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.
In Damian Mc Carthy’s feature debut, the Irish horror film Caveat, Isaac (Jonathan French) receives a sinister proposal from his landlord. It’s one that risks leading him down a precarious rabbit hole he may never escape. His instincts tell him to be cautious, but the lure of money, coupled with his ego, assures him he can handle the situation. He agrees to look after his landlord’s niece Olga (Leila Sykes), for a few days. His original suspicions that this was too good to be true are confirmed, when he learns she lives in an isolated house on a remote island, in picturesque Cork, Ireland. The only access is by boat, and Isaac can’t swim. Once in the house, he’s then instructed that he must wear a leather harness and chain that restricts his movements to certain rooms.
The filmmaker’s debut feature is predominantly set in the isolated house. His earlier shorts, He Dies at the End (2010), Hungry Hickory (2010) and How Olin Lost his Eye (2013), all offered practice at isolated and claustrophobic trappings, precursors to his more adventurous feature.
In conversation with DMovies, Mc Carthy discussed the influence of Hideo Nakata’s original Ringu (1998), and provoking fear through confusion or ambiguity.
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Paul Risker – ‘What we are’ versus ‘who we feel we are’ can often be out of sync. I’ve spoken with directors who say that it took a number of films before they felt they could call themselves a filmmaker. Do you feel that you can call yourself a filmmaker?
Damian Mc Carthy – Now, just about. I say that because if I’d ran into a teacher from college when I was making my short films, and they’d asked me if I could come in and talk to the class, I would have had nothing to say. I’m learning how to make films, and I hope I have another 30 or 40 years ahead of me.
Caveat was a very difficult film to make, and every problem we could have had came up. It felt like film school, and so maybe I’ve earned it to call myself a filmmaker now.
PR – François Truffaut said there are three versions of the film – the film you write, the film you shoot, and the film you edit. Would you agree, and would you describe the filmmaking process as a journey of discovery?
DM – I’ve thought about that for years now, and it’s true. You write a film and you think, ‘This script is great, I’m going to make this.’ Then you get into the production and you realise you don’t need a scene, or the actors don’t need to repeat certain lines, and it becomes something different. When you get into the edit, it definitely becomes something else, and that’s what happened with Caveat. It’s not your core story that changes, but how it’s told.
It is a journey because you’re making three different films. I’ll sit down to watch the film when it’s done, and it’ll still be pretty much what I imagined, but it is a journey to get there, and it absolutely evolves as you go along.
PR – I like to think there’s a fourth version, that’s created by the audience. It’s the moment you lose control as the filmmaker, which must fill you with a mix of emotions?
DM – I like that though, and if you’ve ever seen David Lynch asked a question about what happened here, or what did that mean, he gives no explanation. He’s leaving people to watch the film and come to their own conclusion, with their own interpretation. A film is art and it should be up to you what it means.
PR – Similar to a dream or a nightmare, the events that unfold seem to make sense, but the motivations of the characters, and what happened in the past remains shrouded in ambiguity. The film is not about why things happen, but about what happens.
DM – There’s a mystery about Isaac’s past and what’s happening, but a lot of that was very clear in the script. Once you get into the edit, you’re trying to reflect his state of mind, his confusion. He’s not entirely sure what’s happening and there are gaps in his memory. You have to find that fine line between not giving away too much if you really want the audience to stay with him, but you can’t leave them behind in a state of confusion. You have to learn as he’s learning, and that’s just from the storytelling point of view. You’re trying to strip back a lot of stuff to leave people a uncertain about what’s happening, or even at the end of the film, what has happened.
You know that this guy got to the island and he’s got to get off it. If you get that much of the plot, just go along with the rest of it. From a horror filmmaking point of view, there’s something unsettling or scary about confusion. If you’re not entirely sure what’s happening, it puts you on the back-foot. Is this guy a good guy, or a bad guy? Should I be be rooting for him? Hopefully it keeps you engaged and guessing.
