Tag: FrightFest

Wake Up

Posted on by Paul Risker

In the fourth feature by the Canadian filmmaking collective, Road Kill Superstars (RKSS), François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell, a group of Gen Z activists sneak into a home superstore before closing. They plan to make a political statement against the company’s active role in deforestation by vandalising the store and posting protest videos to social media. Their plan, however, hits a problem when they encounter Kevin (Turlough Convery), a security guard keen to reconnect with his primitive side. He sees them as prey on his hunting ground and when the hunt begins, the activists must survive the night.

Wake Up is the type of film that encourages its audience to kick back and enjoy as all hell breaks loose. Borrowing the popular phrase, it does exactly what it says on the tin, it’s a rollicking 80 minutes of fun – for us, not the unfortunate characters fighting for their lives. However, it lacks the guttural punch of other survivalist films like John Carpenter’s classic, Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale (2000) and Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin’s Ready or Not (2019).

While some may salivate for more excessive violence, the hunt and the kills are entertaining and creative enough. The main qualm will be that the characters’ motivations and interpersonal dynamics are underdeveloped. RKSS, working from a screenplay by Alberto Marini, does the minimum necessary. They introduce a potential romantic motivation for new recruit Tyler (Kyle Scudder), and Ethan’s (Benny O. Arthur) distrust of him, as well as one activist talking about how stores like this put her father out of business. This contrasts with other survivalist films that take time to develop the interpersonal dynamics of its characters, their pasts and motivations. It’s a decision that’s not to Wake Up’s detriment, because it can be enjoyed as a breezier take on this type of story that’s crossed with the slasher.

Wake Up also leans into the archetypal story of the man who has reached breaking point, calls to mind Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down (1993). The construction of cause and effect in pitting the activists against Kevin, may also be a nod to Frankenstein, and the traditions of the sympathetic horror monster.

RKSS and Marini refuse to emphasise the environmental activism angle and enter the timely and contentious conversation about what’s an appropriate form or way to protest. There’s a version of Wake Up that’s more consciously engaged with these social anxieties that would certainly elevate its presence. The filmmakers, however, slip in metaphors that may be missed in favour of the film’s orgy of violence. An effective touch is how the activists who are being killed off one-by-one wear animal masks, metaphorically becoming the thing they’re advocating for and are trying to protect. In the aftermath, we’re reminded of how the engines of commerce and industry continue to endure, despite righteous indignation from the conscionable.

Wake Up continues RKSS’ rebellious affront towards authority. From the orphaned teen’s battle with the older and ruthless warlord and heroics to save the girl in Turbo Kid (2015), to teen Davey spying on his neighbour, a police officer, who he suspects of murder in Summer of 84 (2018), and three young slackers against a corporation in We Are Zombies (2023), RKSS have stacked their films with young characters standing up to the status quo. They challenge authority and institutions of power in an effort to empower themselves.

RKSS are drawn to stories where the young and innocent step out into the adult world, where they try to become heroes of their own stories. These films appeal to the audience’s inner child. They are offering a nostalgic reconnection with not only youthful imagination and desire to grow up, but also the types of films prevalent in the 80s and 90s that tapped into this sense of being. RKSS’ films convey this sense of fun with heavier undertones, where innocence is in peril. All the time, they’re moving between diverse settings, from an apocalyptic world to suburbia and now a deserted home superstore.

Wake Up screened as part of FrightFest at the 2024 Glasgow Film Festival.

Amulet

Posted on by Paul Risker

Actress turned director Romola Garai’s feature début is a cry from femininity about the horror of what it is to be a woman in a patriarchal and misogynistic world. Ironically, she chooses to express this through the form of horror cinema, whose detractors label as misogynistic, and yet it can be said to hone in on the strength of femininity against unrelenting adversity.

Curiously, this cry comes through the attention to Tomaz (Alec Secareanu), an immigrant and ex-soldier from an unnamed country, trying to survive in London. Sister Claire (Imelda Staunton) offers him a place to stay with Magda (Carla Juri), a young woman whose days are devoted to caring for her ailing mother. In exchange for the rent free accommodation, Tomaz will maintain the decaying house. As he begins to develop feelings for Magda, he cannot set aside the feeling that there’s an insidious presence inside the mother’s room.

