Sparse on narrative, Fidel Devkota’s directorial feature debut, The Red Suitcase, follows the two-day journey of a delivery pick-up driver. He’s transporting boxes from Kathmandu airport to a remote village in the mountains. Meanwhile, a man is seen on route to the same village with a small red suitcase.
While on the surface it resembles calm waters, beneath the tranquility are perilous swells. Devkota, whose background is in anthropology, brings a unique eye to the film form, and crafts what is likely to be an acquired taste. It echoes the tradition of arthouse cinema, and yet conveys the individual spiritual culture and traditions of Nepal, that, to the Western eye, gives it a feeling of otherness.
For huge swathes, the film omits any dialogue, engaging the audience through silence. At 85 minutes, it’s a slow-burn movie that merges horror with the political and philosophical. It’s at the 20-minute mark, when he’s parked on the road, that one of the first signs of the horror occurs. It’s something the driver cannot explain, but to the audience it’s an escalation of a strange moment at a petrol station, which reveals an unsettling horror.
Meanwhile, in a later scene, a conversation opens up the film’s political inclinations, that merges with the philosophical, or rather, Nepalese existential crisis. This, however, leans more into political and cultural anxiety, but the seething criticism of the government is laid bare.
Devkota patiently reveals his intentions, and yet The Red Suitcase manages to internalise some of its thoughts, never offering us the impression that the film or its filmmaker have fully bared their souls.
A film that will divide audiences, it needs to be viewed through a specific lens. The anthropological gaze of its director, who places an emphasis on what he describes as, “meticulous ethnographical details that can deepen emotions and drive the narrative forward”, will challenge some Western audiences. The cinematography is traditional, and the long takes recall western arthouse, but beneath the film form’s universal language, the ethnographical details imbue The Red Suitcase with a complexity. We must see and hear, not only look and listen, in order to fully understand the nuanced communication within the imagery.
Despite the one conversation, The Red Suitcase treats death and grief as something that words cannot begin to address. Throughout, one senses the hopelessness of the Nepalese reality, an ongoing cycle where grief and despair spread. Sometimes the response is silent, sometimes it’s spoken, and other times it feels as though people are paralysed by it. To his credit, it’s a way into the film before the director hints at what’s inside the boxes, and by the end, the most apt description for this beguiling work is that it has something to do with death.
Devkota announces himself onto the world cinema stage with a meditative reflection on Nepal – specifically the price a country pays when the young are treated as expendable. His accomplishment is to speak to a diverse global audience, while also speaking about events and cultural traditions that the domestic audience will recognise.
The Red Suitcase has just had screened in the Orizzonti section of the 2023 Venice Film Festival.
In a strange moment of serendipity, I caught Eli Roth’s Hostel (2005) the night before on my hotel television. It’s that weird mixture of boobs and gore that feels like it comes out of the imagination of a fourteen-year-old child, hitting me very definitely than when I was entranced by the movie as a teenager. But some directors never grow up, attracted to both eroticism and gore right until the very end.
It’s serendipitous because Eli Roth is also an executive producer and interview subject in Inferno Rosso: Joe D’Amato on the Road to Excess, a workmanlike documentary about the ultimate cinematic workhorse. Before his death in 1999, Joe D’Amato directed soft-core and hard-core porn, grotesque horror movies, adventure films and historical films; films for Italian cinema, films for foreign distributors and films in America starring big actors. He had his own production company and mentored others as well, making him the “Roger Corman” of Italy. All in all, he was involved in over 200 films, making him one of hardest working directors of all time, a man who made movies as if he was merely breathing.
He’s a fascinating character, his forays into the smartest risk-to-reward genres, telling typically low-budget porn and horror, making him worth of his own deep dive. We are treated to clips from his classic films, including mutilations, sexual violence, body horror, sacrilegious elements and lots and lots of topless ladies. In one of the few stylistic flourishes in the entire documentary, we are treated to rapid-fire montages of naked bodies in all their writhing, sexy glory, showing off just how far D’Amato was willing to push the boat out in the name of entertainment.
