Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

FrightFest 2023: To Fire You Come At Last

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

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.

FrightFest 2023: Herd

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

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)

Fantasia 2023: #BOSSBABE

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

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.

Fantasia 2023: New Life

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

New Life (2023) opens in medias res: a bloodied, panicked young woman makes her way along a street, clearly fearful of being seen or stopped. She heads home, cleans herself up – but her safety and her memories of this place soon get left behind, and she’s moving again. It’s immediately clear that an old way of life has been extinguished; that persists here as a theme, as the girl, Jess (Hayley Erin) has to head North, so far as she sees it – and as quickly as possible. Why? The film takes its time answering that question – it’s one of its key strengths – but clearly Jess is a person of some importance, whatever she may or may not have done.

We next meet a special operative called Elsa (Sonya Walger), a woman poised somewhere between motivational quotes (displayed in her home) and meds (stored and accessible at home). She receives a visitor, colleague and boss Raymond (Tony Amendola), who hands her an important new brief: tracking Jess down, finding her before she crosses the Canadian border. Clearly these people are intent on locating Jess with a team dedicated to doing it, but Elsa is a big hitter which escalates things further still; her requested involvement says as much.

But, for her, there’s more: she is newly dealing with a medical condition which will, at some point, and soon, derail this big-hitting career. It’s addressed early in the film during a very powerful scene: outside of her office hours, and just as she’s started the hunt for Jess, she has a meeting with someone offering advice on how to live with the condition of ALS. It’s a type of motor neurone disease which, in common with all variants of the condition, is progressive. It will render her relationship with her body into something new, something unsolicited; this affects everything about the challenging job she has just taken. She has limited time to find the girl, and limited time left.

New Life parcels out its story very carefully and deliberately; because it takes this time to unveil the motivation behind the pursuit, keeping us in the dark alongside its key players, somehow this absence of knowledge turns readily into dread, even very early on; if so many resources are being put into finding this young woman, and if she is that hellbent on escape, then something significant is pressing at the edges here. The ways in which Jess’s flight impacts upon other people escalates that dread, too. Even moments of calm feel ominous, as well as being rich, touching, well-observed moments, all brought to life by a sensitive, light-touch script. It’s never an overwritten film; it understands pace, silence, absence and exposition perfectly and keeps them in balance. It also sets up opposing worlds, on- and off-grid, with the latter, glimpsed via Jess, incredibly beautiful. One of our characters is hyper-connected; one has disappeared herself, or attempted it.

And these worlds have to collide; we live in a world – as reflected in the film – where everyone can be found, if only enough people are looking. The harm and destruction which set in as a result are bleak and upsetting, even when treated obliquely; oblique approaches allow certain ideas to land slowly. Elsewhere, there’s shock and brutality which edges oh-so close to the fantastical, but never fully settles there. Less is more: the film only needs to show its hand a couple of times for the truly devastating central ideas to take hold.

At the heart of all this, two women are being brought together, each with their own agonising backstories. The film asks further questions, too: it riffs on ideas of high-stakes health, wellness and illness, and by now, at this point in history, we’re more than a little primed for this kind of subject matter. Something else which really stands out for this reviewer is around the theme of ‘good people’. In many respects, New Life is at its harshest and cruellest on this subject; the escalating situation at its heart draws in more and more of these people. But what makes a good person? What does a good person do? And what happens to them as a result? The moral ties which bind people together become fragmented. As this happens, we develop a range of feelings towards our main protagonists: there’s rising pity and anger (with a few lines which continue to resonate), there’s plausible, pitiable humanity, and there’s deep sadness.

Both vast in scale and yet always intimate, New Life is a whip-smart, challenging film with something purposeful and significant on every beat. That this is a directorial debut by a former journalist, John Rosman, makes it all the more intriguing and unusual. It’s superb.

New Life (2023) featured at the Fantasia International Film Festival (and will also receive its European premiere at FrightFest, UK.)

Rage (2020)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Rage (2020) contains a lot of recognisable horror elements, though it utilises some intent in how it layers these elements together. The result is a watchable, at times ambitious horror film which struggles somewhat with its later pacing, but at its best offers something visually appealing and engaging. We start with a bit of a trope: here’s a group of young South Africans, intent on partying the summer away before starting university (though that says something about how the world has changed: people now do their partying before, not during their uni courses). This block of partying is what’s known as ‘rage’, though there’s more dancing and being sick than you’d usually associate with fierce anger. Wisely introducing our key characters by name – these kinds of players can be a little samey else – we discover that the alpha of the group Kyle (Tristan De Beer) has opened up his (parents’) villa to his friends; after a few of them overdo it at the club, they head back there, and the party continues.