One of the interesting ideas Garai brings up is around the subject of forgiveness. Tomaz confides in Sister Claire that he tried to help someone, who was hurt as a result. He tells her, “Before your God, the ancients, they didn’t believe that you could forgive yourself. It wasn’t yours to give.”

Amulet is a moral play, a warning that we can spatially distance ourselves from our sins, but emotionally and psychologically our past is as inseparable from us as our shadow. The director opts to not rigorously explore the theme, instead she breaks our hearts by allowing Tomaz’s haunting memories to reveal how they were hurt. Sidestepping the intellectual approach to themes and ideas, Garai uses the reflection on forgiveness as an emotional device to deepen our interest in her broken protagonist, whose secret stings us like betrayal.

While certainly horror, the film is also a psychological drama. The story segues from the haunting experiences of war, the unpleasant experiences of the immigrant, and the unrelenting pressure to be a carer, into the fantastical realm of horror.

Progressing with a slow pace, Amulet is a gruelling watch, tapping into the hardships and trauma of its characters. What holds our interest is the hope of two lost souls finding one another, and the brooding and suspenseful atmosphere that in the final act descends into a full-blooded horror. Garai rewards our patience with some delightfully nuanced moments, from suspenseful jumps, to body horror and acts of insidious intent.

One of the tantalising things about Amulet is the friction between a dark and dank vision that leans towards British social realism, and the fantastical that requires us to suspend our disbelief. The teasing presence of an insidious horror is a means to give Tomaz a purpose, while Garai explores the psychological drama. The story is of a man haunted by his past that intertwines with a feminine revenge fantasy.

The clichéd genre tropes of masculine cruelty and women as victims are present. If there’s the idea that in war the first victim is innocence, by the film’s conclusion, have the female characters lost their innocence? Is there a metamorphosis from woman as victim, to woman as perpetrator? Amulet creeps out of the crevices of the vengeance found in the Old Testament, although the story leans more towards the Buddhist concept of the cycle of pain and suffering. The events of the film are only a moment in a beginningless cycle of suffering between men and women, that has no resolution. The interesting point is Garai presents a moment for Tomaz to break the cycle, but in his fear he rejects the opportunity, instead consoling himself in philosophical ideas about forgiveness.

In his past memories, we see him reading one of Hannah Arendt’s books, whose title is offscreen. The political theorist wrote on the subject of violence in the twentieth century, and if this is her 1970 work On Violence, it’s no coincidence that Garai has her soldier in a country at war reading this text. Violence feeds into the cycle of suffering we witness unfold in the story, and if the director is pursuing the emotional over the intellectual, she creates a space for the audience to enter the film. She invites us to bring our own knowledge of philosophy to bear in the critique of the story, through which the films intellectual nature emerges.

Amulet played at Arrow Video FrightFest Halloween 2021 and will be released in the UK on January 28th (2022). On VoD on Monday, January 28th.

Last Survivors

Posted on by Paul Risker

The decision whether to believe in humanity or to despair with its fate confronts all of us. Director Drew Mylrea’s American dystopian thriller Last Survivors is a fitting film for our contemporary society. Drastic decisions have ripped apart the divisions that already existed, creating for some of us a sense of political or social isolation, propelling us into despair.

These anxieties are present in Last Survivors, that introduces us to Troy (Stephen Moyer), who has lived off-the-grid with his son Jake (Drew Van Acker) for more than 20 years. With the memories of the devastating war visceral and real, any trespassers on their woodland utopia are shown no mercy. Sensing his son’s growing curiosity about the outside world, he warns him of the dangers of the lurking marauders, and the need to strike first without remorse. However, when Jake happens across a beautiful woman Henrietta (Alicia Silverstone), the utopia Troy has built is set to unravel.

On the surface, Troy is an echo of primitive strength, self-sufficient and living off the land. Over the opening scene, Jake’s voiceover tells us, “There are those who are prepared for opportunities and set backs, and those who are not. Luck doesn’t exist. After the wars it was very obvious who was prepared and who wasn’t. Man had fallen far away from his primitive roots.” In a world flirting with catastrophe, the film poses us with the question whether we’re ready, and are we out of touch with our primal nature?