Despite all of this titillation, this film is oddly incurious. Only 70 minutes long, it feels made for television rather than the big screen. It’s curious how a director that made so many films wasn’t captured more often in archive footage, making me wonder if the team behind this didn’t do enough research or there simply wasn’t enough to go on. The same goes for the interview subjects, who are incredible knowledgable about distribution details or the technical details of filmmaking, but betray little emotion about the man himself. His daughter tearily tells us about how he was misrepresented as a mere porno director by the press, or how he put the house up as collateral so he could continue making movies, but the camera doesn’t linger, and we move on to more platitudes, reducing the emotional impact of the moment.
He is obviously a complex figure, but the complexity feels flattened by this tribute film, introduced by Nicolas Winding Refn. In one major misstep, we are told an actress tried to sue the crew of one of his films after she felt traumatised on set. This moment is basically treated as a joke by the men who remember it, who say it was all part of the way films were made back then. That might’ve been true, but a more interested documentary would embrace the different aspects of filmmaking back then, instead of just going down memory lane. If you’re just interested in a primer on a legendary filmmaker, then you’re in the right place. But there’s no genuine interrogation here, making for a flat experience. Horror and eroticism can benefit from a childlike perspective, but documentaries need to be far more grown up.
Inferno Rosso: Joe D’Amato on the Road to Excess plays as part of the Larger Than Life section at TIFF, running from 17th-26th June.
This film is foul and exceptionally mean-spirited. It’s also hilarious and monstrously enjoyable. Telling the story of an obese teenager bullied by her peers who finds the most perverse way possible to finally turn the tables, it’s a deliriously fun Spanish effort boasting a fearless lead performance, a strong sense of place and a keen willingness to push the limits of sheer awfulness.
Sara (Laura Galán) is doubly unfortunate. Not only is she extremely overweight, but she also works in a butcher shop. This earns her the brutal moniker of Piggy by the other girls in the small Spanish town, who take pictures of her and post them on Instagram with cruel hashtags. (It brought back memories, considering my own surname). She eventually tells her mother about her plight, who meanly suggests she should go on a diet. When Sarah heads to the local pool alone, three of her contemporaries capture her head in a net before stealing her clothes. After that, you can’t really blame her for not saying anything to the police when those same girls get kidnapped by a deranged serial killer.
We’re never given a definitive reason why Sara doesn’t report these kidnappings to the police. Is she scared? Is she attracted to the serial killer? Or does she think that these horrible girls actually deserve it? All interpretations are in play, with Sara making bad emotional, hormone-filled decisions every step of the film, causing endless and unpredictable chaos; confusing everyone from worried mothers to clueless cop to teenage heartthrobs.
It’s shot in Academy Ratio, a suitable choice as it allows Sara’s gait to fill the frame and for the film to have an ironic, whimsical approach to the material, utilising pastel colours at first before getting darker alongside the subject matter. Complemented by moody string music, Stranger Things-like lens flares and a solid evocation of a small town where everyone knows each other’s business, and this is the perfect teen horror movie to watch at a midnight drive-in. The destination might be obvious, but it’s the way it gets there that provides pure thriller pleasures.
It is also the kind of film that would inspire endless discourse on Twitter if it was made in the USA or UK. It’s the classic question of laughing with the protagonist or laughing at her. Nonetheless, Piggy is not so much concerned with getting representation right then just allowing Sara’s fatness drive the story at every turn — including a ridiculous but also finely rendered subversion of the final girl trope. It helps that Galán is completely game here, turning in a brave performance that combines sexual curiosity and teenage despair with absolute ease. She’s flawed, stupid, funny and complex; not a fat girl who was made just for think pieces, but one seemingly doing everything possible just to exist in the first place. For one thing, her story carries an important moral: be careful who you bully. They might actually be a lot stronger than you think.
Piggy played as part of the Full Moon sidebar at Transylvania International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. In cinemas Friday, January 6th.