The next morning, in the throes of their hangovers, some of the group head out to get some supplies, enduring a Strange Cornershop Experience along the way. This rattles them a little; meeting another oddball local at the beach a little later only cements the impression that this is a strange, possibly scary neck of the woods, and that they’re vulnerable at the villa – clearly they’re from out of town, and people know they are. But what of it? Any early ideas that this is going to be a straightforward slasher, or a home invasion kind of deal are scuppered by a few visual clues: there are some unorthodox spiritual beliefs around here; small, pagan-looking offerings are seen on the beach and elsewhere. The area itself seems to be in straitened times, what with various economic issues, population shifts (significantly, there are no young people left here) and other worrying issues. So, the arrival of a bunch of usually intoxicated, naïve young people, trying to get a handle on what is unfolding around them – clearly, nothing could go wrong.

The first act of this film – let’s say the first third – is very strong. There’s a sense of awful build up as we get acquainted with our main protagonists, even if the set-up feels evocative and familiar. Actually getting a sense that these young ‘uns are flawed but essentially decent is important: nothing ever works well when we’re simply presented with fodder for the final scenes. So, it’s a little difficult to watch them missing clues, or not reacting to things which are undeniably on the periphery of their vision as they have a good time, but it’s plausible enough, and these are not unlikeable figures. The film has enough confidence to throw in a little bit of misdirection, too: that opening scream, for instance, tries to take us somewhere else.

This is also a colourful, often trippy and overblown film with lots of stylish visual appeal. It soon starts to get alarmingly reminiscent of Midsommar – sometimes looking more than simply ‘influenced by’ that film – but that is of course a modern film which set the bar for warm, summery imagery to yield something much more visceral. Speaking of similarities – though here’s another Midsommar similarity – the film’s trippy scenes also call to mind Mandy and, perhaps more so, Honeydew.

So the elements are in place: what to do with them? Some of the impetus which Rage works so hard to develop is frittered away by a drop-away in pace from the halfway point or so. Moving more into home invasion, it keeps us waiting for that but, more damagingly to the film as a whole, having set up a Midsommar-esque plot line (and no spoilers here: just look at the movie poster, as well as director Jaco Bouwer’s past projects) it struggles to answer the questions raised by all this. Ordinarily, you’d need more of a backstory for such goings-on; what is so important to the antagonists, and what do they hope to achieve exactly? Audiences will expect a main event of sorts; it’s in the eye of the beholder, but some viewers might argue that it’s not really expounded enough. It would have been so interesting to work out what was going on with the belief system here. Maybe the abandoned narrator device could have gone some way towards this?

Still, Rage knows full well not to outstay its welcome, coming in at an equally welcome, goodwill-sustaining ninety minutes (give or take). It has decent performances – if a little underwritten – it looks good, features some great, nasty scenes, and its crazy meld of genres is no bad thing. With a bit more writing and rewriting this could have been a great film but, as it stands, it’s a decent film and a perfectly enjoyable horror, which tantalises at talents yet to fully develop.

Rage is available now (on digital) from Reel 2 Reel films.

Fantasia 2023: Sometimes I Think About Dying

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

There’s a shot of fallen fruit rotting in a gutter as Sometimes I think About Dying (2023) opens, and not to get into a scene-by-scene analysis of the film, but this image symbolises a lot about the story to follow. In a picturesque but doubtlessly dull coastal town, we meet Fran (Daisy Ridley). Fran is a young woman with an office job (we never find out what the office does, and it doesn’t matter). When she arrives at work each day, it barely generates a flicker of recognition in her colleagues. As harmlessly inane as their workplace banter is, it excludes her – not maliciously, but she blends so colourlessly into the background that she’s barely visible. Work takes up most of her time; when she’s not in the office, she’s at home alone.