We should be cautious of the narratives we create for ourselves and those told to us by storytellers and their characters. Underneath this display of strength, Last Survivors is a story about mental and emotional fragility, and the rabbit hole that lays beyond the survival instinct and self-reliance. It’s a story about trauma, and the way the mind uses coping/defence mechanisms that allow us to survive.

If film can be compared to magic, then Mylrea uses smoke and mirrors to misdirect his audience. It never feels that it cheapens the overall narrative, rather it helps to build a considered story as its themes and ideas gradually emerge. He almost answers the errors of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village (2004), by knowing how to use a revelation to serve the story, to evolve it as opposed to be a surprise that goes nowhere.

It’s important that Mylrea uses the point of identification with Troy’s memories to expose our impulsive vulnerability to identify with a character. By doing so, we are closer to Jake’s experience of discovering an alternative reality than the one he has grown up believing. The themes and ideas resonate not only intellectually, but with a visceral emotion as we join Jake on his journey narrative, a coming-of-age that sees him learn about himself and his world, stepping out of his father’s shadow. Last Survivors is a dramatic story, however, its roots lie in a right of passage that we all experience. Mylrea frames storytelling as an exaggerated version of reality.

Troy talks about not filling one’s heart with hate, and yet his heart is filled with fear. The story explores the connection between fear and traumatic memories, and how it fills someone’s heart with hate. Troy’s rhetoric evolves from one fuelled by a distrust and fear of others, a survivalist mindset, to a misogyny. This feeds into the theme of nature versus nurture.

Misogyny is a form of violence that’s both cultivated, and a response to destabilising experiences on the psyche, but it’s not something we’re born with. It can be caught up in the tangled ways we process memories and respond to experiences, but at its worst, it adds fuel to our patriarchal culture.

Troy’s ambivalence reminds us how blinded we are to our internal selves, lacking a self-awareness that makes us susceptible to fear, other negative emotions and experiences. Jake’s battle between his nature and his father’s nurturing influence is representative of free will to shape ourselves, against the fierce forces of our surroundings, people and events that try to mould us. It positions each of us as having our soul fought over. For Jake, his father and Henrietta are those conflicting forces, moulding Last Survivors into an unorthodox love triangle.

Jake’s relationship with Henrietta drifts into cliché, but if Mylrea were to omit these moments, it would disavow the yearning that she speaks about. We may wish to retreat from society, but that doesn’t mean we don’t desire a human connection. Opposite Troy, her story brings a nuance to the drama. Both want to escape and create a space for themselves, but she is conflicted between hope and despair, that nurtures Last Survivors into a sensitive evocation of thoughts and feelings that binds us all.

Last Survivors played at Arrow Video FrightFest Halloween 2021

Bad Candy

Posted on by Paul Risker

Anthology films are wrapped treats, but whereas we pick the treat we want from the assortment box of chocolates, we can never be sure of what treat the filmmakers have in store for us next. Will it be a haunted house story, a woman terrorised, kids preyed upon by evil or supernatural forces, a gruesome slasher, or a suspenseful treat? If the stories are consistent excitement is sparked, an urgency to make the most of each short story, but if not, the accumulated disappointment feels laborious.

In Scott B. Hansen and Desiree Connell’s American anthology Bad Candy, it’s Halloween in New Salem. DJ Chilly Billy (Corey Taylor) hosts the annual Psychotronic FM Halloween show, with his sidekick Paul (Zach Galligan), who share with their listeners scary stories. The nightmarish tales include the story of a girl who rids herself of her abusive stepfather, one woman’s sexual encounter with a corpse, murder in a toilet stall and a trickster who gets a taste of his own tricks.

Many of the characters who have been at a Halloween party know one another, or are connected through other people. Each experience is their own ordeal, and there’s something satisfying about seeing these crisscrossing stories. It’s not the intimacy that creates this feeling of satisfaction, it’s the playfulness of a mini-universe being forged in small town America.

Pitched by FrightFest as “the best Halloween anthology since Trick ‘R Treat”, it does its predecessor an injustice to mention it in the same breath. Bad Candy begins well enough with the story about a girl who can manipulate her reality through her drawings, or the trickster who falls foul of a more deadly trickster. A moral through-line is introduced that the directors attempt to thread, but it’s never ambitious enough to find creativity in the strange twists of fate that can condemn immorality in the genre.