A film I loved was Hideo Nakata’s original Ringu. The way he shot the videotape was so strange. There’s a guy with a towel over his head pointing at something, there’s people crawling backwards in the mud. It’s unsettling imagery and none of it’s explained. I saw that a long time ago and I think I tuned into that memory.
There’s something unsettling in not getting an answer to these questions. With Caveat, even though what I’ve been talking about is not visual, by not seeing exactly where Isaac comes from, or what the motivation is, that will hopefully unsettle people a little. You’re not exactly sure who this guy is you’re following.
PR – The score is used sparingly, instead you emphasise the natural sounds to create the suspense. Would you agree that the sound design is the dominant provocateur of fear when watching a horror film?
DM – I always think that if a horror film ever makes you feel so scared that you want to cover your eyes, don’t. Keep watching and just turn off the sound. It’s no longer scary and you don’t miss the plot. The visuals are what they are, it’s the sound where the fear comes from.
PR – You show an appreciation for jump scares, but what’s interesting is your choice to transition from shock to morbid curiosity, the camera lingering on the horror. What was the thought process behind this creative decision?
What you’re seeing with the jump scares and then lingering on them, is me trying to get that balance between hinting at the scare, and letting people’s imagination fill in the blanks. A viewer that has no imagination, they need to see something to be scared. They can’t think of something scary themselves, and so we’re hopefully giving the audience that too. We’re trying to get that balance all the way through the film.
PR – Recalling the idea that there are so many archetypal stories, is it possible to be original, or is originality a little like a box inside of a box – originality inside of unoriginality?
DM – …If you look at Caveat, I tried to incorporate things that I have seen in other films, but hopefully with my own take on it. This isn’t the first film where you’re going to see a man head down into a creepy dark basement. I would like to think I’ve done my take on it – going down in the basement with a drumming bunny in his hand, to see where the end of the chain he’s attached to is going. You can be inspired by stuff, but then you have to put your take on it.
Caveat is streaming exclusively on Shudder from June 3rd.
Many like myself would have been introduced to malice disguised as kindness by the witch offering Snow White the poisoned apple. It’s unlikely I registered the moment’s significance when I was a child, the simple childish view of a monochrome world, void of moral contradictions was penetrated and made murkier.
For Isaac (Jonathan French), the protagonist in Damian Mc Carthy’s Irish horror film Caveat, a sinister proposal by his landlord risks leading him down a precarious rabbit hole he may never escape. His instincts tell him to be cautious, but the lure of money, coupled with his ego, assures him he can handle the situation.
Caveat is another cautious tale of being wary of propositions that seem too good to be true, and just as Snow White was seduced by the lush red apple, so to is Isaac tempted by the lure of easy money. He agrees to look after his landlord’s niece Olga (Leila Sykes), for a few days. His original suspicions that this was too good to be true are confirmed, when he learns she lives in an isolated house on a remote island, in Cork, Ireland. The only access is by boat, and Isaac can’t swim. Once in the house, he’s then instructed that he must wear a leather harness and chain that restricts his movements to certain rooms.
The stage is set for a story in which a man walks around a strange house. It’s hardly enticing, but Mc Carthy spices it up with a violent game of cat and mouse between Isaac and Olga. Meanwhile, untangling the truth and the lies of what happened to her parents, as well as uncle Barret’s (Ben Caplan) unclear motivations, linger like a fog.
Caveat is an effective and unassuming piece of filmmaking. It’s unlikely to have you racing up to the rooftops to shout about, but it gets under your skin, and it has an aura of cinema of a bygone era. The cuts feel rough and noticeable in moments, echoing the cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. Unlike the polished look and feel of big budget horror, Caveat’s edit in moments recalls The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973), that through the rough aesthetic honoured the anxious and nightmarish ordeals of its character’s reality.