The only break from this routine which she’s selected for herself comes via moments – dreams, or fantasies – about her own demise, usually imagined as grand tableaux: towering, picturesque deaths, or dramatic, colourful deaths – death by snake is a good one. She still blends in as a dead body, mind, but it mostly makes a change from the settings she’s in on a day-to-day basis. Outside of these little moments, work continues, with one difference: a long-serving member of the team, Carol (Marcia DeBonis) retires, and her colleagues throw a little party. As is typical, Fran hovers somewhere between involved and uninvolved in these festivities. Everything here, by the way, is really well observed, right down to the workplace murmur; every character is plausible, too.

After the cake and the cards, the team gets to meet her replacement, a man named Robert (Dave Merheje). In a professional capacity, Fran and Robert begin to interact (though Fran’s more comfortable with Microsoft Chat than human conversation, as much as she’s just as perfunctory on Chat as with chat.) Perhaps it’s because Robert is a self-confessed workplace rookie, or perhaps it’s something deeper, but he takes an interest in Fran. He even asks her to go to see a film with him. Tentatively, they begin to get to know one another.

The gradual – though it’s important to say, not-uncomplicated – blossoming of Fran as a person is a joy to watch here. Seeing the same thing happening with Robert is just as important, as the film captures a naturally gregarious person being curtailed by being ‘the new boy’, and he’s the new boy for other reasons which impact upon his sense of self. It’s a situation which will be familiar to many people; watching what Merheje does with it is impressive. The film is also able to capture that golden moment in time when someone reaches out, wanting to make a new connection; this is, sadly, a rare enough thing once people get out of their twenties. But as Fran begins to change, those nagging moments remain: what do these visions of death mean now? Is she really equal to this sea-change in her life?

The film’s subtle script perfectly captures the little moments of awkwardness which have largely come to define Fran; the way in which the camera picks over her matching gestures underlines this sense of nervousness, of how it feels to be excluded. There’s no simple in-group/out-group here, however, only glimpses of some people who have learned to become that little bit more proficient in social situations. Everyone’s trying to navigate through, even if Fran’s quiet horror at being asked to do the unfamiliar is often our focus. The way in which Ridley shows us someone keen to get away, but also curious about whether or not it might turn out alright, if she stays? It’s an inspired piece of acting.

And whilst this process is tough, often unbearably so, this is never a film without hope. You might be forgiven for thinking that – with a title like Sometimes I Think About Dying – this is going to be one of those dark nights of the soul type films, where someone is unceremoniously hammered into the ground for their shortcomings. It’s never that: even the opening music sounds hopeful; the town is quiet but beautiful, and colour starts to seep into proceedings as the film progresses. Shots are composed beautifully too, right down to Fran’s death fantasies, which themselves are pieces of art. There’s no unequivocal unhappiness here. It’s also impressive that the film itself references film, providing an important hint of a message on the periphery; Robert is a huge film fan, and he likes them because they invite him to understand other people’s stories. This gentle genius of a film is careful and considerate throughout; it’s a quiet, but nuanced and engaging look at other people’s stories.

Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023) featured at the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Fantasia 2023: Home Invasion

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Home Invasion (2023) is not your standard style of documentary; there’s no talking heads here, no voiceover, no familiar features as such. Instead, it all unfolds via on-screen text, which displays to viewers via what looks like an aperture, representing the film’s key subject matter (or at least, key for the first hour): the home security doorbell. Text takes us through the film’s key ideas and falls broadly into chapters, even though – for all the text used – chapters do not explicitly appear. The result of all this? A strangely trancelike experience, blending images, footage and film clips with a hypnotic, dark ambient soundtrack. Its range is expansive – perhaps too much so – but despite a few quibbles or issues, it remains an intriguing project which at the very least comprises a very interesting array of Ring doorbell footage, enough for a scary and unsettling film in its own right.

We don’t get straight to that, however. Instead, Home Invasion begins by describing the birth of home security. In 1966, a nurse, Marie Van Brittan Brown, woke up after a nightmare of home invasion, probably triggered by a burglary which she felt was not taken seriously enough by police. This led to her feeling unsafe at home, and distrustful of existing measures to tackle these feelings, so she invented new technology: a new doorbell system, with peepholes and a video camera. She became obsessed by the feed; in a sense, as the film suggests, this was a new kind of home invasion in some respects. Ironically, her ideas were picked up and used by people better off than her, in homes she’d never have lived in. But surveillance, as we understand it today, was born.