We’re far removed from the storytelling around the camp fire. When we think of sitting there, the warmth of the flames in the cold night air, there’s an emphasis on building the story, the suspense, the anticipation. This is largely absent here, and there’s a lack of nuance.

It leans into concepts and too often abandons developing the stories, and when they do, we’re left to feel that the concepts are more satisfying. Hansen and Connell struggle to overcome teasing a bigger idea if they’re unable to explore it in the time restrictive short. The opening story with its mix of childhood innocence that’s darkened by the adult world, and the predatory presence of the supernatural, is aching to be developed.

At its lowest, Bad Candy is an unapologetic exhibition of nastiness and titillation – two gruesome murders, and two female characters positioned as sexual objects for the male gaze. The one dressed in a nurses uniform grinds atop of a corpse, while the other dressed in a police uniform, fights off her tormentor.

It’s difficult to not question this objectification as society continues to struggle with its patriarchal heritage. We question whether we should expect and ask for more, yet there’s a pleasure in the simple horror of murder and survival. The scene with the corpse is played out with an intentional combination of black humour and horror, and the latter woman tormented by a childhood friend in a MAGA hat, could be seen as a metaphorical insight into privileged American masculinity.

Bad Candy is a reminder that we can be simultaneously entertained and frustrated by the familiar, but at its heart, there’s a side to horror that’s about creating a morbid and violent arousal in its audience. Horror isn’t always comfortable, nor is it sensitive. It’s a genre that’s provocative, but beneath that provocation there’s an intent to turn the horror into laughs and smiles, or make a point, whether or not it’s particularly insightful, which here may at times be the venting of anger over America’s recent ordeal. The greater frustration is that our wait for the next great horror anthology is not over.

Bad Candy previewed at FrightFest 2021. Released on Digital and DVD 4th October.

Demonic

Posted on by Paul Risker

Neill Blomkamp returns from his hiatus with the Canadian supernatural possession horror Demonic, shot in secret in British Columbia last year. Since his impressive début with the South African set dystopian sci-fi District 9 (2009), the director suffered a lukewarm response to Elysium (2013), that worsened with the critical dismissal of Chappie (2015). Demonic risks continuing that downward trajectory, with a work that will leave its audience feeling deflated, the distance growing between first impressions and his lacklustre maturation.

The story centres on Carly (Carly Pope), who unleashes a terrifying demon by entering the mind of her comatose, serial killer mother. It’s all you need to know going into the film, and as expected it’s technically well made, but what’s glaringly absent is an attention to the craft of storytelling.

Focused on the demon’s rouse, Blomkamp makes the fatal misstep of forgetting that it’s as much about the journey as it is the destination. If a film is the means of expressing an idea, here’s the picture of soulless storytelling, that can be derided as a painting by numbers exercise. The story is advanced at the expense of character development, and in two separate moments characters labour under heavy-handed exposition. They’re the equivalent of pawns on the chessboard – minor pieces that are expendable. The infantile imaginings of the heroic act of throwing oneself into a conflict, echoes simple stories such as David versus Goliath. In essence, Demonic is about a test of willpower between the human and the supernatural, but it lacks ideas to make it a compelling one.

Possession horror is traditionally a traumatic physical ordeal, and in a change of tone, Blomkamp flirts with the idea of what if Carly’s interaction with her possessed mother could be taken it into a mental space, that would then bleed into the waking state? Taking the idea of possession into another realm of consciousness or reality is a curious one. Horror often plays around with the idea of the doorways that link the physical world of the living with the supernatural, metaphysical and dream realms. We’re left to imagine for ourselves the realms technology could open, and with it the danger of the doorways that threats can enter, or lure us through.

All signs point to Demonic being an early draft of a story rushed into production – the idea let down by the storyteller. What’s left is an idea propping up a rudimentary genre picture, that feels tired and worn-out long before its end. While it promises much, it lacks the thoughtfulness to move past the simplicity, to become something more than an archetypal ordeal for the protagonist.

