Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

Fantasia 2020: Bleed With Me

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

When I read the synopsis for Bleed With Me (2020), my mind jumped straight to ‘body horror’ – but that’s a term reminiscent of jarring, even ludicrous extremes, from Tetsuo to Videodrome. In truth, though, there are many quieter entrants into that genre with their own questions to ask; this brings us to Bleed With Me, where reality and dream meet very uneasily at the margins of the female body in an ambiguous, claustrophobic and economical tale. It tackles female agency and friendship in a low-key, but nonetheless at-times unbearable fashion.

Two friends, Rowan (Lee Marshall) and Emily (Lauren Beatty) head into the Canadian woods for a weekend getaway at Emily’s cabin. Yes, it’s a cabin in the woods – but it’s a cosy, well-loved family retreat, and so the site – rather than the source – of what later unfolds. Emily’s boyfriend Brendan (Aris Tyros) is already there to greet them, and things get off on a good footing. It’s clearly a fairly new friendship between the two girls, but all seems fine. At first. When Rowan thinks she sees something or someone outside the cabin whilst she’s preparing food, she accidentally cuts her finger; Emily’s reaction is a little overzealous, shall we say, but there’s no major cause for alarm at this point. The wine flows, maybe a little too much, but a generally pleasant evening is had.

However, Rowan – clearly a damaged young woman, as the film oh-so subtly reveals to us – has some (deserved) misgivings about cramping the couple’s style, soon aided and abetted by Brendan. Her escalating anxiety gives way to disturbed sleep, and the following morning, Rowan wakes to find an unexplained wound on her forearm. She has no recollection of it; the mystery is compounded when she also sees spots of blood on Emily’s nightclothes. The cabin and its inmates begin to feel actively hostile to Rowan: is it paranoia, or a plot?

Bleed With Me is an incredibly slow burn, unsettling piece of film. For the most part, this stems not from what is shown, but from what is not: the gentle lighting, hushed dialogue and long periods of stillness, taking in the natural beauty outside, belie the ratcheting uneasy inside the cabin’s walls. It’s a very attractive film which establishes one aesthetic, only to bring this into direct contrast with the cold, blurred world of Rowan’s dreams (if dreams they are). Director and writer Amelia Moses has a skill in making the run-of-the-mill very intense and alienating.

Much of this is communicated through Rowan’s own eyes, but the film raises a number of queasy questions regarding female friendship, questions which seem to be more than solely Rowan’s. Each of the girls is keeping quiet on their true motivations; doubt and unreason begin to filter through into every word and gesture. As Rowan’s night terrors begin to segue into her days, her proliferation of strange wounds are a symbol of her unease as much as they are a cause for concern in and of themselves. The steady increase in uncertainty achieved here is quite something. Some of Rowan’s terror of her companions’ real motivations has echoes of Rosemary’s Baby, another film where a woman is left vulnerable because it’s unclear who to believe. In other respects, the film reminded me of the short story The Yellow Wallpaper – again, featuring a woman who projects her own suffering onto external phenomena. However, Bleed With Me expands these ideas, using blood as a locus for unmistakably feminine concerns, where friendships simmer and boil out of control.

This is a film which never gives up all of its secrets, and as such it may be too low on exposition for some – personally, I found it a very affecting piece of work which allows intrigue to remain, contributing to the atmosphere and style of the film as a whole. That all of this is done in one setting with a total cast of three people is all the more remarkable.

BLEED WITH ME will premiere at Fantasia International Film Festival – 2020 Digital Edition. August 26, 2020 at 7:10 p.m. EST and play again on September 1, 2020 at 3 p.m. EST

Fantasia 2020: Fried Barry

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The BBFC-esque send-up at the beginning of Fried Barry – with a ‘warning’ of all the adult content to follow and the pointer that film certification is there to help us make informed decisions – suggests from the outset a film stacked with OTT content which is also ready to send itself up. In the case of the former, there’s no argument with the amount of sex and drugs on offer here, though with regards to the latter, it wasn’t always clear to me when or if to laugh at Fried Barry. Furthermore, the tantalising idea of body horror mooted in the premise doesn’t come to pass, or at least not in the ways I was expecting. So it’s scuzzy, yes, but horror is rather low in the mix overall. This is a strange, drug-addled odyssey through rather grotty terrain with some intimation of a ‘bigger picture’ of the human experience, though again, not expressed overtly.

The Barry who gets Fried is a middle-aged man and, even before the big event, he’s not in the best of states: an intravenous drug user, his return home to a distraught wife and child is only of a few moments’ duration before he’s back on the streets again, chasing debts and hitting a local dive bar in his hometown of Cape Town, SA. He heads off from there with a local mate for more of the same; you get the impression that life could be ever thus, but then on his way home late that night, Barry is beamed up by some extraterrestrial force. These aliens experiment on him before swapping him for one of their number, then return ‘him’ right to the place he was picked up. So it’s ‘Barry’ – still wired and still walking around in a state of blank abandon – but it’s also not Barry.