In-fighting, flatulence and freaky food is all on the menu in Flux Gourmet, the latest offering from oddball auteur Peter Strickland. Conjoining his pet themes — the meaning of compromise, deep dives into noise, and the way sex is used as a weapon — into one culinary package, it’s further proof of his unique, uncompromising style. While not reaching the heights of The Duke of Burgundy (2015), it’s a strangely amiable comedy that might not provoke any belly laughs, but kept me wryly smiling throughout.
It occupies a realm between what I’d term horror-light — taking the giallo-lighting, penchant for gore and rapid zooms the genre is often-known for — and light-fantasy, set in an institute dedicated to the fusion between cooking and music. Heading a “band” taking up residency for an undefined amount of time in this location is Ella (a brilliantly prickly Fatma Mohamed), berating her colleagues Billy (an emo Asa Butterfield)and Lamina (a more straight-laced Ariane Labed) for not following her vision to the letter. Soon the band find themselves butting heads with the institute leader, excellently played by Gwendoline Christie. She wears so much black-eyeliner that she resembles a panda.
The film betrays its left-field approach to storytelling early on, when the narrator, Jan Stevens (Makis Papadimitriou), a Greek journalist tasked with documenting this collective, complains of gastric turbulence. There is something wrong with his intestine, leading him to constantly hold in farts. This means that he’s perennially uncomfortable, making his job chronicling the various disagreements within the band incredibly difficult. Their pursuit of culinary performance perfection is later complicated by various rifts between the group, including the sly machinations of the institute leader and a rogue collective previously rejected from the institute lingering menacingly around the edges.
Strickland does a great job of establishing and interrogating the unique personalities of all the players, giving us a TV series worth of content within just two hours. These aren’t just types, but people with their own hang-ups and neuroses, not easily solvable within the confines of a movie. Repetitive moments — from the teams synchronised wake-up to their morning walks to crucial “after-dinner speeches” — give us the full overview of each central character, allowing us to see the story from a variety of different perspectives. One could easily imagine a longer-form adaptation with a different collective appearing each episode.
This is definitely true when it comes to the actual art at the heart of the film, developing Strickland’s obsession with noise as previously seen in The Berberian Sound Studio (2012). I wanted more: from the crackle of fresh food hitting the pan, to the boiling of water, to the crack of an egg opening, hearing conventional kitchen sounds blown up to surround sound is a true auditory delight. But beyond a running joke about a flanger ruining their performance and generic droning sounds, the actual mechanics of the music is left sorely unexplored.
And when the “wind” does finally comes, it simply arrives too late, making for an unsatisfying finale.Nonetheless, I’m happy someone is giving Strickland the money to make films this stylish and weird. I’ll come to his restaurant anytime.
Flux Gourmet played in the Encounters section of the 72nd Berlinale, when this piece was originally written. It is out on monst VoD platforms in September.
The gorgeous north Italian province of South Tirol is turned into a nefarious, ominous place in Other Cannibals, a black comedy that uses its strange premise to force an unusual sense of empathy from its characters. Genuinely unpredictable with a great sense of spontaneity and unforced performances, it keeps you guessing right until the final, deliciously absurd finale.
Other Cannibals starts in a factory, close-ups of machines — coupled with the name of the film itself — suggesting we are in for a straight-up horror experience, the first of many bait-and-switches throughout its runtime. Fausto (Walter Giroldini) finishes his shift then stops by his mother’s house, asking for the keys to his late father’s house. Then he drives to the train station and picks up the mysterious Ivan (Diego Pagotto). At first it looks like a hookup. Or perhaps Ivan wants to rent a room. It’s only when he makes a reference to tranquillisers and sleeping pills that we realise something strange is going to happen.
I refuse to ruin anymore of the plot, because this is one of those movies where you want to experience what’s happening along with the characters. Scenes stretch out beyond the bounds of conventional wisdom, often caught in long takes while using a Dogme-style approach to editing, keeping us in the dark as to what could happen next. The black-and-white photography seems to be more of a ploy to keep the film simple rather than a fully thought-through stylistic choice. And while it’s a bit of a shame not to see the Dolomites in their full glory, it does help to stress the film’s unadorned approach.
