Strange goings-on are pressing in at the edges in Vincent (2023): disappearances, despair, double lives. But despite these blue-tinged, Nordic hints of horror, this turns out to be an immensely warm, often touching film about friendship which absolutely deserves to be seen. This is one of those indie cinema gems which you keep on reviewing films in order to find.
Opening with the Boris Karloff quote, “The monster was the best friend I ever had”, you could say that the film sets out its stall early on: it interrogates the whole idea of monsters, from the cinematic monsters beloved of the horror genre (and a young protagonist who adores them as much as Karloff evidently did) to more everyday monsters, or monstrous behaviour, which requires no supernaturalism whatsoever. We meet the Vincent of the title (Mikkel Vadsholt) in strange circumstances: it looks like he is drinking blood through a straw, and then, soon after, pausing to dig an animal grave in the woods, when he hits something in his ice-cream van. Yep, Vincent sells ice-cream, and if that makes you suspicious, then a police officer who pulls him on a routine stop after a local disappearance is thinking the same thing. Vincent doesn’t help himself: he stammers over his answers to questions, and he’s carrying a lot of kids’ comics for reasons he can’t really identify, except to say that he likes children, and children like comics. That’s enough for Zebastian, the cop (Joachim Knop) to decide to keep an eye on him afterwards, even though the disappearance in question concerns an elderly man. Some things just take precedence.
Meanwhile, we’re also introduced to Viggo (Herman Knop), a monster-loving teenager who, in his way, is just as isolated and prone to suspicion as the older man, alienated and bullied by his peers (the film is a masterclass in bullies you soon love to hate) and, though smart, barely able to enunciate what’s going on with him. Vincent and Viggo’s paths cross just after he is attacked by the same group of bullies who harangue him in class; Vincent sees the assault and stops to ask if Viggo is okay. He offers to drive him home; a few moments into his instilled fear of strangers, Viggo is bruised enough and sad enough to take him up on the offer.
Steadily, the film unfolds details of Viggo’s family life: his nightmares, his problems, and most of all the recent trauma he has experienced as his mother has just filed for divorce from his father, a man who perhaps means well but indulges his cruel, belligerent side in order to ‘do well’, causing more upset as he goes. If Zebastian – whom we’ve already met – really wants to do right by his son, then his prejudices and beliefs impair the process. Primarily via him, it asks us to consider our preconceptions about Vincent. Can a man of a certain age simply like children, or do we see something dark in that? This is all aside from any potential other readings of Vincent’s character, and the subtle, questionable hints that he is not ordinary in other respects: how much of what we’re seeing could be explained away? Is he a threat?
Along the way, as an unorthodox friendship develops between Viggo and Vincent, we’re privy to a range of oblivious, unrealistic, even self-obsessed adults. Vincent might have the trappings of being an odd guy, but at least he notices what’s going on around him; there’s a lot of ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ in this film, a lot of which impacts upon Viggo, a kid it’s impossible not to feel for thanks to a beautiful performance by Knop, where earnest emotion can only find its way to the surface at extraordinary moments. This is ably balanced by Vadsholt, whose Vincent is an incredibly well-observed, earnest character throughout. The unorthodox friendship here is wonderful, and the film as a whole is cleverly written and edited, full of little surprises, clues and inversions.
And, despite remaining largely on the periphery of the horror genre, the film knows horror, referencing it throughout: not only can Viggo reel off the titles of his favourite escapist horror films, but you could debate a few nods to Let The Right One In (albeit without that film’s more overt generic features), some of the dark humour of the lonely ice-cream seller in Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla, and a few nods to The Shining plus (I’d argue) a reference to Kinski’s Nosferatu, only put across in a much less florid way – even if keeping the same sentiment.
There’s just the right amount of ambiguity in Vincent: this is an accomplished, charming film which is humane and heartfelt at all times, whatever other questions it holds onto. It’s a real joy, and the best of all things film-wise – a real surprise.
Vincent (2023) is looking for distribution and festival screenings now: for more details, check out @TheVincentMovie on Twitter (or X, these days) and take it from there.
Let’s not waste time discussing how great the Ginger Snaps films are. You know, we know, so let’s just get on and say that we are lucky enough to have one brand-new Second Sight limited edition Blu-Ray boxset up for grabs, thanks to the great folk at Aim Publicity. Engage copy and paste:
‘The original film is set in the suburban Canadian town of Bailey Downs, where a series of dog killings piques the interest of a pair of outcast teens; sisters Brigitte (Emily Perkins, Supernatural) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle, Freddy v Jason) Fitzgerald. Then on the night of Ginger’s first period, she is savagely attacked by a wild creature but even though her injuries miraculously heal, she’s left with a newfound desire to devour…
Brigitte must find a way to save her sister from her werewolf ways and with only 28 days to do so, can she stop the creature her sister has become in its tracks, or will they both succumb to the animalistic instincts?
Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed from director Brett Sullivan, sees Brigitte wrestling with her own transformation, as she is forcefully put into rehab and must identify friend from foe, all the while battling a male werewolf who’s stalking her. Tatiana Maslany, (She-Hulk: Attorney at law, Orphan Black) and Eric Johnson (Smallville, Fifty Shades) also star.
Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning from director Grant Harvey, depicts the ancestors of Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald, in 19th century Canada. They must battle villagers and werewolves alike as accusations and attacks come at them from all sides. Can they make it out alive or will they succumb to a lycanthropic life?
This beautifully presented box set of the trilogy features a rigid slipcase with new artwork by Michael Dunbabin, and a 112-page book with new essays. There is also a litany of special features, including commentaries and new interviews plus a multitude of behind-the-scenes featurettes and more, making this set a must have for horror aficionados.’
This package gets a release on 30th October 2023, but if you fancy your chances at winning, please do the following:
Email the site in the usual way (please check out ‘Contact Us’ for the details)
Title your email ‘GINGER SNAPS’ (caps lock optional)
Send your name and address (UK residents only, sorry!)
Closing date: Friday 20th October at noon (GMT)
The winner will be drawn and informed on Friday 20th October. If you have not heard from Warped Perspective by midnight on this date, then please assume you have been unsuccessful on this occasion. Good luck, you goddamn forces of nature.