At this point, the film begins to bring in clips of doorbell footage, and takes a short breather from the on-screen text. We next learn about the creator of Ring, an at-the-time depressed and unsuccessful businessman called Jamie Siminoff who invented the live feed doorbell, at first called ‘Doorbot’, but later Ring (despite bombing on the reality TV show Shark Tank, it was later bought out by Amazon; you may know the rest.) This extends the process developed by Van Brittan Brown, affording the possibility of a security network where one can look right back at the people seeking access to your home. The power dynamics suggested by the film are interesting; it also points out that fear became an important selling point in the Ring promotional material, though to be fair, a lot of people seem to use it simply to negotiate with delivery companies (and there’s quite a lot of footage of that going on). It’s also quite interesting to come to this from the perspective of a non-user with no plans to ever use Ring; perhaps we could debate how successfully the fear agenda being proposed has actually landed, and some statistical information would be useful too. Nonetheless, there is a great range of footage here, ranging from the genuinely scary (no Ring doorbell in the world can see through a ski mask) to the diverting, to light entertainment (animals seems pretty good at triggering doorbells).

It’s clear that there is a certain political agenda at play here: as the film continues, the wording on the screen becomes more overt, after asserting that Ring may push a ‘racist and classist’ agenda, it goes further, suggesting – for example – that neighbourhood watch-style messageboards sharing Ring footage are “riddled with police”. ‘Riddled’ is clearly a loaded term; of course questions around purported falls in crime rates since Ring went into common usage deserve examination, though this is likely to fall in with older discourse around the ‘panopticon’ and what it does to human behaviour. And, these ideas are certainly citable. But, on its own merits, the clips compiled here are very interesting; this is the film’s real high point, and having to use your senses to work out what you are seeing is a strangely disconcerting experience (again, this may feel differently depending on whether you use this technology, or not).

The remaining sections spread their net very widely; the final chapter-ish feels like a chapter too far perhaps. After Ring, we move back in time to the role of the telephone (being integral to the functionality of Ring) but here, Home Invasion concentrates more on the role of the telephone in horror cinema, which it didn’t do earlier with newer technology; in fact, this is interesting as an approach, given that home invasion itself forms a horror subgenre, often encompassing CCTV, smartphones and similar. But the range of clips used during the section on the phone (which suggests that the phone once and for all revolutionised our understanding of time, place and interaction) are engaging.

From here, and maybe offering an antidote to what by now feels like an inexorable tide of tech, controlled by institutions and corporations who do not have the best interests of the common person at heart, we go back in time again to the Luddite movement. For this reviewer, this long final section sacrifices some of the film’s forward impetus; presenting the Luddites as evidence that a new way can be negotiated between people and technology isn’t fully convincing, given we know how that went; it’s tough to think of any other reason it’s in here. Two centuries later, we are pondering if AI is going to rise up and kill us. The film also needs a good proofread, given its dependence on text as a medium: there are noticeable inaccuracies, from apostrophes to the use of clunky or non-existent words like ‘logics’ and ‘violences’.

Still, despite some of these issues, as an overall project Home Invasion still has plenty to recommend it: its unorthodox, ambitious approach conveys a wealth of important, engaging information, and it’s done a superb job of assembling its footage, all packaged by a nightmarish soundscape which works really well. It’s not a horror film, but it very much could be in places.

Home Invasion featured at the Fantasia International Film Festival 2023.

Fantasia 2023: Satan Wants You

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The ‘Satanic Panic’ of the latter decades of the 20th Century serves as a deeply unedifying lesson in paranoia, exploitation and groupthink. It also reminds us of the human capacity to ignore the overt to fantasise over the covert: this impulse is still with us, now aided and abetted by the internet and social media; Pizzagate was and is, if anything, even more outlandish than its predecessor, even if (for now) failing to make such an impact on mainstream media. As such, Satan Wants You is a gripping, often exasperating, and a very important watch. It charts the birth of this phenomenon via one outlandish book, which is explored at length here.

Probably the toughest thing about writing this review is summarising just what this book – Michelle Remembers – was, how it came about and what its legacy has been: even though conspiracy theory rolls on in modern life, we do live in a different world to the 1970s in many key respects, and certainly in our expectations around doctor/patient relationships (though I would argue that our increased desire for therapy keeps the door open for less scrupulous, less professional players to exploit us; there’s always a new grift).