As the title suggests, Fausto wants to do something really odd, but along the way we discover that he cannot truly commit to anything in his life. When asked about his factory job, he says that it’s temporary, despite working there since 1998. He has been paying off his car loan forever. There are no women in sight. You start rooting for him without even knowing what he might do next. It’s the magic of cinema that we can feel for people with such perversions. In one brilliant moment, Fausto describes the elation he felt when Italy won the 1982 world cup, besting Maradona’s Argentina, the greatest ever Brazil team and even the Germans. Almost every man has a story like this, making Fausto just like us. Right?
There is a touch of Ben Wheatley here, both in the handheld camerawork and the adherence to naturalism while something more sinister is lurking beneath the surface. The landscape plays a strange role, showing off the unique nature of South Tirol, mixing Austrian and Italian cultures while maintaining a strong independent streak and individual customs. It feels like a landscape stuck in time, especially when the local men, wearing their funny hats with feathers in them, sing a gorgeous multi-harmony ode to mountain life. It’s a beautiful moment in a bizarre film, which blends disparate tones and moods with ease. Never has cannibalism seemed so endearing.
Other Cannibalsplays in the First Feature section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, running from 12-28th November.
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.
The devil is very much alive in Luzifer — even if we don’t see him, his malignant presence lingers across every frame of this haunted, dour Austrian film. Telling the story of two religious fanatics who live in an Alpine hut threatened by the tourism industry, it creates a modern-day parable about the price of isolation and the dangers posed by capitalism.
Director Peter Brunner is interested in extreme states of mind, as previously expressed in his Caleb Landry Jones-starring To The Night (2018), telling the story of a man obsessed with fire. Flames are replaced here by extreme religious penance, Johannes (Franz Rogowski) constantly forced to self-flagellate by his overbearing and overly-intimate mother Maria (Susanne Jensen). They live a simple existence, living off a generator and supplies provided by another local Alpine dweller. But their religious and sacred world is interrupted by the presence of whirring drones, a harbinger of a future that has no place for them.
Franz Rogowski is one of the most interesting actors in contemporary German-language cinema, taking the kind of versatile roles that explore the different facets of wounded masculinity. His Johannes might be the most stripped down performance yet — both literally in his shaven head and often naked appearance — and in the vulnerability he lays bare as a mentally underdeveloped adult. (It’s a shame he doesn’t speak much, because it would’ve been interested to see him attempt an Austrian accent.) Susanne Jensen is equally intense, constantly invoking images of the devil and themes of poisoned minds that betray a deep wound at her centre. Their life cannot truly exist in modern Austria, even though they live so remotely, as they are being hounded to leave so a ski lift can be put in their place.
A sense of evil is well-portrayed through the production design, featuring odd, tortured wood carvings of religious images, and the swooping camera-work, showing off the wintry Austrian alps. One match cut in particular, cutting from Maria’s ear to a hole in the centre of a mountain, is particularly inspired, creating a void that lingers at the centre of the movie. The devil seems to be everywhere, but he is also nowhere. This is the essential problem with the movie; there’s nothing to actually be scared of.
Are the developers the devil? Or is the devil in Johannes, who despite his limited speech patterns and simple manner, occasionally runs off with a younger lady to satisfy his sexual needs? It’s hard to parse as Luzifer constantly adds layer after layer of sick, twisted moments that feel of a piece with the Austria’s austere and harsh arthouse film productions. The evidently talented Brunner could easily make a proper exorcism drama that would terrify viewers, but Luzifer ultimatelydoesn’t stick. Of course it’s filled with horrific images — incest, insects, the possessed — but they aren’t wrapped in the kind of production that makes one feel genuinely revolted. There’s no being worse in Christian belief than the literal devil, but here he’s the kind of guy who can easily be replaced by a ski lift.
Luzifer plays in Concorso internazionale at Locarno Film Festival, running from August 4th to 15th.