(GDPR: all personal details will be held only until the closure of the competition and then deleted from the server.)
More a thoughtful, often thought-provoking experience than a straightforward horror or indeed a folk horror, Nightsiren (2022) doles out its story of rural generational harm piecemeal, but generally carefully. Undoubtedly, it runs aground in places, but this sober, sombre film is always a visual treat with a formidable atmosphere and lots of interesting layering to unpick; if only, if only a few more loose ends were tied up.
We start with two little girls, Šarlota and younger sister Tamara, running from their abusive home into the forest which surrounds their village in rural Slovakia. It’s Šarlota who has most recently borne the brunt of their mother’s anger; Tamara is running away with her simply because she wants to be with her sister, but the little girl has a significant fall in the woods. Now additionally scared of the consequences for this, Šarlota daren’t return home and continues to run. Years later – after some unspecified time spent in ‘the city’ (Bratislava), Šarlota (Natalia Germani) returns to the village, summoned by a letter from the mayor. Her mother has passed away, and there’s the matter of an inheritance, if a questionable one: the old family home has already been burned to the ground. Šarlota has to stay in a neighbouring cabin, long rumoured to belong to a witch – a Roma woman whose history overlaps with Šarlota’s own. It seems that, in her absence, the village has retained its folk beliefs in magic, and mention of the ‘witch’ Otyla still strikes fear into them, so Šarlota’s reappearance triggers a lot of the same antipathies; she and her family are seen as bound up in the same fate, and the children’s disappearances, and reappearances, are seen in sinister, possibly even supernatural terms. Tantalisingly, Šarlota even finds memorabilia relating to her childhood at the ‘witch’s cabin’.
The village is a tough, friendless place, but Šarlota does at least befriend a local girl, Mira (Eva Mores) who puts up with the insular behaviour of the other villagers for the sake of its cheap lifestyle and abundant herbs (she’s a herbalist who makes her living selling what she finds). However, before Mira can fully inhabit her role as detached voice of reason, changes are underway and events from the past resurface, threatening to subsume Šarlota and anyone in her orbit. Just what – if any – are her links to witchcraft? And what really happened to her family?
To get anywhere near answering those questions, we receive a slow avalanche of names, details and relationships which don’t, honestly, always develop into the fullest of characters; people here are usually either good or bad, worldly or reactionary, though it does make for an appropriate level of what feels like a storytelling tradition to backfill the narrative. There are also interesting hints at local customs and beliefs, albeit curated to invoke supernatural beliefs and/or more than a touch of misogyny. On the other side of that coin, we have Šarlota speaking as a spokesperson for a range of feminine anxieties and agonies, sometimes quite literally, sometimes more figuratively, but more or less always about sex, pregnancy and the phantom of motherhood – in its way quite conservative, save for the rather surprising amount of incidental nudity. It can jar in places, fustian one moment and full-frontal in another (we rack up seven – seven – intertitles carving the film into arguably unnecessary chapters).
But there’s no arguing with the cinematography here: evocatively shot, fantastical night scenes, with the same use of natural light and candlelight which helps to make The Witch so easy on the eye, plus beautiful shots of the Slovakian/Czech countryside. This is no colour-laden folk horror, either, save for one sudden hallucinatory experience; the dominant colour is a workaday green; no one is wearing flowers in their hair here. Still, the village itself is nicely remote, and it feels as though this could be any point in time, despite the occasional flatscreen or glimpse of a mobile phone. If the film seems to be reaching for a way to invoke both the self-contained, rural community beliefs of Midsommar with the dour isolation and supernatural ambiguity of The Witch (as amply suggested by the press materials) then, hey, there are far, far worse influences, and Nightsiren is always a sumptuous viewing experience, drawing often on the natural world for symbol and scene-stealing eeriness.
Whilst it loses some of its goodwill towards the end – opting to dodge important exposition points which could have lent the whole film more of a completed feel – there is nonetheless style and ambition here, suggestive of the weight of generational, gendered expectations and the irrational ways these can play out.
Nightsiren (2022) will be receive a select US theatrical release on 22nd September 2023.
Appearing midway-through what might once have been the new normal of the New Extremity movement of the Nineties and early Noughties, Calvaire (2004) was, nonetheless, an odd and interesting fit for that movement. No doubt it was helped into existence by the advent of films like Irréversible, which had been released two years prior (sharing its cinematographer, Benoît Debie, some of the same wheeling, nauseating camerawork and scenes, as well as the aesthetics of the opening credits) but – for the most part – Calvaire is a much quieter, more brooding film. Yet we shouldn’t mistake its frequent lulls in sound, minimal dialogue and lack of soundtrack for an absence of horror: it may be quieter, but it’s quietly devastating, leaving many of its biggest questions to hang in the gloomy silence along with everything else. Those glaring red and black opening credits may be the last we’ll see of the colour red for the best part of the first hour, but it’s the way Calvaire unravels reality which really provides its lasting appeal, making its moments of bloodshed more a symbol of its disorder than its chief purpose.
It manages to foreshadow all of this with a certain amount of farce and grim humour, too: we meet performer Marc (Laurent Lucas) just prior to a gig; he’s applying makeup and clearly takes the whole thing seriously, but the show is a regular stint at an old people’s home and, with his cape and gaudy backdrop, it all looks more like a bad holiday camp than a big career move. But the people there love him; one of his quasi-ridiculous little numbers culminates in an elderly lady desperate to relive the passion of youth. Tellingly, she has allowed herself to believe in his singing, which is relevant – horribly relevant – later. Even the staff are inconsolable that he’s heading off to a special Christmas gala in the South of Belgium (cue one Brigitte Lahaie cameo, and her character is keen enough to tuck some intimate polaroids into his payment envelope).
Marc is faintly embarrassed by it all; he’s more than happy to get going, on a bitter midwinter drive into the heart of the Liège Province. He is also thirsting after fame; this is why he’s willing to drive cross-country in the run up to Xmas – he wants to get better-known, to ‘grow his brand’, as we might say now. It’s soon getting late and dark, however, so he’s relieved to spot a sign for a nearby inn, particularly when the ubiquitous van trouble kicks in and, one should-I-laugh sequence later, he reaches Bartel’s place. Bartel (Jackie Berroyer) claims a kind of kinship with Marc in that he’s a fellow entertainer, and offers him a room in the deserted, but fairly comfortable inn, promising to help him with his van in the morning. Marc’s stay on the premises is, however, rather longer than expected.