A little like Grant in James Gunn’s Slither (2006), this Barry is new to the world and its inhabitants, seeing for the first time through alien eyes, despite inhabiting a human body. (A later moment in the film also seems a clear allusion to a scene in Slither.) But where Grant’s human frame soon begins to corrupt, Barry seems – for most, if not all intents and purposes – much the same as he was. We begin to get a lot of shots through Barry’s point of view, underlining how incredibly strange all of this seems to him, but bodily? He probably says a little less and dances a lot more, but given the amount of pills he chins as soon as he’s given the opportunity, it’s hard to definitively say he wouldn’t have been like that anyway. And he’s certainly no worse a person than many of the folks he meets on his travels. The Cape Town nightlife scene he blunders into is all grimy streets, dreadful bars and caricatured partygoers (though perhaps this is authentically the case; I’ve never been.) Barry also seems unusually alluring to many of them, perhaps necessarily, given the film’s stated determination to provide numerous sex scenes, but it adds a perplexing plot layer nonetheless. One of these sex scenes sees the film veer for a moment into the kind of Henenlotter territory I’d initially expected, with what seems a clear nod to Bad Biology (2008): some of Barry’s wanderings call to mind the equally scuzzy New York of Basket Case (1982) and the altered states of Brain Damage (1988), but Fried Barry never sticks with that kind of SFX for more than a moment.

Barry’s journey eventually takes him to some incredibly dark, or should we say, even darker places: encounters with Cape Town’s hidden criminal elements bring him up against violence and kidnap, where on some occasions he intervenes – perhaps knowing he is acting for the good, perhaps not. In other situations he does nothing, or just seems to help by accident, showing some evidence of supernatural abilities which is not explored beyond itself. Similarly, his own later incarceration sees him carried along by the forces around him, unable to do a great deal but take any substances proffered. There are large lulls during the middle act of the film where it seems unclear where all of this is going; the inclusion of a fake ‘intermission’ reel, an opportunity to shoehorn in a little more lurid 80s aesthetics it seems, is an unnecessary add-on which doesn’t fit with much around it. I fear this might be one of the problems so often seen when a short film is adapted into a feature – and this is a first feature, too, by director Ryan Kruger. At nearly 100 minutes and with no prepared script and an almost mute protagonist, Fried Barry is a very protracted walk through the streets.

There are some moments of warmth, and underpinning the whole is the question of what extraterrestrial life would learn from a walk on the wild side such as this, even if explication is minimal. Some of the more lurid, retro-weird scenes are fun, and the synth soundtrack works very well with the film. It’s not all bad. It’s just that the head-scratching, or slow, or inexplicable moments outnumber the good here.

Fried Barry (2020) will screen at the Fantasia Film Festival, which starts on 20th August. For more details, click here.

Boo (2019)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Horror has often examined the role of addiction: lots of its best-known antagonists have laboured under something of this kind, and it’s fertile ground for taking a closer look at people, their motivations and their flaws. This is the rationale behind short film Boo (2019), an economical exercise in filmmaking which shows a careful hand and sense of structure throughout its fifteen minute running time.

The film starts with a man, Jared (Josh Kelly), startled by the appearance of his girlfriend Devi (also director and writer Rakefet Abergel) at his passenger-side window. Her hands are bloodied and she’s in distress; this is not the straightforward ride home he’d envisaged. Using a time frame which flashes forward and backwards between two pivotal moments, we see Dev some time just prior to this, emerging from an AA meeting with some of her friends, in proud receipt of a 7 years’ sober chip. Still, she tells her friends, she still misses some aspects of drinking – the smell, for instance, even after all that time. They head off into the night while she waits for Jared, reassuring them that she’ll be fine.

Dev said she still suffers from temptation: bang on cue, a car door opens and an inebriated guy emerges. He’s one of those ‘can’t take no for an answer’ kind of guys, as the film quickly reveals; the situation quickly begins to spiral out of control, and although the way in which the film cuts between past and present masks the length of Dev’s ordeal and how her lapse affects her, we know enough to understand why she is so shaken up and panicked when Jared gets there. Or do we?

Boo riffs on that idea, that an addict is an addict is an addict, no matter how much time elapses; the way in which horror underpins this is by shining a different kind of light on the behaviour, making it something monstrous which haunts Dev and makes her fear that Jared will not see her as the person she wants to be. Good short films can get all of that across in often just a few minutes and Boo qualifies for this; whilst genre stalwarts might be able to see where things are heading, a decent pace and handling, with touches such as revisiting aspects of the dialogue under drastically different circumstances, help Boo to get its points across well. It also has enough about it that you may find yourself reconsidering earlier scenes – were they entirely what they seemed to be?

A sharp film with a pleasing punchline – including a neat final scene which asks one question more – Boo is an effective horror short, with a lively feel and much to recommend it.