Blomkamp positions himself as a technician and not a storyteller. The hope District 9 gave rise to, that we were witnessing a filmmaker of note emerging is fading, if it that hope has not been extinguished. There’s no ambition, no courage of conviction that we originally saw back in 2009, and most significantly, it’s a film that commits the gravest of sins. A wasted opportunity.

Demonic was the opening night film of FrightFest 2021. Released in UK cinemas and on Premium Digital 27th August. It will be available on Blu-Ray and DVD 25th October.

Woman of the Photographs

Posted on by Paul Risker

This Japanese romantic-horror, set in a small town near the coast, follows solitary middle-aged photographer and retouching artist Kai (Hideki Nagai), who out on a forest trek encounters social media model and sponsored influencer, Kyoko (Itsuki Otaki). They meet abruptly when she falls off a verge trying to take a photograph, leaving a noticeable bloody scar on her chest. Unexpectedly, the two strangers do not go their separate ways, and when she observes him retouching a customers photograph in his shop, she asks him if he can erase the scar in her pictures. But when her social media profile suffers a drop-off in fan engagement, she begins posting images that show her imperfect beauty. Confusion sets in as she loses sense of the real versus the manufactured version of herself.

The early impression of Woman of the Photographs is of a gentler type of comedy, subverting our expectations of a darker tale. The cinematography and performances play to the beat of a humorous rhythm, and the interaction between the pair as Kyoko tries to engage with the silent Kai, who flinches at her touch, is wryly amusing. They offer the perfect juxtaposition of energetic sociability and detached stillness. Watching her work her way into his life, staying overnight without any physical intimacy, Kushida reveals his hand.

The art of the film in one regard is the unspoken. An emphasis is placed on observing how Kai nonchalantly responds to her presence, the etiquette of his actions, gestures and habits forming a strong sense of who he is. This goes together with a few scenes with an unnamed customer, played by Toshiaki Inomata, whose daughter has passed and who knew Kai’s father. He speaks sparingly of not only his own personal tragedy, but gives us an insight into the solitary middle-aged man, and why he’s only able to engage with women by way of retouching their photographs.

Kushida’s skill is appreciating the value of words and silence, albeit using as few words as needed. The verbal restraint gives the emotions of the characters a weight, not only because it’s how Kai communicates, but it emphasises the internal world they all inhabit.This is a mental space that we must see and acknowledge, from which moments rich with feeling emerge. Inomata’s character illustrates this when he’s sparing with his words in an earlier scene, that informs a sensitive moment he shares with his wife later on.

40 minutes in and the unsettling horror begins to emerge, although from the beginning the film feels deliberately askew. Unlike Jud Cremata’s single-shot American horror, Let’s Scare Julie (2020), Kushida embraces the edit. He’s not interested in smooth cinematography, he wants the jagged edges, he wants to use the back and forth cutting to jostle us. In addition, an exaggerated sound design almost echoes the noticeable scratching sound of Kai’s Photoshop pen in the early scenes. This approach makes the normal everyday world we can see onscreen feel odd, and goes beyond aesthetic to tap into a deeper idea of the levels of consciousness.

It is fair to say that Woman of the Photographs stylistically contrasts our mental versus our physical reality. It conveys something human – to be physically present in one place, but be elsewhere mentally and emotionally. There are moments late in the film where Kyoko appears to exist on two planes – in Kei’s apartment above the shop, but also in the sea, a place he would photograph her. She slips between a conscious awareness of her surroundings and the subconscious of her imagination. Lost in the imagery that relates to the confusion and pain of placing an emphasis on how others see her, and the way the interaction between the water, objects and her body are symbolic.

The female customer who introduces Kyoko to the idea of image manipulation says, “I believe that myself reflected in the eyes of others is my true self… We can love ourselves only through others’ eyes.” The themes and ideas at the heart of the film are unlikely to decrease in their relevance, cautioning us to the danger of finding a sense of self-worth and acceptance through others. Instead we need to show ourselves compassion and understanding so that we can discover a sustainable feeling of personal value.

For many of us, there is a deep intimacy we share with Kyoko’s experiences. Kushida is touching upon human nature and its inevitable vulnerabilities that are a common source of anxiety. In this context, Woman of the Photographs is a horror story about what it is to be human. Its visual playfulness and ideas many of us can relate to through social media interaction and a basic need to be loved and accepted, makes it difficult to not be enraptured and unsettled by this impressive feature directorial debut.