Calvaire and identity
Whilst many of the elements have a familiar ring – car trouble, remote rural location, isolated people – Calvaire has a surprisingly light touch which lasts right up until the moment it really, really doesn’t. Bartel is an unassuming sort of character; he’s a little socially awkward, sure, but not instantly threatening or alarming. He seems to be making some earnest, blundering attempts to help Marc, right down to towing his van back to the inn with the handbrake on, but let’s be fair, his mechanical interventions get a lot more serious than that. Local lad Boris (Jean-Luc Couchard) seems faintly harmless too, and in fact, stays that way: his monomania for finding his lost dog serves for a kind of scaled-down obsession and a disconnect with reality which he shares with all of his near neighbours. We never have any certainty about who Boris is, or how he fits into this very small, very remote community, but we believe he’s probably looking for a dog which has been gone a long time. He presents as a grown man, but behaves like a child, and gets addressed as though he were a child, too. These people have form for seeing things which aren’t really there.
But there’s more to Boris and his frustrated search for ‘Bella’ than just some quaint, if unhinged fella constantly searching the woods for something. His ability to, eventually, make do with a calf (which he enthusiastically believes is his beloved pup) stems from Bartel’s advice to be “obstinate” enough to keep looking. It seems that obstinacy is enough to completely overthrow reason in this film; having heard Bartel’s descriptions of his wife, Gloria, who left him, it seems his own obstinacy allows him to quite suddenly see Marc as Gloria. Not as a stand-in, but as the woman herself. Whilst it’s not fully clear if this was always the plan, or whether it’s a plan which emerged just as suddenly when Marc turned out to be the unwitting guest, the switch from seeing Marc as himself to someone else entirely is the film’s sharpest, queasiest moment. We simply have an echo of it in Boris; obstinacy here is extreme, replacing any and all appeals to reason. In fact, Marc barely bothers to attempt doing it. He only ever very weakly tries to dissuade Bartel from his new beliefs and behaviours; later in the film, he fully accepts his new role, offering one short, but revealing line. Some of this is fear, sure, but is it the whole picture?
It could be that Marc himself is more used to assuming a new identity than it at first seems. Whilst he makes one or two grabs for his old name – he’s ‘Marc’, not ‘Gloria’ – there isn’t a great sense of affinity with his old self, and perhaps this can be partially explained by the ID which Bartel finds in Marc’s van. Early in the film, Bartel is contenting himself by searching the van, pocketing anything which appeals to him, or could be of use to Marc. But in the glovebox, he discovers Marc’s driver’s license and an ID card – neither of which display the name of Marc Stevens, but Pavel Volganski instead. The accompanying photographs are not terribly clear, but it looks like an earlier incarnation of Marc. It could be an innocent showbiz name-change – Pavel Volganski doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue as well as Marc Stevens does, at least in North-western Europe – but on a deeper level, it shows a man who has already reinvented himself at least once, picking a new name – one which masks his origins – to match his career, as well as a new appearance. If once is acceptable, perhaps there’s something on a deeper level with him which means he doesn’t react as strongly as many would; names are already transitory, replaceable and disposable. Add shock, terror and abuse to that, and the strong reclamation of identity which many audiences might have expected, never comes to fruition. Again, Marc’s behaviour at this juncture remains one of the film’s big, strange questions.
‘That you’ll fly away one day…’ music as trigger
What exactly causes all of this, though? Bartel is chatting to Marc as Marc, amiably enough, for the first day he spends at the inn. He has also already covertly broken into the van, looking over mementos of Marc’s life – publicity posters, photographs, and of course the mysterious ID. In effect, he has a sense of Marc’s backstory, and seems to accept it, whilst (maybe significantly) not ever bothering to challenge him as Pavel. The key moment which seems to precipitate the bizarre shift in Bartel happens at dinner one evening. We, as an audience, already have a clue that music in the film invites characters to behave in out-of-the-ordinary ways; we remember how the film’s last real-life women respond to Marc’s performance at the old folk’s home. So, when Bartel pressures Marc to sing for him, and knowing that his wife Gloria was also a singer, we may already feel prepared for some kind of …event.
This and this alone seems to do it: immediately, the night takes on a significance for Bartel, a moment to be treasured, and a special memory. Uh-oh. Marc must ponder whether he just put too much into his acapella performance, because the next morning, Bartel has convinced himself that Gloria is back; he torches the van to be sure she isn’t going anywhere (not that it was going anywhere without a battery), and this is just the start of Marc’s new mistaken identity. It all seems to echo the behaviour of Madame Langhoff, the elderly lady at the start of the film who is so captivated by Marc doing the whole ‘look into their eyes’ routine during a song that she takes him entirely seriously, coming to his dressing room to clumsily try her hand at seduction. When rebuffed, she pours hatred and scorn on herself. It seems that Marc’s music – even these rather trite easy listening ballads – have had a similar effect on Mademoiselle Vicky (Lahaie), who begs him to return as soon as he can.
It’s interesting that a film without a soundtrack places so much weight on its internal music, but it clearly matters in Calvaire. We’re forewarned, and then – after Bartel’s Gloria delusion takes hold – we get the bar scene, where Stan le Pianiste successfully revs up the room with a frenetic, discordant number which puts everyone in the mood for a good ol’ home invasion, to take back what they want from Chez Bartel. Not for nothing, then, is the film’s opening line a lyric: ‘Day after day, life is merely survival.’ Music goes from livelihood, to demand, to element of violence: its lyrics pick out ideas about futility and lost love and then weave them into major themes.
The absent female
However, alongside the discourse about music and loss, reality and unreality, we have to remember that Bartel’s belief in Marc as Gloria exhibits a wide, unpalatable range of attitudes towards women which run throughout Calvaire; it’s just that, here we see it all happening to a man. Women as a group are almost entirely absent from the film, after its opening couple of scenes; you could argue that they’re made a little ridiculous even then, these older women both so mesmerised by a two-bit performance that they’d risk their marriages and jobs for a quick tumble with the cape guy, even if he has a handsome face. But it’s when Marc goes on the road, heading to the backwoods of Liège, that things kick up a gear. Just as a later entrant in the New Extremity movement – Frontière(s) (2007) – teases out tacit attitudes towards race, albeit in much bloodier ways, so it seems that the bedrock of Calvaire hinges upon tacit attitudes towards women.