You can find out more about Boo (2019) and director Rakefet Abergel by clicking here.

We Die Alone (2019)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The first character we meet in We Die Alone is Aidan (Baker Chase Powell); he’s preparing for a date, and he’s nervous – so nervous that he is practising the same line, over and over. We never see him get to the restaurant; his nerves are so bad that he stands the girl up, receiving an angry voicemail as he trembles and self-loathes back at his apartment. This is, it seems, par for the course – and establishes one of the key themes of the film. It’s isolation, and the reasons why, in a hyper-connected world, some people find themselves so seemingly isolated.

Aidan goes back to his daily routine, working shifts at a thrift store and making polite, if friendly small talk with his co-worker Elaine (Ashley Jones). You get the impression that this could go on forever, but then by chance a new neighbour from across the hall named Chelsea (Samantha Boscarino) locks herself out of her apartment, asking for Aidan’s help to call the manager to let her back in. This, again by sheer coincidence, makes this the nearest thing Aidan has ever had to a blind date – perhaps in forever, given his behaviour. They even oddly hit it off via some shared interests. Aidan is then presented with a quandary: maintain the pretence of online dating, or take a shot at asking out his new neighbour – a woman he has at least already spoken to. Encouraged by Elaine, he begins trying to find a way to ask Chelsea out. But is a ‘yes’ really what Aidan wants or expects it to be?

Oh, my. You cannot help but feel an immediate sense of sympathy for Aidan: this is no incel, no entitled woman-hater, and in some respects he could be seen as an everyman figure for our times – nice, quiet, but in absolute turmoil just beneath the surface. However, for all that, he is unable to treat women like individuals. He learns one line, to parrot at every (or any) woman he gets near. You could imagine he’d be one of those guys who went on to say any girlfriend was ‘the female version’ of himself, so unable is he to see things from a different perspective than his limited own – women as proper equals are missing from this equation. In shades of Maniac (2012), he substitutes one girl’s face for another; the fantasy surpasses the potential reality. So in a very brief running time (just over twenty minutes, all in) We Die Alone successfully develops a nuanced character, vulnerable but flawed, sympathetic but teeth-grindingly wrongheaded. Similarly, you feel for Chelsea when her well-meaning friendly behaviour is misconstrued; you know something, something is going to give, and the film’s tight editing build and build this impression. It’s a tense watch.

On a deeper level, all the people in this film are in some kind of flux, and as such, it represents familiar aspects of modern life which offer fertile ground for horror stories. People are rootless, or lonely. They lie, or misrepresent themselves online. They want to use professional photos to generate ‘real’ connections. We Die Alone very successfully takes this modern malaise and plays with audience expectations, shifting perspectives and bringing different aspects of the story to the fore; to reiterate, this is a twenty-minute horror film which achieves what many features cannot. I can think of few films which riff so well on what at first seems a very straightforward set-up.

Utilising some deft touches and moments of repetition showing a clear sense of direction throughout, We Die Alone is a clever, economical short film. Its brutal pay off offers an equally deft punchline. Be careful what you wish for and be careful what you do in this world.

We Die Alone will be released to VOD on 21st August 2020. For more information about We Die Alone, please click here.

Perfect (2018)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By pure chance, several of the most recent films I’ve watched have had elements in common: a certain kind of body-mod sci-fi has cropped up in films such as Parallax, with its riff on memory and mental states, and again in Peripheral, where one woman takes on futuristic tech in an attempt to maintain her sense of self. This brings me to Perfect (2018), which coincidentally blends all of these ideas; it’s a young man’s personal journey, refracted through futuristic tech and psychoactive add-ons. The resulting film is creative and visually-appealing, though plot is low in the mix.

We start with a young man who remains nameless throughout, only ever referred to in the credits as ‘Vessel 13’ (Garrett Wareing). Waking alongside a girl’s corpse and having no recollection of what has happened, he calls his mother in a panic. She (Abbie Cornish) comes to his aid, but rather than alerting the authorities, she decides it’s better to find her son a place in a remote clinic – somewhere she once received treatment, so that he can get ‘fixed’. The kinds of treatments offered vary, but fundamental to ‘the journey’ which he will be expected to take is the use of implants which distort (or is it improve?) perception.

However, whilst the other inmates seem to be making the kinds of progress required by the secretive organisation behind the clinic, known only to our young man by the voice which addresses him over his intercom, he struggles with it. He continues to suffer black-outs which hint darkly at the kinds of violence of which he’s capable, and although he forms a bond with another patient called Sarah, she rejects him – given his lack of progress. If this is his path, then it’s by no means a straightforward one and he is by no means assured of reaching the ‘perfect’ state he craves.