Woman of the Photographs played at Arrow Video FrightFest Digital Edition 2.

Held

Posted on by Paul Risker

Characters with their backs against the wall are an impulsive hook on which a filmmaker can engage their audience. Playing on or sensationalising a common fear of entrapment and loss of control however, can create a swell of frustration. Directed by Chris Lofting and Travis Cluff, from a screenplay by lead actress Jill Awbrey, Held is a misguided effort, a mix of success and failure. By scratching at a deep social desire for equality and change, they fail to immerse us in the plight of its female protagonist from start to finish. Where they succeed is in creating an effective piece of provocative filmmaking, that asks us to decide how we feel in response.

On their nine-year wedding anniversary, Emma (Jill Awbrey) and Henry (Bart Johnson) are looking to reignite the spark in their relationship. They take a vacation to a isolated luxury rental home, complete with smart house features and integrated security, in an isolated and nondescript part of America. Waking the next morning, they find themselves trapped inside. A voice tells them that they’re being watched, and if they are obedient, they will be able to leave unharmed, but it warns them that disobedience will have consequences. With an intimate knowledge of their marriage, the mysterious voice requests that they role-play the perfect couple, even as fractures in their relationship are revealed.

Hitchcock spoke about how you come in at the last possible moment, and leave at the earliest convenience. Held opens with an unnecessary scene that remains so. The only possible explanations for its inclusion are to tease us about why this is happening to Emma and Henry, or because it’s part of Emma’s character development. There are problems with either explanation. The twist isn’t well disguised, and we watch in vain, hoping the film will find a creative way around what we expect will happen. This negates the effectiveness of any attempt to tease us about a possible connection between her past trauma, and their entrapment. Neither is it character development – the only purpose it serves is to position Emma as a victim. The trauma of sexual violence explains her nervous disposition, but when it’s revealed that she has cheated on Henry, it throws our perception of her character into conflict.

A scenes necessity is decided by the story being told, and a comparison of note is Rose Glass’s Saint Maud (2019), which begins with a brief flashback into the character’s traumatised past. It’s a teasing look into the reason for her religious conversion, and forms a narrative that reflects on the theme of faith as solace. Lofting, Cluff and Awbrey fail to build on Emma’s opening trauma, and they only complicate matters by presenting her first as a victim, then as an adulteress. Ironically, given who has written the screenplay, Emma is symbolic of the genre’s habitual nature to brutally use women as an object for suffering, either sexually violated, or as a punishment for their sexual choices and indiscretions.

Eventually, control becomes the core theme of the film, showing little restraint in its patriarchal rhetoric. Women are objects who belong at their husband’s side, and it’s he, the man who controls the marriage. Women must be obedient and show their husband love. Held’s male characters and not the film attack gender equality, and dismiss it as misguided political correctness.

The story space, especially in genre and horror cinema plays to nightmare scenarios. In this context, Awbrey’s story is a nightmare, a push back against the deep social desire for equality and change. Emma, like so many women before her, notably the ‘final girl’ must survive the conflict into which she is thrust. This asks questions about female empowerment and strength through genre cinema. Is the only way a woman can be empowered through violence? If it is, then it’s not an exception. The western genre is all about strength and empowerment through a propensity for violence, by overcoming the antagonist’s violence.

While the conflict between the social and the anti-social remains timeless in the western, even if it is male dominated, a woman subjected to male oppression and violence in horror cinema complicates matters. Lofting, Cluff and Awbrey’s nightmarish push back should be uncomfortable because compared to slasher films, it has a heightened self-awareness of gender politics. Held relies on one’s own interpretation of empowerment through violence and suffering. It leaves it to up to us to decide whether we see a woman empowered or a victim of objectification.

The inability to disguise the twist compromises the film and never allows the truth of what we witness to be exposed. It’s a moment that would flip what we’ve seen, throwing up uncomfortable questions about control and violence that have moral ramifications. Held is watchable, but it feels as though it has been abandoned by its writer and directors. In this final cut, it’s still in search of itself as either a simple genre picture, or under more studious authorship, something more thoughtful.