Firstly, there are no women left in the village at all; it also sounds, for all the world, as though they were always scarce. Very scarce. Excepting Gloria Bartel, no one makes mention of their own wives; we don’t see them; the men at the village bar only refer to Gloria, and soon seem to be part of the same delusion about Marc (which layers uncanny on uncanny, quite frankly). It’s a bleak discourse arranged around a number of horrifying little vignettes. The only sexual scenes in the film invoke rape; there’s also the scene where a number of the men seem to be initiating one of their number into a spot of zoophilia. Of course, this showcases an isolated farming community just as strange as any in the horror tradition, but bereft of the one woman they seem to have known, it looks as though the men have to make their own entertainment. Later in the film, Bartel’s speech-destroying reluctance to go into the village seems to be linked to Gloria: he turns up at the bar to declare that none of the men are allowed anywhere near his wife now that ‘she’ is home; this implies either that they have slept with her, or that he’s afraid they have, or might, but the concepts of ownership, punishment and abuse are present any time his wife gets mentioned. They just happen to be put particularly strongly at this moment.
Assuming that Gloria is/was a real person – if she is, then no bloody wonder she left – then her husband’s proprietorial attitude towards her is appalling, and just happens to be playing out around the unwitting male who has wandered into her deserted life. Here, a man is forced into a passive and compliant role, subject to vile gendered language, held prisoner, made to participate in a domestic setting (and then mocked for crying). It is usually intimated rather than shown, but the likelihood is that Bartel is insisting on sex with Marc; we do see one scene which suggests as much will happen. And, after the home invasion, Marc’s attempts to seek help are met with more mockery, rape and violence from a group of men who are themselves perfectly happy to see what Bartel saw. Marc’s final escape is from Orton (Noé frequent collaborator Philippe Nahon) and his sons, who equally seem to see Marc as Gloria. Again, it seems they see what they want to see, right down to Orton’s pleas for ‘Gloria’ to set his mind at rest about their former relationship. Was there one? What is real here?
Whilst some commentators have felt that the film explores a homosexuality subtext, I would disagree: these people aren’t convincing themselves that Marc is a woman to justify their homosexuality, but rather are content to see anyone as a woman provided they’re wearing a sundress and occupying the prerequisite space. The little trappings of femininity here happen to be weaponised against Marc, making him into something he’s not: a dress, a song, that’s all it takes to dismiss ‘Marc’ altogether. And it isn’t much, but it’s enough to justify the often casually-accepted attitudes towards women being forced onto an unwitting male stranger. Laurent Lucas even gets to enact the female horror role of being tied to a chair (admittedly a rarer act in 2004) and having his head shaved as punishment, and to make him too ugly to sexually assault, which Bartel thinks will keep ‘Gloria’ that bit safer. The shaven head penance pops back up in Frontière(s), by the way, and plenty of other places too. Perhaps Marc can’t strive for his identity because he has immediately taken on the studied, necessary passivity of a woman aiming to survive. Even now, on the other side of that, it’s quite unusual to see a male character escaping quite so far and for quite as long: this is usually the preserve of the final girl, thrown the sop of an incredulous bloodstained survival after ninety minutes of fixated carnage. And, if you think of the big hitters of the New Extremity films, it tends to be women who suffer most; Marc is an outlier here, drawing attention to types and degrees of violence usually reserved for female characters, and his last line in the film is spoken as Gloria, either as a bizarre kindness or because he can no longer keep sight of his old self at all.
Last words
It’s interesting that the Anglicised title – The Ordeal – just never seemed to fully stick for Anglophone audiences. And yet, Calvaire – or, Calvary – has a religious resonance which itself might be lost on a fair few audience members, if they’re irreligious or indifferent. It certainly is an ‘ordeal’ – no one would dispute it – but naming the film for the place of Jesus’s crucifixion and death calls to mind additional ideas about penance and forgiveness which fit well with the film’s themes. Religion itself occupies a kind of present-absence in the film: there but not there, a cobwebbed figure of Christ on a windowsill, a grotesque partial crucifixion as punishment for misdeeds, and a towering statue of the crucified Christ at the end of the film. Marc arrives at the inn at Christmas; Bartel jokes to himself down the defunct phoneline that Marc may have to stay until Easter.
So the stage is set with religious ideas and symbols, which do more than enough to make Marc’s ordeal resonate with the idea of penance for sin. This is portrayed in no uncertain terms – Marc spends some time literally nailed to a cross – but in other respects, his suffering seems more symbolic: he is the absent wife, the heartless mistress, the indifferent performer – all at once. The result is a world where no one speaks sense, no one behaves justifiably, no one provides full closure, but the sense of expiation throughout Calvaire is impossible to mistake. As such it remains a defiantly original, unsettling, gripping film which rewards your patience with a whole host of ideas to ponder. It’s a clever, artistic, slow-burn horror which leaves behind a sense of foreboding, punctuated with both questions and statements about gender, power, selfhood and sin.
Calvaire (2004) is about to get a digital re-release from Blue Finch Film Releasing. It’s available from 19th September.
A sylvan nightmare introduces us to the world of Mercy Falls (2023) and a sylvan nightmare it remains; make of that what you will. As a film, it retains all of the standard nonsensical elements of a nightmare, alongside its tension and inescapability. The film on the whole can be perplexing, though it does do enough to remain entertaining.
A childhood flashback wakes Rhona (Lauren Lyle), now a young woman off on a camping expedition in the Highlands with a group of friends. They evade the trope of picking up a scary hitchhiker by sensibly speeding past straight them on their way to a rendezvous point, a nearby hotel. Frankly, once I’d seen the girls’ car (emblazoned with flower and ‘peace’ stickers) then all bets were off, but: Rhona has a plan. She wants to hike out to her late father’s old cabin near a place called Mercy Falls; she has a map, a map she clearly struggles to read, but wouldn’t you know, the hitchhiker they passed earlier has also arrived at the hotel. Carla (Nicolette McKeown), aside from having a face of perfect make-up, come what may, is an experienced hiker and offers to help them in their search. Whilst this clearly disrupts the delicate friend group ecosystem as far as Rhona is concerned, the others are more enthusiastic: as such, Carla tags along/takes over, and off they all go.