I will say that I’m not a fan of the monologue voiceover which underpins a good share of this film: I find the platitudes and self-help speak quite alienating, although I understand the need for it, given the rather lofty themes being explored. But what this film can boast above all is in its aesthetics – which are undeniably superb. From the look of the clinic itself – sparse, minimalist but augmented by a very specific style of technological hardware – through to the actors and their outfits (everyone in the film looks as though they could be cast in marble) and through to the incredibly lurid and imaginative psychoactive sequences, albeit that some of these do utilise the kind of retro-80s vibe so popular at the moment, this is a visually very attractive project throughout. There are some nods, perhaps, to Blade Runner – the kind of consumerism which offers items to ‘improve’ life – though in its developing levels of ordeal and body horror, there’s also some overlap with Starry Eyes. However, the story moves very slowly, to the point of being ponderous; the delivery of new implants tends towards being repetitive as the means of applying them is always the same, and there is very little exposition overall, even given the monologues which overlay proceedings. Perfect is very much a film for those who enjoy the experience of strong, creative visuals, happy to have those visuals wash over them for ninety minutes without reaching a marked crescendo of any kind.

This is science fiction which eschews high action and even characterisation, the better to have its complex themes play out in a visually-mesmerising way. It’s a sombre, reflective affair, existential rather than narrative-driven. Its creativity deserves praise, although there are some issues here for people who prefer their storylines a little more strongly-drawn.

Koko-di Koko-da (2019)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

‘Koko-di koko-da’ – this is a tune sung by an oddly jaunty showman making his way through the woods with a group of equally odd companions, as the opening credits introduce us to this film. Koko-di Koko-da is an often challenging, if always creative watch which uses unorthodox means to explore very real experiences. Our odd little group remains in the woods – for now.

We shift our attention to a young family – father Tobias (Leif Edlund), mother Elin (Ylva Gallon) and daughter Maja (Katarina Jakobson), who are out for a day at the coast when Elin gets sick after eating some bad mussels. It’s serious enough that she needs to get airlifted to hospital, but she begins to recover, staying in hospital overnight (which means that it’s Maja’s eighth birthday when they wake up).

But they can’t wake her. In a genuinely upsetting long take, they realise that Maja has died in her sleep after eating some of the same mussels as her mother. An abrupt cut silences Elin’s desperate screams and time, it seems, has passed. Without the anchor of their mutual love for their daughter, Tobias and Elin’s relationship has lurched into the petty and the peevish. Negative gender stereotypes abound: Elin has turned into a passive-aggressive complainer, Tobias into a blend of heroic masculinity and sullen torpor. Perhaps because of this – or perhaps despite this – they have decided to go on a camping trip to try and reconnect with one another. Early signs are not promising.

Worse still, the strange band of people from the opening credits arrive on-site and they are savagely, pointlessly cruel, treating the pursuit and torture of the pair as a pastime: you get the impression they have done this many times before, so assured are they in their actions. Or are they? What are they? Overlaying a genuine, realistic portrayal of grief, Koko-di Koko-da transforms into a circular fever dream of power and powerlessness.

Even attempting to look past the tragic central event which underpins the issues which plague Tobias and Elin, this is potentially a deeply unsettling viewing experience for an audience. The film moves forwards and backwards in time, unpicking previous scenes, repeating other scenes and destabilising the narrative throughout. The magical, the optimistic, or even the faintly normal gives way endlessly to harsh (un)realities; for example an animated insert, providing a childlike way of expressing the unpalatable, is brought back down to earth with a loud bump. Like a scale tipping first one way and then another, the film displaces moments of calm in favour of something startling – though as it progresses, even the moments of calm are horrifying, a waiting game for the next ordeal. The characters who appear from the darkness to torment the couple are an interesting group, acting like a new, dark fairy tale version of the stages of grief: the animal, the mute, the brute and the showman encapsulating a range of covert feelings or ways of behaving.

Bringing this back down to earth even more sharply is the fact that Tobias and Elin are far from sympathetic characters for large parts of this film. Yes, their love for their daughter is clear, but without her they are not the same people and seem fated to go through the same process forever, never understanding it or undergoing the kind of awakening you expect, even in such surreal styles of storytelling. Tobias, however, does start to realise something is going on as the overnight camping trip goes on and on and on, and he tries to break the cycle – though he does this purely selfishly at first, with Elin going through a stage during the mid-point of the film where she seems less and less like a character in her own right at all, just an annoying, inert being who fails to understand Tobias’s alarm. This impression of her is dispensed with it a truly beautiful, truly moving sequence later in the film, one of the finest developments on offer here.

Koko-di Koko-da is a relentless exploration of loss, where new miseries and terrors overlap the old and realism jostles for position with the surreal. Much of it has a kind of Waiting for Godot vibe, in the sense that you have two people trapped in the question, ‘how do we ever move on?’ However, the grisly, nightmarish aspects of the film transform the question into something altogether more pressing and fearful. This is by no means an easy, enjoyable watch and god knows it’s not for everyone, but it’s always a thought-provoking experience.

Koko-di Koko-da will be exclusively released to BFI player, Blu-ray and digital on 7 September 2020. For more information, click here.