In Steven Kostanski’s independent American sci-fi, horror, comedy Psycho Goreman, siblings Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) and Luke (Owen Myre) unwittingly resurrect an ancient alien overlord, who was entombed on Earth millions of years ago. Nicknaming him Psycho Goreman, PG for short, they discover they can control this tyrannical force, that once threatened to destroy universe with a magical amulet. Forced to abide by Mimi’s childish whims, PG’s presence soon draws the attention of allies and foes from across the galaxy. In small town America, the fate of the universe will be decided.
No stranger to genre cinema Kostanski’s previous directorial credits include Manborg (2011) and The Void (2016), co-directed with Jeremy Gillespie, and Leprechaun Returns (2018). He has also worked on makeup prosthetics and effects on features and series including Star Trek Discovery (2017-18), Hannibal (2013-14), Crimson Peak (Del Toro, 2015) and Suicide Squad (Ayer, 2016).
In conversation with DMovies, Kostanski discussed the need to change the culture around movies and keeping our inner child alive.
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Paul Risker – Why film as a means of creative expression? Was there an inspirational or defining moment for you personally?
Steven Kostanski – I come from a very artistic family. My mum is an artist and while my dad’s not an artist, he was a technical drafting supervisor. He’s now retired, but he’s a technically minded guy, and the combination of that and my mum’s artistry turned me into what I am.
I like the problem-solving of filmmaking, and I also like the creative expression behind it – of being able to create weird fantasy worlds. I was a kid that was raised in the video store, watching sci-fi, horror, fantasy and action movies, Saturday morning cartoons, and playing video games – all the typical stuff of a late ’80s, early ’90s kid. It’s all burned into my brain and it influences everything I make.
When my dad moved one of our VCRs into the basement, I had free reign over what movies I was watching, and it opened up the world of filmmaking. I was able to obsess over movies, and this predates DVD and watching clips on YouTube. Being able to pause and rewind, and watch an effect over and over again, and obsess over how it was made was influential.
Up until that point I liked drawing, sculpting and painting. I was always making dioramas in school and I realised that all of those things could come together in one form of expression, which is movies.
PR – Youth is a special time to discover film because at that age we’re sponges. We absorb everything, and as we get older how we relate to cinema changes. It’s not that we love film any less, but it’s a different experience, and one that I find feeds a nostalgia.
SK – The internet and the connectivity we have is great for some things, and for the post-movie discussion it’s fine, but I find it spoils the experience of just watching a movie now because there’s expectation. The hype-machine that’s built around movies and TV now is so empowering, and it’s also instant – it happens and then it’s done.
It’s newer and it’s a little outside of the VHS era, but one of the last times I went to a movie and was blown away in that child like way was when I saw The Fellowship of the Ring (Jackson, 2001). I’d not read the books and I didn’t know anything about it. I was more into sci-fi and horror at that point, and so I thought, ‘Oh, it’s just going to be elves and fantasy stuff, this is going to be boring’, and I remember being blown away and overwhelmed. I was pulled into this universe that was epic in scope, but also singular in Peter Jackson’s vision. I always felt he had me in the palm of his hand, ‘I’m telling you this story and you’re going to listen.’
I also think back on that experience because it was such a surprise, I was so blindsided. Immediately after I read the books and then the experience changed. There was hype and expectations around The Two Towers (Jackson, 2002) and The Return of the King (Jackson, 2003). Neither of those hit the same way that first movie hit because I didn’t know what I was getting into, and so I was overwhelmed by the experience. I wish more movies could do that, where they come out of nowhere because nobody is talking about them. You just go to check it out and it punches you in the face. We need a little bit more of that with our movie consumption.
PR – It occurs to me that it’s unlikely you’re alone in these feelings, and equally that it’s near impossible to reverse the power of the hype-machine.
SK – It’s impossible because we’re in an age where people are racing to spoil everything, and not just spoil, but also give their opinions. It becomes more about going to watch a movie and wondering if I’ll agree with someone, as opposed to going to watch the movie because you want to enjoy the experience.