The book was written as a result of a collaboration between a patient – Michelle Smith herself – and her psychiatrist, Lawrence Pazder. Opening the film, podcaster Sarah Marshall introduces us to Michelle and her recovered memories as the ‘patient zero’ of the Satanic Panic. Back in 1976 (the Satanic Panic is perhaps best-known as an 80s phenomenon, though the book pre-dates this period) Michelle began making claims about a slew of horrific memories – cruel, even absurd events which happened to her during early childhood at the behest of a highly secretive (of course) Satanic cult. Forgotten by her until this point in her adult life, Michelle was able to recall what occurred thanks to the special, unorthodox therapy sessions offered to her by Pazder; Pazder encouraged her, recorded her, and to a large extent refracted her scattergun recollections via his own experiences, ideas and beliefs. The book itself is a summation of this process, a folie à deux perhaps, only one latterly influenced by power, money, influence and – lust.

The book was a sensation; well of course it was, as it made claims about a well-organised, vicious, hidden cabal of devil worshippers operating in North America; people, being people, can’t help themselves. It also had a bulletproof justification for all of its lewd, bloodthirsty content – a defensible front, as this was Michelle ostensibly warning society about the nefarious goings-on in its midst. Speaking to Michelle’s sister, the film is able to glean some vital context for the type of person Michelle became as an adult; theirs was an unhappy home, with lots of house moves, a violent, alcoholic father and a downtrodden mother; this, maybe, goes some way towards explaining some of Michelle’s traits – but this is just a small part of the whole.

Steadily, a picture emerges of the early relationship between Michelle and religious faith; when she began to make her claims about Satanic abuse, the Catholic Church, perhaps already buoyed up by a newly-devout (read: scared) flock due to The Exorcist in ’73, was more than ready to give her complete credence (the Pope himself offered a foreword in Michelle Remembers). So it wasn’t just Pazder, not even in the early years, as fundamental as he was to the new life which unfolded before Michelle (and which he enjoyed alongside her). Tours, talks, travel, but perhaps most of all wealth and influence came along in quick succession. A rather more complex representation of Michelle comes out at about this point: was she simply a pliant, authority-motivated people pleaser, or was there more to her? How motivated was Michelle by her interest in Pazder in a capacity beyond being just her psychiatrist? How responsible was the Venn diagram between organised religion and psychiatric medicine? In interviews, but particularly in her transcripts, Michelle is as apologetic as she is grotesque, but – as it comes across from Pazder’s not-wholly-unbiased ex-wife and daughter – not above attention-seeking, and certainly not above selfishness. Families, including theirs, were destroyed by the book’s legacy.

Elsewhere, Michelle’s story led to a great blossoming of unreason, a snowball effect which went so far as to have people guarding newborns in British Columbia against Satanic cult kidnap; no one, it seems, with the exception of the Church of Satan (who actually brought a defamation lawsuit against the book) dared cast doubt on any of this. It was all too mysterious, too salacious; to call it out was maybe to suggest that you were a Satanist yourself. How do you win that one? Speaking on behalf of the CoS, Blanche Barton is a welcome voice of reason throughout.

Whilst you could come to this film as a complete outsider, knowing nothing about the topic, my feeling is that Satan Wants You is somewhat more for those already aware of the Satanic Panic and its origins: it gets going quickly off the bat and keeps up this pace and detail across its ninety minutes. A visually very smart documentary, it’s impeccably shot, edited and soundtracked, with old footage, new interviews, on-screen text (excerpts from transcripts, interviews and sections from the book) and lots of material which will certainly not have been seen by many people, or not in one place at least. Thorough and expansive, with a keen undercurrent of disbelief that this ever unfolded the way it did, Satan Wants You follows the story right through, covering its twists and developments in suitable detail. It feels very fresh and new. And perhaps it should, because this kind of paranoid racketeering never feels fully past tense. It can’t fully answer the ‘why?’ but it shines a light on what happened, and perhaps could happen again. This is great work by directors Steve J. Adams and Sean Horlor.

Satan Wants You featured at the Fantasia International Film Festival 2023.