“The trade-offs we make to be part of society” – Talking 1BR with director David Marmor

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

1BR, which I reviewed recently, was one of those great screeners which managed to surprise me whilst clearly also paying due respect to existing genre features. This is a skill which not everyone can demonstrate, much less in their debut feature, so I reached out to the director, David Marmor, to find out a little more about the world of 1BR and the experience of bringing it to the screen…

1) So for your very first feature, you chose to go with a horror/thriller. What was it that drew you to this genre?
I hope it won’t be a disappointing answer to say it was kind of just luck. It wasn’t a strategic decision at all. I love horror movies, but had never written one until 1BR.

I actually never think about genre when I’m starting a new project. Usually once I know what the story is, it will naturally feel like one genre or another, and that was definitely the case with 1BR. When it started taking shape in my mind, it always had a nightmare feeling, and seemed to clearly want to be horror, so I embraced that.

That turned out to be really lucky, I think, as I’ve learned in retrospect that horror is one of the few genres where you have a chance of breaking through with something very low-budget and with no “name” stars. We also discovered the wonderfully passionate world of horror fans, who are such an engaged and warm (if you’ll forgive me) community.

2) Why LA? Los Angeles is an important setting for 1BR, and it’s often held up to be the ultimate ‘American Dream’ city, though there’s a different side to it. Was it important to you to set your film there, and why?
Originally, the script was set in Los Angeles simply because the story was inspired by the apartment I lived in when I first moved to L.A. So when I started writing, I just kept things as close to reality as possible. But as I worked on it, I realized L.A. was actually integral to the story. I think you’re completely right to say that L.A. is the ultimate “American Dream” city. It’s full of people who have moved away from everyone they know, pursuing improbable dreams, trying to reinvent themselves. We hear about the few who succeed spectacularly, but the fact is most people in L.A. have not “made it” and many never will. It’s a city of people struggling alone, far from family and friends (as I was when I started writing the script), and I found it uniquely potent as a setting that Sarah would find seductive as well as desperately lonely.

3) 1BR touches upon ideas of cults, communes and closed communities which operate under often very punitive rules and regulations. What drew you to that as a theme, and how did you navigate the line between real-life precedent and fantasy?
I’ve long been fascinated by fringe communities, and it turns out L.A. has been very fertile ground for these types of groups, probably in part because of the loneliness I’ve just talked about. So it felt natural to connect the two thoughts, and that was really where the idea of the movie first came from. I started with this basic idea, of an extreme community operating in the most normal of settings, and as I wrote, I found that it just kept branching out, adding layers to the story, and resonating to me as a metaphor for my own ambivalence about the trade-offs we make to be part of society.

As far as walking the line between reality and fantasy, my instinct is generally to stick as close to reality as possible, and only embellish when the story demands it. In this case, that turned out to be sadly little. Almost all the awful things that happen to Sarah are drawn from real life examples, either from real cults, or from interrogation techniques used by the U.S. military and others.

4) Did you draw on any specific cinematic influences for 1BR?
Oh yes, too many to list here! Of course in making a movie like this I couldn’t help but be influenced by Roman Polanski’s Apartment Trilogy (Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant). I also studied Darren Aronofsky’s brilliant Black Swan closely for how it keeps the audience in the protagonist’s point-of-view. I’m generally always influenced by Stanley Kubrick, and there’s a good deal of A Clockwork Orange in 1BR as well. In less specific ways, I was also influenced by movies like Caché, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and many, many others…

5) What has your first experience of writing/directing a feature taught you? And what would you like to go on and do next?
I don’t know if there’s any film education as intense as making a first feature. In just those fifteen shooting days, I think I learned as much as I ever did in film school.


Maybe the most important lesson was to let go of my perfectionist tendencies. We were so limited in time and money, and had to make so many compromises all the way along, it would’ve been a recipe for insanity if I’d tried to cling to the idealized version of the movie in my head. At some point early on, I realized all I could do was fight for the most important things and let go of the rest.

Even that wasn’t always easy, given the disasters we experienced (our producer, Alok Mishra, has written an entire article for MovieMaker Magazine about this, but a few of the lowlights included losing three lead actors a few days before shooting; being shut down by wildfires; and having an equipment truck stolen in the middle of the night). But in a way I’m grateful for the chaos, because it forced me to learn to put everything else aside, trust the producers to keep us afloat, and focus on carving out a positive, creative space on set where the cast and crew could do their best work.


A smaller lesson, but just as important for me, was to pace myself. Even a shoot as short as ours is a marathon, and it was really important to learn to be disciplined about sleep, and to make sure to find moments to be alone and quiet so I could stay focused over the entire length of the production.
As for what I’d like to do next, 1BR was so harrowing and exhausting it probably took years off my life–and all I want is to do it again as soon as possible! I’m actually working with the same producers on my next feature, which is very different, a science-fiction thriller on a much bigger scale. Alok has forbidden me to say any more about it for now, but I can say it’s a script I’ve been working on for years and I couldn’t be more excited to make it. (Whenever we get to start making movies again in a post-Covid world!)