Whilst the minor questions about what happens next soon conglomerate into bigger questions about people’s motivations and behaviours, at heart the tension here comes from Rhona’s past and Carla’s present, as (and it’s probably not a spoiler to say) she isn’t all she seems. But then again, Carla’s past also turns out to be a factor, and as they get deeper into the remote woodland, the issues between these two young women in particular drive the rest of the events which follow. Childhood misery, budding female antipathy, a few lines in the script which question whether this naïve lot has an emergency plan – here’s our raft of elements, then, which could be explored or exploited in a range of ways.
As we get going, it’s clear that the Scottish landscape is one of the stars of the show, and it’s filmed well; it’s also positive that these are Scottish young people in their own country, which eschews tried-and-tested tension between outsiders and place in a broader sense, something that typically comes with its own issues (although these particular hikers are themselves strangers in this environment; this could be anywhere, albeit without a family cabin somewhere off in the mysterious distance.)
As for the young people themselves, well: the script starts out by painting a picture of some plausibly daft, adrift townies on their way into a dangerous, remote place. That’s all well and good, but the undercurrent of sexual tension here is far more difficult to believe in, and leads the plot down some rather sketchy paths (such as: how on earth do you lose two of your party when there are only six of you and you’re at a tiny campsite?) It’s a bit clumsy and extraneous, even if we allow for the fact that – well – so are people. But other motivations are puzzling too, and should have been clearer, if we are to believe that all of these events unfold between our characters; certain big scenes in the film are utterly mystifying (I shall say only ‘fallen tree’ here and anyone who sees the film will get it completely). It always seems like a good, brutal script edit would iron out so many of the issues which befall low budget indie films, and cost little to no money out of the budget, in the grand scheme of things. There has to be a good answer to the ‘why?’
Still, there’s enough here to keep the film moving along. Credit goes to Lauren Lyle in particular, who is given a lot to do and a lot to carry into the final act; in fact, she offers the most nuanced performance throughout, and deserves recognition for that. If you can let your eyes glaze over at some of the rookie errors, then you just might find enough to enjoy in the often baffling melee.
Mercy Falls (2023) received a UK theatrical release on 29th August 2023. Mercy Falls is in cinemas now and on digital from 6th November.
The act of fossil-hunting is, for all its wholesomeness and its interesting history and fresh air, a hunt for a past which is by now utterly alien to us. It hangs somewhere between presence and absence; fossils are here, but gone; permanent, but extinct. And if all of this sounds like a rather lofty way to introduce a short film review, then I’d argue that it’s all relevant to Vestige (2023), a film which takes fossil-hunting as its starting point, albeit taking it somewhere very different. Even given its runtime of just twelve minutes, it tantalises at something significant and resonant beyond its immediate storyline.
Our fossil hunter is a teenage lad called Lucas (Ben Hackett). As he listens to tape recordings of his father giving him advice (on music, and on finding fossils) he is suddenly drawn to one rock in particular: taking his hammer and chisel, he splits it open, revealing an extraordinary fossil inside. But Ben has little time to admire what he’s found: the recording of his dad’s voice (another absent-presence here) is wavering, as if something is interfering with the player. Could it be the fossil? Lucas turns sharply, calling his father’s name. It’s clear by now that dad is gone, but is he gone? Lucas comes to believe that his father is reaching out to him; if he could just decipher the message, then he could have his dad back again. For Lucas, this means finding his dad through what he has left of him – his voice, his tapes – as well as their shared love of fossils.
The fossil hunting aspect of Vestige is matched by its focus on analogue technology; there are a lot of love letters to analogue tech in cinema at this point, driven by nostalgia and a half-held memory that some of this equipment could be (and can be) quite creepy and evocative, though here it makes sense on a more practical level: Lucas’s father would probably have grown up with cassette tapes, and probably would have collected them. But tape itself forms part of the film’s puzzle; it’s also a source of anxiety, as well as a connection to the past. At heart, this is a deeply sad story, but it moves increasingly into the fantastical as it draws to its close, using Lucas’s dad’s collection as part of this (with some neat visual devices along the way). And, ultimately, is this is a sad story, come the end? You could certainly argue that it’s ambiguous; it doesn’t spill every detail, so you’re left wondering what, exactly, has unfolded. Whether you see it as a horrific trickery or something more opaque is down to you.
However you read it, Vestige does a great deal with all of its elements, offering an interesting exploration of grief and loss but looking at these from a horror-tinged, engaging and unorthodox perspective. It works well, and the striking County Durham beaches which form the film’s backdrop are the perfect environment for such a stark, but rather beautiful film.
Vestige (2023) featured at this year’s London FrightFest.
Good Boy (2022) is an odd proposition, because it immediately disrupts what you may expect from its most obvious plot elements. With its clean, sumptuous interiors, pleasant and polite cast, and distinctly bloodless approach to its storytelling, it oh-so almost keeps up appearances – but it has a grim, unsettling element which runs right to its core. As such, it’s an engrossing watch, layered with discomfort. In essence, it’s a messed up story about power and privilege, and whilst it decides not to satisfy every question you might wish to ask, it nonetheless does enough to make those questions run around in your head after viewing.
We begin with an as-yet faceless young man preparing a meal, and it’s a very nice meal, too: it has ‘date night’ written all over it, except it turns out that it’s for the young man himself. He’s not totally alone, however: he has a dog, and we see him feeding it. This is the first moment of high strangeness: that isn’t a dog, it’s a man in a dog suit, seemingly remaining in this character throughout the scene. Aside from that, this is a rather beautiful house, teeming with affluence – it just happens to have a dog-man resident in it. But our young man-man, Christian (Gard Løkke) seems to crave more orthodox human company, too.