The culture around movies has changed a lot, and not necessarily for the better in my opinion. It makes me yearn for that childlike excitement where the only hype around a movie I would get is one of my cousins telling me how terrifying Hellraiser 2 (Randel, 1988) was. The hype-machine back then was my cousins and my friends at school saying, “Oh, you’ve got to see The Puppet Master (1989-2018) movies, they’re crazy.” That’s all the lead in you’d get, and we need to bring that back. I’m not sure how, but we’ve got to figure it out.
PR – Is Psycho Goreman the type of film with a vibrant energy and confidence that it demands to be seen, therein making it difficult to adequately review or spoil through criticism?
SK – I feel like I’ve experienced that with PG, where there’s polarising opinions. What I’ve loved is that in the online discussion, even people that are not onboard with the movie are still telling you to see it. I like forward momentum, like what you’re saying. You just have to experience the thing, and I appreciate that because even with bad movies, it shouldn’t be a case of going to Rotten Tomatoes and thinking, “This has a lower rating, I’m not going to watch it.” I love misfires and I find them very interesting. Having made a movie that has this discussion around it, where people that have experienced the movie, regardless of whether it’s necessarily their cup of tea or not, are pushing people towards the film, is exciting. It’s getting us towards that movie culture that I’d rather be in, where it’s little more communal and accepting.
I’m not trying to spin anything, but I find that in this world where everybody is so polarised, it’s either love it, it’s the best thing ever, or they want to murder the filmmaker. Going back to childhood, there’s that middle ground of it’s a fun thing to talk about. It’s just a movie and it should be a fun pastime, and not so much of this industry of criticism and review, which I feel a lot of people have clung onto as their bread and butter, which feels very weird to me.
PR – As kids we’re dreamers, and films often fuelled our youthful dreams and fantasises. Is your film one that can offer nostalgia to reconnect with our inner child?
SK – My whole life and throughout my adulthood, I still feel like a twelve-year-old in an adult body. I don’t think that’s ever going to go away, and I’ll have moments of clarity in meetings with studio executives where I just want to go and play Nintendo 64.
You have to keep that spirit alive because I don’t get what the alternative is. As a kid, growing up meant I’m allowed to watch Terminator 2 (Cameron, 1991) and Predator (McTiernan, 1987) as much as I want. To me the adult content was just amped up kids content, and so that’s why I make the movies that I make. You’re allowed to like fantasy stuff as a grown up, there’s nothing taboo about that.
I don’t get what the expectation is otherwise – are we all just supposed to watch sports and wash our truck in the driveway every weekend, and barbecue?I don’t get what the alternative is and so to me adulthood is the same shit as when you’re a kid, except now there’s gore and nudity – what’s wrong with that!
To me it’s not so much reconnecting with being a kid, it’s about keeping the spark of life you had when you were a kid, and that seems to get extinguished in a lot of people in adulthood. It’s understandable, the consequences of reality can beat a person down, but I feel like you can use that guiding light of fun and whimsy to keep your spirit going in the dark times. I want to keep that energy going because otherwise what’s the point? Why even bother getting up in the morning?
Psycho Goreman is streaming exclusively on Shudder from May 20th.
Before spurious terms such as “cancel culture” entered the mainstream, British censors were hard at work “cancelling” content they deemed inappropriate for genuine consumption. This work became the centre of a media storm in the 1980s with the rise of “video nasties — cheap, sensationalist content that toned down on the plot and dialled up the violence, including gratuitous scenes of rape, torture, cannibalism and dismemberment. Think the chainsaw scene in Scarface, but for an entire movie. And just like arguments regarding GTA in the 00s, right-wing voices were concerned that these videos could lead to copycat violence of its own.
Censor evokes the drabness of the 80s rather than its neon-light sparkle, using clips from Margaret Thatcher andMary Whitehouse to set the “mother-knows-best” tone of the era. It’s in a dark, smoke-filled room we first encounter Enid Baines (Naimh Algar), who discusses removing a penis shot here, a gouged eye-ball there. She takes pride in her work, trying to make the videos just right so they are suitable for public consumption. But there is a sense that something else is boiling under the surface of this self-controlled, persnickety woman, who might be able to change the tone of difficult movies, but cannot censor the difficulties of her own past.