Fantasia 2023: Hippo

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Hippo (2023) isn’t a particularly easy film to sum up, much less to recommend along easily definable lines: it’s an often moody, deeply eclectic, art-house-leaning project with a storyline which is both minimal and yet…profound, at times. It doesn’t sit snugly in any one genre, it moves from vast or unpalatable topics into domestic familiarity and back again, but it rarely provides much sense of which of those two – seismic, or cosy – is coming next. How am I doing so far? However, for all its harder-to-read or harder to pin down elements, it eventually weaves together a strangely compelling story of its key characters. These two teenagers, for all of the (often self-made) chaos which unfolds around them, grab hold of you: they’re vulnerable, they’re trying to find their own way, and you can’t help but become invested in them, come what may.

We first meet Adam – nickname Hippo – and his adopted sister Buttercup – at the grave of their father, on the fifth anniversary of his death. Adam (Kimball Farley) is at that age and stage where he’s trying to see a future for himself as a man; this shapes his reflections on his father and whilst a graveside is a pretty suitable place to be morbid, Hippo keeps it going wherever he goes (which isn’t far). Buttercup (Lilla Kizlinger) came to this family having already had a family life in Hungary, so she brings different obsessions and concerns, but: she’s having her own existential crisis at the age of seventeen. Newly aware of her sexuality, she can only really refract it through her Catholic upbringing, blurring the lines between a new awareness of her potential to be a mother with the story of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. It’s a tough gig. Hey, her desire for a boyfriend eventually takes her to Craigslist, which perhaps in the 1990s wasn’t so entrenched in common knowledge as a place of unknown terrors. (This also triggers one of the film’s most intensely weird, and hilarious episodes. I’ve never laughed so much at the appearance of a simple CD.)

Mother Ethel (Eliza Roberts) is quite a character in her own right: her tolerance is infinite and she takes her children’s attempts to carve out their own paths with a kindly sort of disinterest, but she has her own things going on: she’s a big believer in extra-terrestrial infiltration, a sentence which sounds far less strange coming in a week of official testimonials essentially saying the same thing. Maybe Ethel knew what was going on first. Oh, and the theme of alien life turns out to be an important one. Still, she tries to help her kids navigate early adulthood, albeit that her ‘birds and bees’ talk probably causes them more confusion. Hippo’s crisis of masculinity increasingly gets blended with a kind of god complex, crossed with the kind of sexual cluelessness which has probably started a lot of wars. Buttercup more and more wants a family of her own, as much as she still relies on Hippo to underwrite her idea of ‘family’.

That’s the essential set-up in Hippo, though none of its conclusions come easily and nor do they come via expected plot developments or uses of tone. For example, the arrival of Buttercup’s first-ever date, the odious (and potentially dangerous) Darwin (Jesse Pimentel) underlines the naivety of the entire family unit, but it’s not necessarily played as a ‘threat from outside’ – it skates close to that line, but it becomes too ridiculous to fear, even given what happens later. The film keeps up its self-referential, self-effacing tone, even when it’s delving into significant ideas about selfhood and agency, which it certainly does. Shot in crisp black and white which draws all of the heat out of the film’s opening summer setting, it looks a lot like an arty, experimental film (and say, was I the only person who felt the odd nod to Eraserhead? Just me?) But there’s some mumblecore stuff going on too, particularly given its focus on teenage characters. Some of its content can be quite shocking; it almost casually throws in the concept of incest in the first few minutes, and via the film’s narrator (Eric Roberts) who speaks throughout, helping viewers to navigate, but feeling for all the world like a character here. Getting mired in which pre-existing genres Hippo does or doesn’t belong to isn’t perhaps the most useful way to assess it, but it can be hard to step outside that sometimes. And there does come a point, quite early in the film, where you either settle into what it’s trying to do, or you reject it.

Around it all though, however outlandish it gets, the film develops an unmistakeable kind of warmth. Once you become aware that this is a film unlikely to offer much in the way of denouement, and once you realise it’ll have to just sit across a range of genres, it’s still a story to draw you in. It builds a weirdly charming, aberrant little world which feels quite like anything else. The highly dramatic performance given by Farley (who also co-wrote the film alongside director Mark H. Rapaport) works well against the quiet, calm performance given by Kizlinger. All in all, the film achieves a weird and wonderful mixture of elements. And I’ll never look at a Super-Soaker the same way, thanks.

Hippo (2023) featured at the Fantasia International Film Festival 2023.

