most successful horrors, those charming hodgepodges of locations, actors and nationalities.

Still, because the film opts to be largely a dream narrative, it labours under all the challenges as well as the charms of this approach. Make it unclear when a character is awake or asleep, or what is real or imagined, and your job as a storyteller gets a hell of a lot more difficult. Peg your film on specific symbolism, such as on the ‘horse head’ itself, and you risk stranding your audience if you don’t explore it fully. I felt far more willing to go along with Horsehead’s happily-shaky grasp on reality at the beginning of the film; as it went on, I felt a little less amenable. As my mind inevitably started to attempt to sift through the real and the unreal – as it often does when lucid dreaming, actually – some issues cropped up: just as with sci-fi, because it’s fantasy-based it doesn’t mean you can automatically forget about any sort of internal logic. I confess I started to weigh up character ages, and look at their costumes, and pitch that against what we were being asked to accept – and yeah, I’d love to have suspended my disbelief entirely, but as elegant a film as this is, it’s still a film telling a story, and ultimately as a yarn about a family tragedy, it didn’t quite hang together for me. (Also – Jessica’s ‘big revelation’ towards the film’s close? That was a cliche which the film could definitely have done without.)

So – it’s big and bold, for sure, and the makers of Horsehead have clearly taken great pains to capture the ghastly otherworldliness of nightmares on screen. The film itself isn’t always successful, but it’s striven to do something different, and its development of atmosphere is indeed impressive. If narrative isn’t your chief concern (last mention of Amer goes here) then this may be of interest to you, and I’ve certainly seen enough here to make me interested in any further work by Basset.

Horsehead will be coming to Blu-ray/DVD/VOD on June 23, 2015 from Artsploitation Films.