This is the debut film of Welsh director Prano Bailey-Bond (one more of many debut British filmmakers making waves in the horror scene) yet she shows a maturity of composition that shows off a great confidence in form. The video nasties are expertly recreated with excessive blood and gore in an Academy ratio, while the real scenes are shot in widescreen, making use of expressive, two-tone lights to suggest the conflicted nature of Enid. In one impressive flourish, betraying the ways that both reality and movie-making can merge, the widescreen ratio slowly contracts into the smaller frame, the film tightening its grip as the true horrors finally emerge. Along with Saint Maud, Rose: A Love Story and Kindred, it appears horror is becoming the de facto form for Britain’s up-and-coming directors. I would suggest a crossover anthology film!
Nonetheless, while Naimh brings great sensitivity and complexity to the main role, the supporting cast, including her parents and fellow co-workers, feel lightly sketched in, not allowing for much contrast to her fixed mission. The overarching message is that censorship might be needed in some extreme cases, yet can often achieve the exact opposite effect. This is lost somewhat in the final sequence which doesn’t allow the horror to linger, opting instead for an unsatisfying fantasy flourish. Coming at a time where the topic of censorship in art is being rigorously discussed once again, Censor perhaps needed to be bolder in its transgressions. With that said, this is a fascinating debut from Bailey-Bond, who will likely work wonders with a larger budget. Here’s hoping the same backers, Film4 and BFI, give her the necessary investment she needs to become one of Britain’s hottest horror tickets.
Censor played in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival. On Mubi on Sunday, October 31st.
A flirtatious encounter turns into a life-or-death struggle for Eve (Lucie Debay), when she meets a charming stranger (Arieh Worthalter) in a nightclub. She’s away from home supervising a construction project, and dodging the calls of her boyfriend or husband, she leaves the hotel and heads to a local club. She hits it off with the stranger and winds up in the back seat of his car, only for them to be disturbed by a second man. Unsettled, Eve escapes and flees into the forest, but her ordeal is far from over. Pushed to the extremes of survival by the two men in pursuit, awakens a vengeful desire.
With its clichéd heart of a woman victimised by men, tradition dies hard in French director Vincent Paronnaud’s English language horror, set in a nondescript place. While Covid-19 may be depriving us of normalcy in our everyday lives, it assures us normality can still be found in genre cinema.
Watching Hunted, I found myself provoked by the quizzical feeling of why we choose to watch these types of films, and why do storytellers continue to tell these stories? These plots are a well trodden path of violence, that can seem to have little to offer us beyond their adrenaline fuelled survivalism.
A relentless and intense nightmare, we watch Eve flee, trying to evade her pursuers. She’s caught, only to escape again, until the final showdown ends somewhat predictably. It may be that we’re supposed to see these stories as empowerment forged through violence, a defence against the recriminations of misogyny that genre cinema is vulnerable to.
Hunted is not supposed to be a comfortable experience, and it’s not solely about physical violence. Eve’s torment is treated like a twisted sexual act – the verbal abuse is the foreplay to the violent consummation. Without doubt, this is an abrasive movie: its maker doe not fear repelling and unsettling people.
As civilised as we are, there’s a primitive side to us. Therapy offers a client/patient a safe space to confront their thoughts and feelings. Cinema offers us something similar to connect with our shadow complex and our primitive instincts – the survival and the predatory.
Characters like Eve allow us to experience the former, while Worthalter’s charming but sadistic killer, similar to the likes of Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight (Nolan, 2008), should allow us to empower the darker aspects of our personality, but in a safe way.
The skill of these films is to find a means to make cruelty fun, often through the antagonist who finds the separation between our moral and shadow complexes, then whether consciously or subconsciously, they rip it open. Worthalter’s character is laced with black humour, that opposite Eve’s vulnerability and lack of confidence early on, seduces us. It’s not to say we like or sympathise with him, but there’s a part of us tickled by his cruelty. Unlike Gotham’s homicidal clown, who compels the conflicted choice of who we would aspire to be: the hero who defends society, or the villain that seeks to burn it down, the antagonist in Hunted is superficially amusing.