Scrolling through Tinder after dinner, he finds a young woman called Sigrid who catches his eye: he ‘super likes’ her, perhaps drawn to her tagline, ‘If you have a pulse and two legs, we’re well on our way!’ Humour, or a cavalier approach to standards? Well, one of the two seems to be appealing (and in fact, you could probably easily make a horror film based solely on the responses to an open-season line like that on Tinder). And just like that, they connect, and arrange to meet in person.
Their first date only showcases their different personalities. She’s late, for one; Christian is already sitting there, punctual, and formally dressed. Sigrid (Katrine Lovise Øpstad Fredriksen) rocks up in jogging bottoms, disregards any conventions about who buys what and how, and plays on her phone at the table. It’s not a great start but, gradually, Christian begins to warm up a little. In fact, they end up going back to his place, and the size and style of his home wows her. But the presence of a grown man in a dog suit comes as a hell of a surprise (well, it would, wouldn’t it?) This early spanner in the works disrupts their growing closeness; sadly for Sigrid, it’s her roommate’s revelation about Christian which enables her to overlook his little foibles. She hears Christian out, and their relationship continues. However, this just begs more and more questions, and their unignorable situation develops.
Well, there’s a lot going on in here. But firstly, any expectation that this is going to be either some kind of queasy sexual story, or a torture porn-adjacent affair are thwarted. True, Sigrid looks into the whole idea of ‘puppy play’ as she tries to understand what’s going on, but Christian isn’t involved in this for sexual reasons. Sex and sexuality are present in the film, but not the driving force behind the plot, even where we have a young relationship unfolding: Good Boy wrongfoots the audience in several respects, and this is one of them. Instead of fulfilling our genre expectations, it spends a good deal of time on character, beginning with Christian who, as he prepares for his first date, seems to genuinely care about how it’s going to go. Any notion of a darker side to him is slow to grow: little clues, little reveals in conversation, leave you wondering at first. Then we get a lot more on Sigrid, which not only balances the tale-telling in the film but adds to the growing tension. Yes, some conventional developments pop up, but not until we have a pair of nicely established, diverse characters who contrast with one another, even in the most straightforward of terms. (There’s also, perhaps unavoidably, some subtle, ridiculous/sublime humour in here too.)
Look, there are a few gaps or questions in the film’s plot which remain unanswered come the credits, but does that diminish Good Boy‘s Scandi-minimalist weirdness? Not a jot; it also invites us to ask ourselves when and for what reason we might fling our red flags out of the window, and what roles we might content ourselves to play. When things escalate here, they really escalate, even whilst the film retains its polite, considerate, even stylish veneer. Good pacing, good characterisation and a dialogue-rich script carry this bizarre turn of events along, leaving us with an unsettling story about social and personal control, playing out just (just!) on the right side of plausibility. Good Boy is quite a tough film to shake off, and that’s immensely to the credit of director/writer Viljar Bøe, who has fashioned a strangely engrossing corner of a recognisable universe here.
Minore (2023) is a great premise on paper, but – sadly – too diffuse and poorly-paced to pass muster in practice. Along the way, there are great scenes and great ideas, but the film’s ragtag approach to building tension and developing a plotline let it down. It could have been a great film, shorn of around half an hour or more, but director and co-writer Konstantinos Koutsoliotas has decided to treat his film as a wraparound for a whole range of characters, directors and even genres; that was his decision and them’s the breaks.
‘Armageddon is coming’, reads the placard of a lone, paddling penitent as a young sailor called William (Davide Tucci) arrives at a sleepy Greek town where he plans to take some shore leave. He has a specific motive for being here: he’s looking for his absent father, a musician, and he has a notion he may be in this town somewhere. In the meantime he gets settled in, staying at a local hotel and finding his way to a local taverna, as recommended by his, umm, friendly hotelier. Hitting it off with waitress Aliki (Daphne Alexander), he soon feels fairly welcome, even though he’s haunted by dreams of his absentee dad, a man he always sees in his mind’s eye playing a mysterious little number on his bouzouki. In and around this piece of relationship-building we get a run-through of a number of local characters, all of whom we’ll see again, but: the general plot-specific point here is that something strange is happening to this place. There are earth tremors, people are having bad dreams, there are disappearances and some people have taken to wading into the sea…
Time passes, and William thinks he just might have had a breakthrough in his search for his dad: there’s a certain man they call ‘Teacher’ who instructs the musicians at the taverna – but let’s move forward to around the hour mark. At this point, and not in any significant way before mind you, some of the strange portents start to come to something – the dreams, the rattling walls, the strange behaviour. Now, alien denizens emerge from the sea and besiege the taverna, giving us a Grabbers-style segment of the film (before a tension-splurging diaspora where they all disappear off elsewhere, but you get the idea). As such, the town residents will need to face down the tentacled menace and try to restore order.
The take-your-damn-time first act of this film is all character, character, character, to an extent that breaks the rhythm of the film; character fans may like the lengthy diversions where people discuss, for example, whether certain boys or girls are ‘clean’ or ‘dirty’ (bit of a weird aside, all of that). Apart from the reputational analysis, we get slivers of comedy, dramedy, crime, history, vignettes on Greek small town life and some slightly confusing interplays on who likes/knows who; there are lots of side-plots and mysterious predilections, in a nutshell, which keep us hanging around.
As for the creatures in this creature feature, Minore leans heavily on Lovecraftian horror and it does so from the outset: we get visual clues like framed paintings of tentacled entities, a sailor’s cap emblazoned with ‘Miskatonia’, and of course the beings themselves, calling to tiny human minds from the sea. It’s strange to me, though, that a film which works so hard to ground itself in Greece doesn’t opt for more vivid elements of Greek myth and legend; even if you accept the Lovecraftian premise that these cosmic entities pre-date humanity, it seems a shame to ignore the tentacled, and also multi-headed, winged, hooved, chimeric entities of Greek stories, which have the jump on HPL by a couple of millennia. Ancient Greece gets shoehorned in at some late point, true, but given the liberal amount of time afforded to so many other elements in the film, we could have had this done far more convincingly.