6) Sounds great! Before we wrap this up, do you have any other comments?
I’d just like to thank everyone, yourself included, who has embraced our little movie. The reception we’ve gotten has been beyond anything I’d hoped for, and I’ll be forever grateful to the festival programmers who took a chance on us, the genre press who have gotten the word out, and the fans who have taken a chance on this movie. It means the world to me!

Massive thanks to David Marmor, Alok Mishra and the team behind 1BR. To find out more about the film, check out the official account on Twitter: @1BR_Film

The Woman in Black (1989)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Screenplay writer Nigel Kneale has a superb pedigree as a purveyor of the strange and the supernatural. Never is this made clearer than in his adaptation of the 1983 Susan Hill novella The Woman in Black. In fact, even mention this TV film to fans of a certain age and/or persuasion, and they will immediately enthuse about its impact on them, often particularly that scene. Perhaps many others are more familiar with this story via the 2012 rendition directed by Eden Lake’s James Watkins; with regards to the latter, I’m determined not to simply poke holes here in what is an overall entertaining period horror, but Kneale’s version has held its ground simply because it excels as a piece of terrifying tale-telling.

Arthur Kidd (one of those odd minor alterations from the novella, where he is ‘Kipps’) is a young solicitor at a London firm. He’s given the responsibility – as a means of compelling him to take his trade more seriously – of clearing up some of the necessary arrangements following the death of a long-term client, Mrs Drablow. He makes the journey to Crythin Gifford, a remote town on the East coast of England, though at first he meets a guarded response from the locals he meets when he mentions his business there. Nonetheless, he attends Mrs. Drablow’s sparse funeral, noting only one other mourner – a woman dressed in the kind of high mourning which belongs to a generation before. She’s not mentioned by any of the others present at first, though when associate Mr. Pepperell seems to see her, he reacts with alarm.

Arthur soon afterwards needs to visit Mrs Drablow’s former residence, Eel Marsh House – it’s a dour old pile, cut off from the rest of town by a winding causeway which is submerged twice daily by the tides. He soon begins to appreciate the reticence of the locals for the place. The strange woman reappears outside, radiating a kind of menace which terrifies him back indoors, whilst a range of strange, horrifying phenomena soon begin to impact upon his work. Gradually, he begins to make sense of a local tragedy – one which begins to ensnare him.

This really is a masterclass in storycraft. An understanding of subtlety is manifest throughout, with a slow, deliberate escalation of the otherworldly which needs no flashy scares. Different kinds of scares depend on different kinds of responses: the most simple affect your reflexes by making you jump, but the most memorable are those which play on the imagination – making you doubt, look twice, or shrink away from what’s on screen. The horror here is doled out carefully; the development of something truly ghastly happens almost gently, with as much happening off-screen as on it. You do not need to see children jumping to their deaths – the small revelation of something profoundly amiss in the churchyard is singularly effective in exploring the same plot point.

Whilst you could raise an eyebrow at some of the depictions of class in this – Kneale has some form for representing the working classes as somewhere between fear-inducing and inept – there’s perhaps more to get to grips with in the nature of the larger tale, presented here as something akin to a medieval witch legend where hell has no fury like a woman scorned and curses extend beyond the grave. It would be possible to see this through a gender lens (which itself links back to class) in its examination of gendered stigma and monstrous motherhood, but for me the backbone of the curse itself isn’t as intriguing as its manifestation. This is no morality play where bad people get their comeuppance; Jennet’s fury consumes anyone who gets near. Here, where Arthur Kidd (Adrian Rawlins) is represented as a loving father and a conscientious man, it makes his involvement with the Woman in Black all the more galling. It reminds me somewhat of Ring, the Japanese film made a decade later – similarly there, the drowned girl Sadako’s vengeance destroys everyone, even those trying to help put her to rest. Another similarity between these two films, and with many other stellar horror tales, is the fact that the monster is barely on screen at all. In The Woman in Black, it adds to the pure shock of certain scenes (and yes, we’re back to that scene again).

Those who already love this film will certainly value this high-quality version of it. It looks excellent, with crisp colours and lines throughout; the ‘ad break’ screens are included, and I’m on the fence with this, though for nostalgists it’s probably a positive (and these bookend some of the tensest moments, for people who want the relief of a short moment’s pause). There are extras available on this release in the form of an audio commentary (Mark Gatiss, star Andy Nyman and Kim Newman), an image gallery and a collectable booklet written by Andrew Pixley. For those who are maybe more familiar with the newer film or the stageplay, then this Blu-ray is testament to a way of telling ghost stories on-screen which has been largely set aside; it has lost nothing over the years, and it still has the power to make your skin crawl.