One of the interesting ideas Paronnaud plays with is nature as a moral arbitrator, that protects the woman in plight. Hunted can be positioned as a metaphorical film, with Eve representing mother nature, who is victim to man’s violence, and the wolves and the dogs are nature fighting back. If the red coat and the wolves are supposed to infer this is a reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood, then it’s not. There’s an awareness of the fairy tale and references, but there is no act of reimagining.
At the same time, it seems unlikely that there would be a political agenda for the director, butHunted responds to present-day US in an unexpected way. Eve can be seen as personifying democracy. She plays with fire by allowing herself this sexual dalliance, and burning herself she’s forced into a struggle to reassert control. It echoes the American political system that frustrated with the establishment, chose the untraditional Trump. Now having burnt themselves, they’re in a struggle to reassert control, and protect their constitution and democratic values.
I often wonder whether there’s a point where survival films such as this need us to enter an emotional and psychological space, that with continued exposure becomes increasingly difficult? The insurmountable struggle for Paronnaud is that neither his protagonist or antagonist are memorable characters, fating his film to be forgotten with the passage of time. Already likely to be a divisive film, Hunted is certainly not for everyone. Genre fans may even respond with lacklustre enthusiasm, tired of the overexposure to the familiar, but for some, they’ll be moths drawn to the flame.
Hunted streams exclusively on Shudder on Thursday, January 14th.
Fiona Shaw is a national treasure. As the terrifying matriarch at the heart of Kindred, she shrieks and scowls, scoffs and shocks with venomous glee. Occupying a central space in this British pregnancy horror, she reminds us that she is one of the best actors working today.
An indication of her character Margaret’s entitlement comes quickly into the film. When she is told by her son Ben (Edward Holcroft) and girlfriend Charlotte (Tamara Lawrence) that they are moving to Australia, her reaction is of pure disgust. How can they leave her and her enormous manor behind? But why wouldn’t they want to leave? She is a dark and difficult woman, constantly doted upon by her “nice guy” stepson Thomas (an excellent Jack Lowdon).
Things suddenly change when veterinarian Ben dies in a horse-related accident. Charlotte, suddenly pregnant despite being on the pill, blacks out in the hospital and awakens in this large, ancestral home, replete with long corridors, creaky floorboards and various other Bric-à-brac. She wants to use her phone. It’s broken. She wants to go back to her home. It’s been foreclosed. She wants to go to a hospital? Thomas can take her… No matter the reason, Charlotte finds herself unable to get out or contact anyone.
Charlotte is black but her race is never mentioned in the film. Nonetheless, it seems to be an exploration of the well-documented ways Black women are more likely to be disbelieved than white women, especially in a medical setting. Charlotte is constantly being gaslighted, from the small things — like complaints about dizziness being waved away— to the large, like the amazing moment when she tells a nurse that she is being kidnapped to remarkable indifference. There is also the fact that these large legacy homes across the UK are notoriously white spaces, making Charlotte a constant stranger despite technically being part of the family.
While engaging in the odd symbol here and there — the reappearance of the horse shot like its come straight from a Lloyds commercial, and a flock of birds straight out of Hitchcock — this horror leans more family thriller than supernatural. And unlike many big theme horrors that have come out in recent years, which lean on metaphor and feeling more than good old-fashioned storytelling, debut director Joe Marcantonio has a great eye for set up and pay-off, making it a remarkably entertaining movie. A fair point can be made that the hereditary theme isn’t really explored at all, but it’s not much of a big deal when the film is just this much fun.
With constant twists and turns, delightful red herrings and moments of genuine suspense, Kindred has ounces of flair. Supported by three remarkable performances, including Tamara Lawrence’s steely resilience, Lowdon’s skin-crawling creep act, and Fiona Shaw’s scene-chewing monologues, and this is easily the best British horror of the year. Expect a warm reception back in Britain.
Kindred plays as out of competition in the First Feature strand at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, running from 13th to 29th November.