When things get going, and in those scenes where there is some kind of a monster showdown, Minore does make a decided effort to layer in plenty of gore and high weirdness which works well; budgetary constraints mean a lot of slightly dicey CGI but it’s all forgivable; hey, Dagon does the same thing and it’s still great, because any concerted effort to give the audience aggressive, head-popping monsters is always appreciated. But then, we also get so much padding and weakly comic dead ends which dilute the welcome gore. Sometimes, putting so much in a single film derails it, when what it really needs is to drive at its key points and best material in a straight line. That’s the case here, meaning that Minore, for all its strengths, scuppers most of the goodwill engendered by its momentary tentacles, flying eyeballs and splatter.
There has, in recent years, been a modest resurgence in interest in the genre of folk horror, with directors such as Ari Aster and Robert Eggers putting their own spin on recognisable folk horror features such as closed communities, local belief systems and irrational devotion to the edicts of these systems. As such, the likes of Midsommar and The Witch have a direct line of descent from the likes of The Wicker Man and The Blood on Satan’s Claw. But there’s more to the genre, and if we look beyond cinema to the long traditions of oral storytelling, early print, music, drama and television, then we broaden the scope significantly. Sean Hogan’s economical short-ish film To Fire You Come At Last is firmly rooted in the kinds of supernatural tale-telling which once furnished ballads, local folklore, and then the likes of the penny dreadfuls and stage plays. It’s a simply, subtle story which, in this case, belongs to a specific time, place and cast of characters, but in its revelations and reckonings could be anyone, anywhere. It’s this balance which Hogan gets very right, using its supernatural elements elegantly and ambiguously.
At the film’s start, a wealthy local Squire (Mark Carlisle) has been bereaved of his only son: he wants his boy to receive a decent burial, which means transporting him to the nearest churchyard; for those villages which didn’t have a church, this could mean carrying the coffin manually to its final resting place, if a horse and cart couldn’t do the job (see for example some of the ‘corpse roads’ in England). Alongside his son’s best friend Holt (Harry Roebuck), manservant Pike (Richard Rowden) and an obsequious drunk named Ransley (James Swanton), paid to help, Squire Marlow is keen to get going – despite the fact that he’d hoped not to have to act as one of the bearers, but they’re a man short else. Holt, well-versed in the monstrous folklore of the Lych Way they’ll be taking, is afraid of the moor’s lonely darkness: stories of its spectres and strange circumstances have rattled him. Still, they must begin, and as night falls, the men talk.
All of these men are, to a greater or lesser extent, known to one another. They all live in the same village; they all knew the deceased, Aldis, and all have their tales to tell. What ensues is an unfolding of their quietly kept, sinister, interlocking histories; as they progress along the path, unreason rises higher and higher, forcing relationships to falter, revelations to come out. All of this is precipitated, at first, by the scraping, but conniving Ransley, who takes on a dangerous, trickster persona, prying and searching for weaknesses in his social betters, in the ways that old folklore often has Old Scratch manipulating and misleading people to their damnation. Whilst Hogan doesn’t take things quite that far, Ransley is certainly a catalyst in the film and he’s well played by Swanton; all of the actors in this small cast enact their roles very well, and it’s no disservice at all to then to say this feels like a stage play, or indeed series like Play for Today at their darkest.
Speaking of which, this black and white, beautifully lit and enhanced array of night-time scenes works brilliantly. Despite making it clear, through an opening run of well framed shots of the landscape and broader vistas, this feels like a very claustrophobic experience in the way that darkness does feel. You lose all sense of distance in the pitch dark; these men, with only candle lanterns to light their way, are at the mercy of their imaginations as they glimpse what they think they glimpse, barely there before them.
It must be incredibly hard to shoot a period feature and not fall foul of some little detail which breaks the spell; famously, one of the Big Three folk horrors, Witchfinder General, slips up by including a shot of a modern house in one of its scenes, as well as a few TV aerials here and there. To Fire You Come At Last is suggested as taking place in the 1600s, which perhaps isn’t right in a few respects (phrases like ‘she threw him over’ are awry) but overall the spell here works – the language is simplified and accessible, but it’s generally thoughtful, plausible and effective, building character and tension well. The costumes do enough to signify that there are divisions of class, wealth and power here, and best of all the film balances historical distance with familiarity: it addresses beliefs which we still practice but may have lost the basis for, such as why we carry a coffin ‘feet first’ (superstition has it that this is so the corpse can’t look back or come back). Does this explain some of the fascination with folk horror? Does it tantalise some lost language, known to our ancestors but unintelligible to us? In folk horror, it’s often the case that outsiders suffer, because they don’t know the rules of a certain place; here, it’s us. It’s so often us. Severin Films, the production company behind this film, have discussed at length our complicated relationship with folk horror. I think this film captures its feelings of distance yet closeness. But beyond all that, it’s simply an eerie, well-paced, quietly horrific tale, and a welcome addition to the modern genre which effectively bridges the gap between old and new.
To Fire You Come At Last (2023) screened at FrightFest 2023.
At this point, a good zombie film feels like a noble tradition for many horror fans but also, given the number and the scope of zombie horrors down through the years, it’s acceptable to be a little picky. Not only did the birth of zombie cinema kickstart a new, nasty, unrelenting kind of horror, but it’s proven very versatile, standing in for myriad social anxieties as well as offering an outlet for plot-lite, but gratuitously grisly movies too. Or indeed, it’s done all of these things together. So it’s with a heavy heart that it turns out Herd (2023) neither expounds an interesting backstory nor shows us a truly horrific vision of a world gone awry. There are some good elements here; there are some interesting ideas here. But there are also issues, which either keep things feeling too derivative or just spread those decent ideas too thinly.
We start promisingly, with a strangely bucolic, rural landscape: it’s probably fair to say that a lot of zombie horror has tended to be urban, and this clearly isn’t. But the panning shots of golden fields and dotted farms end abruptly as we glimpse an older man, fleeing through this farmland, before stopping off at a barn to gather supplies before he tries to connect with others. Via him, we also encounter one of our perishingly few zombies – not a runner, and not particularly aggressive, but dangerous nonetheless.