The Woman in Black will be released by Network on 10th August 2020. For further details, please click here.

Peripheral (2018)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

I’ve enjoyed following director Paul Hyett’s work to date: The Seasoning House and Howl both made great use of confined locations and escalating ordeals, whilst I had some misgivings with the latter film; we have something different altogether with Peripheral, however, as we delve into ‘tech terror’, combining age-old anxieties with the shock of the new.

Bobbi Johnson (Hannah Arterton) is an author whose first novel has become the voice of the disaffected in a UK now rife with protests, invoking her words and her ideas as gospel. How to live up to that? Writer’s block has taken hold, represented by a blank page staring back at her (from what looks an awful lot like a nod to the typewriters of Naked Lunch). Ironic, given she’s trying to write something about the perils of success, at a point when she can no longer pay her own bills. Her publisher, Jordan, argues that she ought to ditch the analogue and start using editing software: it’s not an idea Bobbi is much taken with, but needs must and a deadline looms, so she agrees.

The set-up she receives is pretty extraordinary – a kind of virtual reality Lament Configuration; not only is it there to facilitate her writing, it’s there to demand it, even to live-edit it. This in itself is a ghastly prospect – and the continued presence of junkie ex Dylan (Habit’s Elliot James Langridge) and someone persistently delivering numbered video cassettes to her home address isn’t making the process any easier.

The new hardware keeps on coming and coming; Bobbi becomes less and less certain of how much of this writing is even hers, given the machine takes it upon itself to alter key aspects of her narrative. As she slips into occasional drug relapses (no thanks to Dylan) the divide between author and machine becomes increasingly blurred.

Peripheral is a visually smart, colourful film with an equally smart script: it uses humour (Bobbi’s attempts to change the looming computer to UK English; the cardboard blinkers she creates for herself) but despite this, it links fairly effortlessly to bigger, more fundamental questions about writing itself. It examines the idea of writing – or any creative process – as pure product, with agent Jordan (Belinda Stewart-Wilson) as the calm, clinical voice of the moneymakers, bulldozing Bobbi’s concerns about her ‘craft’ as pure nonsense. Just get it done. The machine will sort it out.

The imagined tech itself, which supersedes current capabilities but not by much, calls on some extensive CGI sequences, the likes of which are never for everybody, but these are as pacy as the rest of the film, and don’t detract from the story; likewise, some of the visual metaphors are pretty blunt, but in a quick, savvy film which deviates into fantasy as often as it does, it still feels in keeping with the whole. It knows its stuff. There’s a level of knowledge and exasperation here which propels the film onwards, exploring the ideas of fame, celebrity, creativity and inspiration in a world increasingly hostile to creators. And, whilst this film doesn’t delve to the grisly levels of The Seasoning House, it still explores aspects of body horror – the use of a body as palimpsest adds a note of graphic, unsettling unease.

Hyett has struck a good balance here, then, between the flashy futuristic and good, old-fashioned claustrophobia. As tech horror continues to develop and reflect contemporary concerns, this love letter to Cronenberg is grim but stylish, and well worth a watch.

Peripheral will be released on August 3rd, 2020.

1BR (2019)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

A criticism often levelled at modern Western society is that our sense of community is gone. We’re all out for ourselves, unable to see the wider picture – and we would be so much happier, if only we could take the time to get to know our neighbours, or we could throw ourselves into a different ethos. On the other side of that, the idea of belonging to any sort of a closed community which compels people to say goodbye to their old selves is a source of deep anxiety; any surveillance culture, or a community of enforced values, gives us pause for thought. Support comes, sure, but at what price? It’s a question which has underpinned some superbly-realised horrors in the past few years, and it’s absolutely the case in 1BR, a film which, yes, uses some familiar horror elements, but handles them with such sensitivity, economy and awareness that it’s a genuinely effective, unbearably tense ride.

Sarah (Nicole Brydon Bloom) is a young woman striking out on her own. An at-first unspecified schism with her father has made her feel that it’s finally time: time to stand on her own two feet in a new city, which happens to be LA. Sure, her car is a rust bucket and her new job is pretty monotonous, but as she begins looking for a new apartment, she finds an open house at a very attractive complex called Asilo Del Mar. It’s competitive, but she registers her interest and – as luck would have it – she gets accepted. Sarah is warmly welcomed by the folks already living at Asilo Del Mar. Perhaps this is the family vibe she’s been looking for: complex manager Jerry (Taylor Nichols) seems to believe she has potential. Feeling like her life is on the up, Sarah happily moves in.

Too good to be true? It starts out just fine, but odd sounds at night disturb her sleep and begin to impact upon her wellbeing. However, the tone alters when a note gets pushed under her door: the ‘no pets’ policy (which she’s flouting) has drawn a vicious personal complaint. Sarah begins to doubt those smiling faces, and she’s correct to do so – this picture-perfect neighbourhood is not all it seems and her predicament escalates shockingly, and quickly. All of that may sound, on the surface, fairly tried-and-tested; if I can do one thing with this review, I hope that it’s to communicate something of what makes this film work so well despite – at least superficially – sounding familiar to existing horror films.