Unfriending (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Don’t be misled by the title ‘Unfriending’ – as I was at first – into thinking this film has anything much to do with the kind of ‘unfriending’ we associate with social media and the internet (and for which the term was coined). Whilst this film covers the kinds of attitudes to friendships which are perhaps more prevalent in the social media age, it’s rather an honest-to-goodness dinner party drama which edges into dark, horror-adjacent territory. Things get uncomfortable, strained, then strange and horrifying, with a very dark key theme which is teased apart and explored throughout the film. It works very well; it’s low-key, but brutal in its way nonetheless.

We start with a young man getting ready at the mirror in the bathroom of a grand house, before heading downstairs to help with the prep (read: to complain about the prep) for an important dinner party. A dinner party: already we’re primed for the worst, as no one makes films about successful dinner parties. Mind you, what are we calling ‘success’ here? We glean that the dinner is all in honour of a mutual friend called Isaac: hosts Blake (Sean Meldrum) and girlfriend May (Simone Jetsun) have pulled out all the stops to make it a memorable meal, even if Blake emanates envy and irritation. So why are they hosting this dinner at all, given that Blake can hardly repress his dislike of Isaac – one of his best, longest friends? And wait: why did May just mention a ‘funeral’? Is Isaac ill?

More guests arrive and, as they talk, it turns out that this is a kind of intervention, rather than a simple social catch-up. But it’s not an intervention where friends and sometimes family get together to do the best they can to help someone thrive; the big idea here is that they all want to convince Isaac to commit suicide. They have, they feel, rock-solid reasons for encouraging him to do this, allowing themselves plenty of time to mull it over on his behalf. The film takes some time to settle into its groove here, being a very dialogue-heavy affair which takes place across a few rooms of the house for the most part, and it takes a moment to to get us into that; this isn’t a high-action thing, and it lags a little as it sets out its store.

Essentially, we as viewers are soon ready for Isaac himself to turn up, because he has been built up by this discussion by his peers (particularly by the odious Blake, whose one-upmanship with his friend of thirty years is made clear). But, at last, the man of the moment (Alex Stone) arrives: jaded, nervous, instantly sympathetic, and actually, unfortunately, quite excited to see everyone. What’s less expected, given the discourse on his many personal failings, is that he has turned up with a hot date in tow. Lexxi (Golden Madison) is an outsider here, and as such, a complicating factor.

The plot thickens as the night progresses. As it does so, the conversation (and the action) become increasingly mean, to the point of being excruciatingly cruel in places (and if you’ve ever rooted for an underdog, then you’re bound to feel something for Isaac). But all of this accompanies a series of pleasing twists and developments, so that – however unpleasant the original premise is – it doesn’t define the plot in simple terms. There’s more to come here.

There’s much to admire in Unfriending, even if with some of it, you do have to wait for it (the film’s script does an excellent job of delivering little clues and references which it picks up on later – it’s a pleasing thing to experience, showing lots of skill from writers/directors Brett M. Butler and Jason G. Butler). The little visual details – like Blake draining the bag from the cheapo box of wine – show nice attention to detail, whilst moments of awkwardness and absurdity (with more and more physical aspects) add depth to the conversation-heavy style of the film. Some of the initial comments on ‘consent’, ‘cancel culture’ and similar feel a little clumsy, though, as above, the script returns to these ideas, fleshing them out and reiterating their relevance. The sharper edges of the dialogue are all nicely handled and super mean-spirited; some of the repartee is very strong.

There’s decent acting here too, in some cases from relatively new actors: you can certainly love to loathe this bizarre bunch, and the performance style matches the central premise well. Of course the question has to be, why are these people even friends? Well, these things happen; we have another recently-coined word for it, ‘frenemy’; the film’s social satire picks up on the relationships between these people and sees them through to a satisfying conclusion.

In some respects, this film feels like it could have been a stage play: that’s not to disrespect it as a film, but just to point out that the rate and style of its reveals, its use of sets and its use of its script to carry its plot along feel like they could work in that environment, too. But the way it all comes together and the ways it grows its characters makes for an engaging indie movie which has plenty to say, and interesting ways to say it.

Unfriending (2023) is hitting the summer festival circuit at present, hitting Cobb International on Friday, August 4th.