As the man struggles with him/it, he misses a call from a young woman whom we can soon infer is his daughter, Jamie. And we then cut to Jamie (Ellen Adair), seemingly unaware (or hardly bothered) about any mysterious outbreak, and instead preparing to go on a relationship-saving canoe holiday with her partner Alex (Mitzi Akaha). You may be forgiven for thinking that few relationships, even robust ones, could survive such a thing, and you may be right: it’s tense, it’s awkward, and it’s a dreadfully confined location for a potential break-up. Perhaps the accident which cuts all of this rowing short is a blessing in disguise, but when Alex hurts her leg it makes Jamie and Alex move a lot slower, and what’s more, they now seem to be deep in enemy, i.e. Jamie’s family’s terrain.
They then get overtaken by a ragtag bunch of rural residents, trying to get back to the safety of their small community. It seems the outbreak situation has developed, and requires people to hunker down, to wait for the whole thing to blow over (a definite possibility here, as it happens). But this isn’t easy for Jamie, as it turns out some of these guys know her, and she winds up heading back to her old home town – a place she left in bad circumstances, particularly with regards to her relationship with her father.
My feelings on Herd changed after its first thirty minutes or so: its early scenes promised decent-looking, if familiar (and if somewhat declawed) zombie action, even if the whole ‘couple who must be reminded why they love each other’ is a well-used trope which is very easy to spot. Sure, it’s a strange feature of the script that it seems Jamie and Alex are perfectly aware of some strange, dangerous illness appearing around the country, but they head straight for it anyway. Still, initially, the action ramps up quite nicely, and whilst there are lots of familiar elements here (short of a military checkpoint, a band of men in fatigues or plaid carrying guns are almost obligatory) the performances are earnest enough. There’s some good, practical SFX, if conserved rather carefully, no doubt for reasons of budget. All in all, it’s made to look as though some grand crisis is coming, and it’s going to create an unbearable pressure cooker of human emotions as it unfolds. Fine, that’ll do just fine; that’s more than enough for a good film.
Sadly, at this point things grind largely to a stop. Once hunkered down, the film tries to become a character study, looking at this claustrophobic situation and what it tells us about our key players. Whilst surprisingly little happens outside, it turns out Jamie and Alex just aren’t quite up to sustaining the weight of the run time, and it also feels like making it all about hot topics like sexuality (and to an extent, class) is an attempt to hot-house engagement with these characters. There’s some attention paid to the ‘man is the real monster’ idea, but given the fact that the zombies aren’t particularly menacing, it doesn’t feel as substantial as it might have done. We have quite a problem with disparity of threat from the obviously-influenced-by-The Last Of Us zombies – who come replete with fungal-type growths – as they are fairly non-aggressive, largely avoid conflict and can be circumnavigated easily, eventually for good. As such, all of the human drama which unfolds feels a little unconvincing, even with the zombie element in its midst, and any surprises which the film rocks out in its final act only serve to diminish what precedes it.
With not quite enough horror and not enough plot development, Herd feels like rather a long lull after its initial set up. However, despite aspects which are patchy or predictable, it remains a visually appealing film, one with some sense of its heritage, but also some ideas of its own. This seems quite the departure for director Steven Pierce, whose directorial slate so far has consisted of shorts and music-oriented projects (there’s a far amount of live music present in Herd, come to think of it). There are elements of skill here, but some challenges to face too, and if Pierce is to make this kind of horror again he’d do well to consider how to balance pace against tension.
Herd (2023) had its European premiere at FrightFest 2023.The UK home entertainment release follows on 23rd October 2023 (High Fliers)
We know something’s up as #BOSSBABE gets underway: not only are we at a funeral, but we’re at a very glam funeral, one which could almost be a photoshoot, if not for the sales talk colouring the eulogy. This eulogy – which refers to the entrepreneurial genius of the deceased, marking her out as a ‘boss babe’; it’s being delivered by another boss babe, our most important one – Sophie, sorry, Sofi (Katelyn Doyle) and we pick up with her in the next scene, which takes us back, pre-funeral. We know a boss babe has shuffled off this mortal coil, but who, and how?
#BOSSBABE answers this question in its short run time of twelve minutes, but it builds a fun, even relatable superficial world of faux friendships and modern preoccupations, camping them up and playing them out in a grisly little comedy-drama.
Sofi is a seller for pyramid marketing scheme Bevlon (and well done to the team for getting that one past the clipboards). It is, as you may have inferred, a cosmetics brand, which pushes its sellers towards unlocking ever-higher levels of excellence by promising them a special ring – bronze, silver or gold – as well as many other, aspirational perks. Sofi’s doing alright, but she wants to do better, so she is prepping for a recruitment event, preparing a marketing video – and I mean a video cassette – to promote what she’s doing (maybe this is a trendy lo-fi thing, or perhaps on a deeper level it just adds to the kind of picturesque, soft-focus confusion which runs throughout this film.) Sofi is put out by the arrival of some of the other high-ranking sellers – her ‘team’, but judging by all the mwah-mwah passive aggression which soon starts to fly, also her greatest competition – but there’s a big plus to all of this. The other girls have brought along a potential big new seller, one who comes with a big, exploitable social media following. Score!
The focus is on Sofi’s clear but concealed discomfort here, but honestly, the new girl Dani (Selena Goosney), marked out as fresh quarry by her astonishingly cosmetics-free face as well as her tantalising follower list, is just as uncomfortable. It all feels more of a cult initiation than a party, and it’s obvious that there is a lot seething away beneath the positive vibes. The film hints at a culture of mutual ‘support’ which is anything but, one certainly associated with the brutal world of pyramid selling, but perhaps also with women more generally; there’s a lot to unpick in there about female socialisation and stereotyping which goes beyond the remit of the film, but is certainly relevant to it. And in any case, the party is about to take a bit of a turn: things get briefly more obviously violent, to match the simmering tensions at play.
The film captures that sort of acid-saccharin, bitter but sickly sweet vibe really well, boosting its theme of superficiality with acid colours, bright textiles, trippy backdrops and soft focus. It all feels like a dream gone wrong; the camera work (closing in, swinging, moving here and there) and the lively running soundtrack match this fun, but somewhat sinister tone. #BOSSBABE is overblown good fun, a big pop of colour with a moral message. It notes that the world of fashion cosmetics walks a line between cutesy and cutthroat, and it sends it up very nicely.
#BOSSBABE screened at the Fantasia International Film Festival 2023.