Sitting down to watch a horror film, we enter into a stare-down. The filmmaker dares us to not look away, to listen, unsettling us through sight and sound, but also through narrative should that be a tool at their disposal. Early on Mc Carthy who not only wrote and directed, but edited the film, along with his re-recording mixer, Richard De Mowbray, and sound mixer, Hugo Parvery, deliberately emphasise the diegetic sounds. Richard G. Mitchell’s score is used sparingly, and it heightens our hyper-arousal to sound, triggering our fight or flight instincts of fear. Immersing us in the drama, we are lured down the rabbit hole. We find ourselves disoriented, heightened by an effective use of the image and narrative ambiguity.
Caveat never descends into cheap attempts to frighten us, nor does it refrain from appreciating the value of a well placed jump scare. Transitioning from shock to morbid curiosity, we linger on the horror, familiarising ourselves with the sight, and scrutinising why we should be scared. In the moments following Isaac’s arrival, the suspense gradually builds, and in one playful scene featuring a portrait painting, the director toys with the idea of whether it’s the house or the painting that’s haunted. Later in the film, he follows up a jump scare with the lingering gaze of the camera, before cutting back and forth, creating suspense through our anticipation of what we’re about to see, or what we could see happen.
Mc Carthy is wise enough to understand that it’s a film that will succeed for its atmospheric eeriness, and the complicated relationships between the characters. We must be kept on the cusp, never quite allowed to reach an orgasmic high. He achieves this in part through making Caveat not about the why, but about what happens.
Similar to a dream or a nightmare, the events that unfold seem to make sense, but the motivations of Barret, and what happened in the past remains shrouded in ambiguity. We should also remember that Isaac’s naïve choices that lead him down the rabbit hole, have that eerie feel of peril and despair we find in the dreamscape. We could be forgiven for thinking that Isaac will wake up from a dream, but if he does, it’s after the closing image.
The distrust and paranoia, the tangled up narrative of the past, the ulterior motives, are an echo of our times. Our political system and its figures have erected façades, and Brexit has sown the seeds of division and distrust, anger and frustration. Caveat echoes the rabbit hole of our decrepit reality.
Caveat is streaming exclusively on Shudder from June 3rd.
Actress, writer and director Madeleine Sims-Fewer, and director and writer Dusty Mancinelli, premiered their feature debut, the Canadian independent horror Violation at Midnight Madness, TIFF 2020.
Miriam (Madeleine Sims-Fewer) and her husband Caleb (Obi Abili), visit her younger sister Greta (Anna Maguire) and brother-in-law Dylan (Jesse LaVercombe), at their secluded lakeside home in the Canadian woods. Troubled from a past trauma and on the edge of divorce, the family reunion takes a dark turn for Miriam when a slip in judgement leads to an act of betrayal. Fearing that her sister is in danger she commits an act of violent revenge, but she’s unprepared for the emotional and psychological toll.
The pair first collaborated together on the 2017 short Slap Happy, about a breakup of a sexually expressive couple, and was followed by Woman in Stall (2018) and Chubby (2019), about a ten-year-old confronting the trauma of her sexual abuse.
In conversation with DMovies, Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli discussed not weighing a film down with expectations, but instead allowing it to be whatever it needs to be, and guarding against being typecast by the genre.
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Paul Risker – ‘What we are’ versus ‘who we feel we are’ can often be out of synch. I’ve spoken with directors who say that it took a number of films before they felt they could call themselves a filmmaker. Do you feel that you can call yourselves filmmakers?
Dusty Mancinelli – I was struggling with actualisation as a human being for a long time, and it’s only now that I feel comfortable with myself as a human being. In terms of being a filmmaker, I’ve been making shorts for 13 years, and I definitely had no clue who I was as a filmmaker prior to meeting Madeleine. It was only through our collaboration that I felt I finally understood the kinds of films I wanted to make, and how I wanted to make them.
Madeleine Sims-Fewer – There’s a clarity that comes from our collaboration in realising what our voice is, together and individually. I definitely didn’t know what my voice as a filmmaker was, I was still working it out, and there’s something about the way Dusty challenges me as an artist that actually helped me to realise what it is I want to say.
DM – I don’t believe in anything ever being fully formed. No artist is fully formed, even the greatest artists, and I’m always in awe of PT Anderson for example, who has evolved. His films are very much his films, but you see a progression in his work that’s inspiring.