Fantasia 2023: Restore Point

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

As the gap between science fact and science fiction narrows year on year, some of the best sci-fi simply takes recognisable elements from our day-to-day lives and gives them a tweak or two; that’s often enough to make us question the new normal in some way, and some great cinema has already appeared as a result. Restore Point (2023) does this too, but its key conceit centres around something far more profound and – in this way and to this extent, at least – hitherto unobtainable. But still, all of its developments are made to feel damn close at hand in this often inventive, provocative and smart film.

It’s 2041 in Central Europe: inequality is no thing of the past in this close future. Instead, social issues have escalated to the point that violent crime is fully endemic. Of course, removing the inequalities themselves would be a monstrous, difficult task; instead, a philanthropic organisation called the Rohan Institute has created a piece of technology which can resurrect people who die an untimely death. All they need is to maintain regular back-ups using the company tech: this is the ‘restore point’ of the title. It’s like a cross between a save point in a game, and the ultimate in life insurance. However, it seems that not everyone is fully on board with this techno-ideology; a terrorist organisation called River of Life rejects the notion of a deathless death, and they have been responsible for a number of attacks on the Institute.

We see one such attack-by-proxy taking place as the film opens; detective Em (Andrea Mohylová) is on the trail of a hostage-taker who has been systematically executing prisoners in a well-shielded location (which resists her scanning technology). A gunshot alerts her to the correct floor in the building: ignoring her orders to wait for backup, she tries to save some of the lives she can, but the assailant eludes her, falling readily to his old-fashioned, permanent death – a fate which seems to appal Em, product of her times that she is, but as it turns out she has a particular interest in this organisation, wishing to take them down for personal reasons.

Likewise, River of Life seems to have a personal interest in the Institute, too, seemingly murdering two individuals, a married couple called Kurlstat; David Kurlstat (Matej Hádek) had been working on a new scheme for Rohan, just at the point in time when the Institute was preparing to privatise its services (citing the need to improve those services, though its critics fear a two-tier, overtly wealth-based restoration system is really on the cards). It’s a fraught time, and things grow more complicated when David – believed dead-dead, with no up-to-date restore point – turns up alive, seeking Em’s assistance. There’s a conspiracy taking place, he claims, one which strikes at the heart of the Institute but, as is so often the case, showing that the divide between blame and blamelessness is never straightforward.

In many respects – as you might glean from the last sentence – the main narrative here is a familiar one. We’re used to determined, lone-wolf detectives getting drawn into power struggles and corruption, then struggling to balance duty against conscience. This is handled well in Restore Point; there’s a sense of a steadily ratcheting story, with a plausible (if very closed-off) central protagonist in Mohylová. And, those familiar ideas of secrecy, subterfuge and rebellion help us to orientate through the plot, actually; they’re all-too recognisable. This orientation is particularly helpful as the film’s more expansive ideas develop; rogue hard drives and recovered info are commonplace, sure, but questions about life and death remain more mysterious, and even if some of the surprise factor wears off with regards life, death and coming back from the latter state, it’s still an interesting, subtle idea negotiated through technology which looks like it belongs in our timeline (which provides a nicely uncanny sensation). Restore Point plays around with old, accepted divisions – not only life and death, but also presence/absence, eroding those boundaries too. Things suddenly turn out to be in doubt in the world of Restore Point. The Kurlstats, for example, have already been removed to the morgue, but holograms of their bodies remain in situ for the police to investigate the crime scene as-was. People are there and not there; nothing is certain.

Even the restore point itself is fraught with risk and uncertainty. It promises much, but yet the ‘undiscovered country’ is no less mysterious. The film opts not to investigate the physical and emotional impact of taking this journey in full: it uses death and restoration as more of a philosophical point (with one nod to a classic piece of horror cinema aside) which is a missed opportunity in some respects, though tonally, the film is clear and consistent just the way it is. It has a wealth of visual tricks and lots of grand, nearly-here urban vistas; it looks great. It was great to see a little reference to Arnold Böcklin in there, too, and Pino’s Resurrection of Lazarus (which actually reminds us that important organisations have been promising ‘death is not the end’ for rather longer than we’ve had modern technology). Restore Point tantalises, rather than answers all its own questions, but it’s an engaging and intriguing piece of world building which rewards your attention.

Restore Point (2023) featured at the Fantasia International Film Festival 2023.