Tag: Shudder

Turn off the sound but DO NOT cover your eyes!

Posted on by Paul Risker

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.

Caveat

Posted on by Paul Risker

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.

Kids and grown-ups love it so!!!

Posted on by Paul Risker

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.

Real-life horror begets film horror

Posted on by Paul Risker

Corinna Faith’s independent British hospital horror is set in 1974, when a period of unrest between the UK government and the coal miners led to a scampering to ration electricity. Trainee nurse Val (Rose Williams), arrives for her first day at the crumbling East London Royal Infirmary. With most of the patients and staff evacuated to another hospital, she’s forced to work the night shift in the dark, near empty building. The walls house a frightening secret that will force Val to confront her own traumatic past, and discover the pain behind the wrath of a malevolent spirit.

Her debut feature, her previous films include the shorts, Ashes (2005), about a father and son who are thrust into a situation, Care (2006), and The Beast (2013), that centres on a young woman’s perilous infatuation with the myth of a beast that stalks the moors. In 2006, her radio production In The Bin for BBC Radio 4 received the Mental Health Media Award for Best Factual Radio. Her documentary work Body-Snatchers (2003), African ER (2004) and Little Angels (2004) have been broadcast on BBC television.

In conversation with DMovies, Faith spoke about the joy of accidentally discovering films, Saturday afternoons watching a film noir, the authored period of British cinema from the 1980s, and how her feature debut is a response to stories of institutional abuse.

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Paul Risker – Why filmmaking as a means of creative expression? Was there an inspirational or a defining moment for you personally?

Corinna Faith – I’ve always been excited and fascinated by visual images, and just anything to do with cameras [laughs]. I started out as a photography student, and then it just happened that on my degree course we got the chance to try cinematography, and I was offered the chance to move onto the film side because they liked what I’d done. I realised that was my dream come true, but I hadn’t ever reached for it.

PR – We naturally perceive movement even in a still image. Did your photography background give you an appreciation for how in cinema you can create movement without moving the camera, instead using the audience’s imagination?

CF – There was always a crossover in my love of photography and cinema. I’m a film fan in loads of different ways and in lots of different areas, but I’m often drawn to films that have an intense sense of atmosphere, that you may be able to look at something for a while. So that definitely connects to my love of being able to delve into an image, and a lot of the photography that I loved was quite narrative. What I started doing myself was instinctively creating these almost film type images, putting myself in them and setting up little worlds in photo form.

PR – Picking up on your point about having a diverse interest in cinema, what films resonated with you when you were young, and are there any that have particularly nurtured your love of cinema?

CF – When I was young I was very lucky because anyone who’s my age, there wasn’t very much choice, but there were a lot of films on TV. You’d stumble across films in a way that these days, you’d have to seek stuff out, and so you might accidentally watch a film that blows your mind less often because you’re making a lot of choices.

I was often just immersed in some black and white American noir on a Saturday afternoon, or whatever was on. It showed me the massive landscape of classic American Hollywood, and because I was watching my early films in the 80s, quite an authored time for British cinema, I got a taste for the idea that you can create a singular vision.

Besides all the Hollywood stuff, I was watching Peter Greenaway films, and Young Soul Rebels (Julien, 1991) had a massive impact on me at the time. I still absolutely adore Terence Davies.

They’re all so different, but I feel I was lucky that I got that film education just by being sat at home. It’s something I’m trying to pass onto my kids [laughs]. I’m always trying to make them watch something slightly obscure and older to keep their minds open. I feel it was a very fortunate time in that way.

PR – Do you think films not being on tap that created an appreciation that has since been lost in changes with technology and distribution?

CF – There’s definitely something different about the whole experience of how we access and find things. It’s less random and there’s less of, “Oh, I’ll give it a shot and get through it because I’ve got literally nothing else to watch. I spent two hours choosing it at the VHS store, so I have to watch it.” You can get bored and turn off now, but on the plus side there’s definitely a lot of passion around, and there are the curated possibilities like the Film4 movie, and Shudder if it’s a horror. There are people attempting to do the same thing but in different ways, and it’s not the same as the accidental old film noir on a Saturday afternoon, but it’s still good.

PR – You spoke about how the films of the 80s were all different from one another. Looking through your filmography, you’re not leaning in one direction, but seem to be interested in creating a nuanced body of work.

CF – Yeah, I think that’s fair to say. I’m not a horror or genre devotee, I love quite a few particular films across the entire range. I’m quite discriminate in what works for me, and I guess it’s always about being transported somewhere particular with that conviction, and that could be anything from E.T (Spielberg, 1982) to Aliens (Cameron, 1986), or The Shining (Kubrick, 1980) to Paddington (King, 2014). If it has that world you can commit to in that way and be taken somewhere else, then it works for me. I suppose I’m just looking for stories that have enough meat and depth for me to push through and commit, and do what I know it takes to get them made, which is a lot.