To begin with, 1BR can boast very high production values, with a sense of the power and artistry inherent in well-composed shots, a sharp script and an understanding of what scares an audience, blending old fears (the assault on the self) with the new (how easy it is to make someone disappear when our lives are lived online). Straightforward know-how is used to superb effect; for example, director David Marmor frequently keeps the shots very closely on Sarah. This reduces the sense of anything existing outside, as well as maintaining a sense of the overbearing behaviour of the other residents. The steady early focus on Sarah’s sleep deprivation, too, is a subtle but pervasive feature; you empathise with this young woman trying desperately to make sense of her situation through the fugue of exhaustion. The atmosphere in 1BR is uncomfortable almost immediately; this is no mean feat either, given the sunny positivity on display at first (and elsewhere throughout the narrative). It all points to a very sharp understanding of genre. Yes, there is some signposting, and yes, there is some use of trope, but so carefully done that it is still highly effective to watch.

This notion of a wonderful, nurturing community which operates under ghastly and unfamiliar norms, right down to one scene in particular, put me in mind of Midsommar (2019); however, there’s no occult here, no sense of old beliefs creeping into the modern world. The horror of Asilo Del Mar is probably closer to Get Out (2017) and namechecks theories and ideologies which are rather closer to home, in terms of contemporary society at least. The idea of self-help and psychology forms the bedrock of the ordeal here, toying with bigger ideas about what constitutes happiness, what values we’re willing to drop or adopt, and what we will tolerate. ‘Conditioning’, and what people will do out of fear of some unspecified punishment calls to mind the Stanford Prison Experiment; the meticulous drilling-down through a person’s psyche corresponds to (rumoured, please don’t sue me) Scientology practices. This is all rather closer to home than a quaint commune in remote Sweden. This horror speaks our language.

1BR is a finely-honed appreciation of cruelty: what it can do, and how gratitude for its cessation can motivate a person to do incredible things. Its well-pruned version of mob rule offers an at-times excruciating, note-perfect attack on modern selfhood and through superb performances, it achieves everything it sets out to do. I’m reluctant to dip too far into plot details – see this one, and it’ll restore your faith in genre film.

Neraterræ – Scenes From The Sublime

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Whilst it’s quite usual to hear of albums which are based on, or influenced by cinema or literature, it’s still a rarity to find albums which hinge entirely upon art. Neraterræ – the musical project of Alessio Antoni – has recently released an album which does just that, taking for its inspiration a range of classic paintings. He has used an eclectic choice of pieces ranging across four centuries, though there is some overlap between all of these in terms of their symbolism and theme. The artists explored altogether are: Beksinsky, Bosch, Repin, Goya, Friedrichs, Fuseli, Dali, Böcklin and Turner.

This is a concept album, then, but not in the ways ‘concept album’ is typically understood. Each of its tracks is based in its entirety on a different painting, and the overall effect is very interesting and immersive. Ten tracks in length, this is an almost entirely instrumental release, taking a dark/ambient approach with some elements of drone. Although not classically instrumental, the album reaches for something of the ‘Sturm and Drang’ experience via its focus on the Sublime. You can also expect some collaboration on some of the tracks: Cober Ord, Shrine, Alphaxone, Martyria, Xerxes the Dark and Leila Abdul-Rauf all contribute.

One of the first highlights is Fate Unveiled, based on the Hieronymous Bosch painting Visions of the Hereafter; the track’s thrum and sound coming close to static in places give way very briefly to something lighter, before closing in again. Similarly, In Deafening Silence (based on Ilya Repin’s standalone painting Ivan the Terrible and His Son) conveys and explores the terrible stillness of the painting, a moment of horror and regret. The introduction of vocals on Thou, Daemon is quite a jarring moment, adding menace to accompany a very menacing painting; Goya’s later work attempted to capture the deep irrationality and fear of simple people. The layering here of almost choral elements mirrors very well the warped religious ideals within the artwork.

The art of Zdzisław Beksiński is a perfect basis for music; his astonishing painting AE78 is the inspiration behind Doorway to the I, which is a good, ominous accompaniment to an image with incredible depth. More sinister or fearful vibes are picked out of the Salvador Dali painting The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory in the track Collapse of Matter and Time. It’s an interesting interpretation – its colourfulness and boldness has always made it seem less like a tragic or alarming painting to me, but of course its symbolism works well with the ticking, rather dour exploration it gets here. At the end of the album, Virtues of the Dawn (via William Turner) is a somewhat uplifting close to a very weighty, but expansive album.

Scenes from the Sublime is a worthwhile creative project and a welcome means of re-appreciating some phenomenal, varied art. Having the images themselves in front of you is absolutely the way to listen.

To find out more about this release, please click here.