There’s a danger in thinking you’re fully formed as a human being, or as an artist because then there’s nowhere to go. I don’t believe in the idea of mastering a craft, or yourself as a person – that idea is an illusion. What we’re constantly striving for, like Madeleine said is clarity, but also a sense of growth and progression. It’s almost like you’re in a dark forest that’s absolutely endless, and you’re trying to find some boundary that represents your shape. You don’t know what that is and with every film it’s like we’re trying to figure it out, and hopefully we get closer to it, but also that it shows a range of tastes.
One thing we’re noticing coming off the back of Violation is how many people will see us as these kinds of filmmakers because of the content and the genre. We have such a wide range of tastes that it’s important for us to think carefully about the next thing that we do, and how that still represents who we are, but will also show our diversity.
MSF – There’s a funny thing people in the industry say: “Don’t say I want to be a director, say I am a director”, which is so silly. I don’t subscribe to that at all. It’s almost like this secret way of imagining things into reality, and filmmaking is a lot more tangible than that. I don’t know if I would, other than by putting on my tax form, say I’m a filmmaker. There’s no pride for either of us in saying that.
DM – A lot of that has to do with how we romanticise the idea of filmmaking and writing. The imposter syndrome only comes out of the romanticisation of it because I don’t feel any pleasure in being able to identify myself as a filmmaker, or as a writer.
MSF – It’s more stifling.
DM – It’s not easy, and it constantly feels like you’re going to battle with yourself. It’s part of your identity I guess in a way that feels basic, though I totally respect and appreciate the idea of the imposter syndrome. We’re definitely crippled with insecurities and things that sometimes slow us down, or we get blocked creatively.
PR – Greta and Miriam both convey the characteristics of strength and weakness, but in different ways. Was it your intention to question these as being exclusive of one another?
MSF – This reveals what we’re interested in, which is the complexities of human beings and human relationships, but also that we are multifaceted people. There’s an inherent strength in emotional outpouring, but there’s also an inherent strength in stoicism, and I don’t think those two things have to cancel each other out, when neither one is right.
DM – In revenge films, it’s all about that person finding their redemption or closure. This is an anti-hero, this is someone who it’s not important to us that you like her, but we want you to understand her as much as possible, and it’s the same with Miriam’s brother-in-law. This is drawing from our own personal experiences of abuse and trauma now, but you’re so used to in the sub-genre of rape revenge seeing the stranger in the alleyway who is clearly a nefarious villain. Yes, I’m sure those people exist and that does happen, but it has been reported that more often than not sexual abuse is caused by a perpetrator who is close to the victim, and who’s trusted. It’s a family member, a friend, someone who’s in the inner circle. We realised we had not been seeing that, and what happens when you make that person affable and charming at the beginning? How can you actually make the audience feel betrayed by this character, so that it simulates the betrayal that Miriam feels in the moment?
PR – We infer a previous traumatic incident in Miriam’s past, but by treating it ambiguously do you see this as a way to create space for the audience to enter the film, and for you to manipulate how we identify with characters?
DM – This is something we learned when we made our short film Woman in Stall, about a woman trapped in a public bathroom. There’s a man on the other side and she’s not sure what his intentions are. When we were cutting the movie, we weren’t sure how much to show of him, and if we should make him out to be a complete villain. We realised the best thing we could possibly do was to try to walk as fine a line as possible, without revealing to the audience what our thoughts were about either of these characters. Instead we tried to subvert your expectations of who you thought this person was, trying to show you them both in as much of an unvarnished way as possible.
It was fascinating when we showed it at the Austin Film Festival. We were in the audience and they did a poll to see what the stances were, and it was 50-50. It was amazing to see that half the people thought she over-reacted, and half the people thought he was a creep. We realised it’s magic and what that kind of conversation reveals to us is just how a film can provoke an internal bias, and that’s exciting to us. After that experience we’ve been chasing it, trying to figure out how can we constantly do that, and Violation does it in so many different ways.
