On her twenty-seventh birthday, Elizabeth Cadosia (Lani Call) inherits her grandmother’s dilapidated schoolhouse. Soon after Elizabeth moves in, she begins to experience disturbing visions and the subsequent discovery of various artefacts around the place reveals that her grandmother was a practitioner of black magic. Will Elizabeth follow in those footsteps too?
The blurb for this movie referred to director David R. Williams being inspired by, amongst other things, Tarkovsky and Antonioni’s “slow” cinema and there is little doubt that House Of Screaming Glass takes its time in almost everything it does, stamping – or should that actually be gently pressing? – its glacially paced process on the proceedings from the opening scene, in which the camera inches upwards from a gruesome bit of business splattering the floor to an upstairs window of a building. If you think that’s a patience tester, you don’t know the half of it. This loitering version of the first half of the crane shot in Tenebrae is just easing you in.
From there on, Elizabeth takes a leisurely wander around the house and gardens, sits at a piano and taps out a piece by Beethoven, leafs through a book and so on, all accompanied by a voiceover which lets the viewer in on our protagonist’s thoughts. If this all sounds like a movie you’re going to switch off after twenty minutes, I’m not here to tell you that you definitely won’t be switching it off after twenty minutes. Just hold on, though…
Yes, a huge amount of this movie features just one person on screen. Yes, a huge amount of this movie does not feature on-screen dialogue. However, it’s this approach which sets House Of Screaming Glass in its own, vastly different place from the pack. It clearly wrings the very last drop from its microbudget, deploying striking props, including a beautifully designed, Raimi-esque Necronomicon, and the odd gorge rising, viscous effect to jar the watcher out of any potential slumber.
Speaking of slumber, there’s no doubt that the offbeat, dreamy atmosphere is maintained throughout, but the tempo is often far too languorous for its own good. The long takes eventually undercut any building dread, save for the previously mentioned piano scene, in which something lurking in the blurry background is keyed into each note of the tune so that the film hits a high in terms of genuine tension. Holding matters together is the excellent Lani Call, her one woman horror show requiring many changes of mood and character and she acquits herself admirably. Replacing the role of Final Girl with Only Girl, she’s an unorthodox yet perfect choice for Elizabeth, letting us into the various psychological aspects of someone dealing with both a mysterious past and a potentially dangerous present, while still retaining a little of the enigmatic.
The final act does pick up the pace (relatively), the weirdness amps up and the resolution of the plot ties up with where we came in. The payoff may be far from satisfying for some, but it tracks with the film as a whole – oblique yet somehow straightforward at the same time. The climax goes for the unnerving rather than the spectacular and, given what is known from that initial sequence, I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking “I spent 103 minutes to get to that”? I’m not entirely sure that me suggesting that it’s more of an overall experience would cut much ice, either.
For anyone looking for a change of pace, I would be asking just how much of a change of pace they require before visiting House Of Screaming Glass. This is measured and then some. However, there’s little like this out there and it deserves credit for putting its own spin on what could have been bland witchcraft fare. The temptation is to say that it could lose half an hour and be a better movie, but a seventy-five minute version would lose the peculiar ambiance that makes it such an atypical watch. Fans of wham bam horror are advised to steer clear, but fans of no budget indie horror or the generally curious may want to give this a whirl, if only for the intriguing performance by Call.
House of Screaming Glass arrived on VOD and DVD on Tuesday, May 21st, from DeskPop Entertainment.