Held played at Arrow Video FrightFest Digital Edition 2.

The Swerve

Posted on by Paul Risker

Holly (Azura Skye), a wife, mother, teacher and daughter suffers a psychosis following a fatal car accident, yet even before the incident, she’s struggling with family and work pressures. Her two teenage sons are at that difficult age, and her husband Rob (Bryce Pinkham) anxiously awaits a promotion at work that will ease financial pressures. Meanwhile, her sister Claudia (Ashley Bell) who she has a fractious relationship with returns home, and student Paul (Zach Rand), shows an inappropriate interest towards her.

The Swerve is an effective exercise in slow burn drama, a quietly unobtrusive film that leaves us with a haunted feeling. Tragic storytelling should provoke such a response by accessing our empathy and sparking a spectre of pain within our breast. We feel the grind of the anxious passage of time as we watch Holly battle her own mind. Our memory of the film comes to be characterised by pain and sadness.

It’s not possible to identify a single defining moment in the story, but an important literary reference does signpost Holly’s experience as a journey into a psychological and emotional hell. In an early scene, a student in Holly’s English class reads aloud a passage from Italian poet, Dante Aligheri’s The Inferno: “When I had journeyed half our life’s way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray. Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was, that savage forest, dense and difficult, which even in recall renews my fear: so bitter – death is hardly more severe!”

This is underlined with an irony when Holly remarks to the class, “…fear: so bitter – death is hardly more severe! That’s intense.” This will cease to be an intellectual thought, transforming into a traumatic personal confrontation with reality and delusion.

Kapsalis appreciates his playful role in blurring and revealing these boundaries, that are at his discretion. This action shapes our relationship not only to Holly, but also to the other characters. Her paranoia and suspicions become ours. But then we question her perception of reality and we fear that her impulsive responses to a betrayal have only heightened the savageness of the forest.

Tapping into the uncertainty and angst of living, The Swerve presents itself as a human horror story. There are no monsters lurking in the shadows here, nor persons known or unknown. Instead there is something more terrifying – one’s own mind. Holly echoes Norman Bates in Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960) and Mark Lewis in Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960), whose minds, shaped by their life experiences were the true antagonist of their respective dramas. Admittedly, the murderous nature of Bates and Lewis are on the extreme end of the spectrum of fractured minds and damaged personas, but the connection remains intact.

The mouse Holly discovers and which forms a subplot of the film, is an important moment in framing her vulnerability. The incident mentally and emotionally unsettles her, and even irritates her husband. It serves as a symbolic distraction for when we might discern that she wanders from the path, and from here, the rest of the story becomes a reimagining of a shadowy forest.

But Holly is product of her life experiences, and we should remember that mental and emotional struggles are not an easily defined series of points on the map of one’s life. It’s not uncommon for someone confronted with such struggles to realise they’re lost only after they’ve gone astray. Together with Bates and Lewis, Holly is part of the picture cinema casts of life experiences influencing a persons fate. Each are dramatic in different ways, all three spurred on by a family figure: Bates by his mother, Lewis by his father and Holly by her sister.

As symbolic as oranges were in The Godfather (Coppola, 1972), here something as innocuous as apple pie carries with it foreboding symbolism. It’s synched with Holly’s mental and emotional scars that have never fully healed. Claudia rips these open again by taunting her sister about a childhood incident, that threads together Holly’s youth and adulthood with disastrous consequences.

Throughout there is a lack of exposition to detail Holly’s fracturing mind, and reassuringly the director is not so naïve as to believe in a singular defining event. The drama is in every scene, and is not only found in specific moments. Instead of relying exclusively on dramatic moments, the director frames Holly’s journey has a continual process that even precedes the opening of the film, even her marriage and the birth of her children. Kapsalis blurs this distinction between two paths to instead suggest that there is a single path in life. He echoes Dante’s sentiment of intertwined happiness and suffering, good and bad, because as the poets passage continues, “But to retell the good discovered there, I’ll also tell the other things I saw.”

The Swerve had its UK premiere at the 2020 Arrow Video FrightFest Digital Edition Film Festival. It is out in U.S on VOD/Digital platforms on Friday, September 22nd.