MSF – Some people can be frustrated by that because they don’t like any ambiguity in the films that they watch, and that’s fair. This film is not for those people, but it’s something that will always exist in our films.
DM – … There’s no ambiguity in what happens to Miriam, I think that’s important to note. The ambiguity comes in the complexities of this being someone she trusts, someone in the family. Then what happens when your sister also doesn’t accept this truth? What does it mean to find justice, and is there such a thing as the self-righteous notion of this crusader who enacts their own violent course of vengeance? These are the interesting elements that are complex for us.
PR – You’re right to stress that. By not fully revealing herself to us, she leaves us wanting to understand the violence, pain and anxiety she has suffered, that makes her a difficult character to forget.
MSF – I’ve been thinking more and more about the character, where she’s not someone who entirely belongs anywhere. She doesn’t belong with her sister and she doesn’t belong with her husband. She’s constantly seeking this belonging and never finds it, and so many people latch onto that and feel the same way about their own lives. We feel that, and it’s something that has come through in the character.
DM – Trauma can be incredibly alienating, and that’s what it comes down to for us.
PR – Interviewing Larry Fessenden, he spoke of how a film is abandoned. Would you agree with this sentiment, or is it more about being able to let go of the film, and accepting it’ll never be perfect?
DM – One thing I’ve discovered over the years, and I believe this, is that the thing we’re creating is alive. I think of it as a living organism and I don’t know what it’s going to be. I’m a parent and I’m trying to inspire it, shape it, or encourage it, but it can go in so many different directions.
MSF – You have the idea of its potential and if you impose your view of what it should be, then it absolutely will not live up to your expectations – just like no child lives up to their parent’s expectations if they impose these on them. You have to just be open for it to become whatever it needs to be.
DM – We could keep working on it forever, and when you release a film there’s a sense of clarity about what you would do differently. Sure, we could go back in the edit room and spend four more months on it, and we’d change it, or we could go back and rewrite the script. There’s a certain point with any piece of art where you have to accept the final manifestation of that idea, as the inevitability of every action that brought you there, and you have to fully accept that it’s always going to be imperfect.
MSF – One of our actors said that when they watched the film, they didn’t recognise themselves because that was a moment in time that has now gone. It was a great way of putting it because when I now watch the film, I don’t quite recognise that part of myself because I’m now someone different. You’re just constantly moving and evolving, and the next thing we make will be a completely different stage, and then we’ll move on from that.
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.
When illegal human experiments go wrong, an undead test subject escapes from Korea’s biggest pharmaceutical company and winds up at a shabby gas station run by the Park family. Upon discovering their strange visitor, the head of the household is bitten, but instead of transforming into the undead, he is revitalised and full of life. Seeing this the misfit family that spans three generations, hustling passers-by to make ends meet decide to monetise their fountain of youth, and soon the locals are queuing up to be bitten too.
Director Lee Min-Jae describes his feature debut Zombie for Sale (Gimyohan gajok) as, “…a slightly unfamiliar and odd zombie film.” The quirks of a zombie that likes human flesh with ketchup and whose bite revitalises his victims, brands this as one of the more curious entries in the sub-genre in recent years.
Min-Jae flips the tropes of the genre, reframing the monster as a fountain of youth or elixir of life, as opposed to its familiarity as an harbinger of walking death. It’s a creative move, but as he proves, you can only push back so much before the familiar reasserts itself. Zombie for Sale is an experiment in offsetting familiar conventions with the unusual, but the peril the filmmaker faces is from an audience a film of two halves may divide – creativity that descends into the familiar apocalyptic mêlée.
Cinema is saturated with the zombie film, the image or scenes of characters under siege and pursued by the undead a familiar sight. From conversations with critics and friends, I’ve picked up on a feeling that the sub-genre has become tedious. This exposes the irony of the familiar to both attract and repel. For any new addition to the undead canon that wants to appeal beyond the die-hard fan, it needs to repackage the familiar, but is this enough, and is it possible even?
A mix of zom-rom-com, well over half of the film is devoted to the comedy – around 70 minutes in total of its 122 minute runtime. The horror is held until the outbreak inevitably hits, and its here that the filmmakers creativity begins to feel stifled.
The earlier comedy had me chuckling along more than any film has in a while. This is in part due to the emotionally expressive nature of the Korean characters – a friend who has spent time in Korea has told me that they are as passionate and expressive offscreen as they are onscreen. I find there’s something larger than life to the Korean character, truth merged with emotion that feels untruthful and heightened for performance in Western cinema. In Zombie for Sale, such emotionally expressive characters add to the appeal of the comedy and charm of this dubious family of hustlers.
There is a lack of character development, but Min-Jae shows the effectiveness of sparing character detail, particularly for Hae-Gul (Soo-kyung Lee), the daughter of the family, who confides in their undead guest, her love interest about her mother’s death during child-birth. A seed of information replaces her dramatic arcs, re-surfacing to have the chaos resonate for her on a personal level. Similar touches for the other characters would have been welcome, although the characters serve their purpose, provoking a mix of laughter and suspense.
What is striking is that the earlier visual expression of the budding romance conveyed through a visual style or language, feels new to the sub-genre. It channels a modern expression of silent film, that merges painting, photography and cinema, an aesthetic rarely championed in this type of genre storytelling. Here is a filmmaker that conveys his appreciation for expressing feeling in cinema through image and sound, not exclusively dialogue or text, showing glimpses of an artistic flourish in which film as art leaps above film as an exclusive narrative form.
One wishes the filmmaker had continued to flip the script, but even before the genre reasserts itself and the apocalyptic mêlée begins, we find ourselves questioning what the film is and what it wants to be. It is difficult to push back against a sub-genre with such a firm, even self-conscious identity, and so, the director is right to say that it’s a, “slightly unfamiliar and odd zombie film.” Yet it’s also a product of our contemporary world because amidst the current pandemic crisis, Min-Jae’s film has an allegorical presence of mind. In another time it may have been more escapist, but in this current time the film resonates disturbingly because when one looks to the U.S, an ally of South Korea, the film can be seen as a satirical piece of storytelling – the priority of capitalist and economic needs over containing a potential contagion. Zombie for Sale is a reflection of present day anxiety, a snapshot preserved for posterity.
Zombie for Sale is out now on Blu-ray and is streaming on the Arrow Video channel.
There’s a reason many couples – typically new and loved up – choose horror on a movie night; it is the genre most likely to draw them together, causing grips to tighten and heads to nestle. However, no such experience will be had watching The Final Wish, a scare-free effort that trades on Lin Shaye’s B-movie charisma.
Shaye’s schtick is a good fit for unhinged matriarch Kate Hammond, who she commands with a blend of psychosis, senility and the supernatural. Michael Welch also proves capable as her son Aaron, a bewildered everyman trying to make it as a lawyer. Regrettably, everyone else is a stock character – Jeremy the stoner friend, Derek the brutish local sheriff, Lisa the vapid love interest.
Even worse than the characters are the woefully constructed scares. It’s a reheated medley of creaky floorboards, possessed household items and characters’ reflections screaming at them in the mirror – all of which occur in a rickety old house with inexplicably poor lighting… why is it so dark in there?
And of course, this litany of tropes is amplified by a generic score that does two things: assaults you like a cattle prod during its irritating jump scares or counterfeits the tortured strings of The Shining. Even more annoying is the trailer, which uses that almost dubstep-inflected crescendo of synthetic drumbeats and screaming noises that audiences are just sick and tired of.
There is a plot, something about a haunted urn and seven wishes, but it’s so trite that it doesn’t bear repeating. Ultimately, this is just another rehashed horror movie. Aside from the competence of Shaye and Welch, the only praise one can eke out goes to the gaffers and set designers, who mock up some neon-kissed diners that have a charming air of Americana about them. Otherwise, there’s barely a shred of flair or creativity.