PR – Speaking of commitment, seeing a film through requires you to give up a period of your life. What compelled you to believe in The Power and decide to tell this story?

CF – Well that’s the interesting thing because by the time you get to make the film, it has been ages since you first started the process. It has to be universal enough to still be relevant in my own head, and even with this being my first feature, I knew that was going to be the ride because I’d already had one that was not made. In that case I was thinking about people not being heard, and the experience of being a woman and not being heard, which I’m sure is part of the creative journey, as well as the themes of the film.

I was responding specifically to all the stories about institutional abuse that were surfacing like a nightmare into the news at that point in time six years ago. They resonated for me, and I found it incredibly sad in a way that I couldn’t shake off the thought of the lost souls of those places, and those experiences. I wanted to write a ghost story, and all those themes just tied up for me. I thought I was not going to lose interest in this topic because it’s something that doesn’t go away.

PR – Before anything happens we’ve determined that we should be scared. What you create is an uneasy atmosphere in which the music along with the past, the hospital building and the institution agitates our unease and fear, which is then heightened by the supernatural haunting.

CF – What’s interesting to me about this character is that she has reason to be scared even before she steps foot in that hospital. It’s not actually the ghost, it’s a lot of stuff that has happened already, and it’s everything that could happen to her. It’s the nature of the place she’s working for the night, as well as a haunting.

I always wanted the institution and the situation to feel as frightening as the haunting for specific reasons that unfold as the story goes on. I’m glad it felt like that when you watched it because that’s more real.

PR – You mentioned liking to be immersed and taken somewhere else by a film. The effectiveness of the story hinges on us going on a journey with Val, in which we find ourselves lost in her trauma, trapped like she is.

CF – I wanted Val to feel relatable and accessible, and for us to have empathy with her from the beginning. Rose did a brilliant job with that, and it was one of the reasons I was drawn to her.

This is a story about a character peeling away layers of themselves, and going to their darkest place. We all have a dark place [laughs], and we don’t necessarily all want to look at it, but she’s forced to. It’s a big journey for her to go on, and what I love about Rose is that there’s a warmth about her. It’s a real quality she has as a person, and that was helpful as a starting point for that journey, on the surface as well, and where she goes to is quite a different place.

The Power is streaming exclusively on Shudder.

The Power

Posted on by Paul Risker

Corinna Faith’s independent British hospital set horror has a captivating appeal. Set in 1974, when a period of unrest between the UK government and the coal miners led to a scampering to ration electricity, she sinks her imaginative tentacles into our fear of the dark. Trainee nurse Val (Rose Williams), arrives for her first day at the crumbling East London Royal Infirmary. With most of the patients and staff evacuated to another hospital, she’s forced to work the night shift in the dark, near empty building. The walls house a frightening secret that will force Val to confront her own traumatic past, and discover the pain behind the wrath of a malevolent spirit.

The Power’s conventional three act structure is predominantly built around atmosphere, not themes and ideas. Its effectiveness lies in Faith’s reluctance to revert to juvenile jump scares, which are mostly absent apart from a sparing few. Instead she nestles into the unsettling aura of the building, its shadows and history, as well as the propensity for human cruelty, narcissism and judgement. Once the surface of the film is scratched, as in so many horror stories, perhaps the source of terror is humanity and not the supernatural. The truth is likely that we’re caught in the cross-hares of a conflict between the trauma that bridges the realms of the living and the dead, each with their cast of protagonists and antagonists.

The unrest housed in both the hospital and Val’s traumatised psyche echoes the social and political unrest, and the internal hierarchy of hospital politics only hastens us to see Faith’s ghost story as an echo chamber. Genre cinema has a way of effortlessly commenting on broader issues, and at it’s heart Faith’s film is about trauma and institutional abuse. Rather than forcefully using these themes to add an intellectual weight to the story, she leans towards a thematic simplicity that lacks such ambitious overtures. This draws interesting comparisons to Rose Glass’ Saint Maud (2019), another recent British horror about a traumatised young woman, a former nurse turned carer.

Opposite Saint Maud’s thematically richer story made simple, The Power has an honest simplicity. The sparse expression of themes and ideas places the emphasis on mood and atmosphere, while Glass shuts off rooms in the vast house like structure of her story, living out of only a few lit rooms. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with the path either filmmaker takes, and each show a different tack towards simplicity. This reflects a tendency towards silence, of communication repressed in the shadow of trauma, conveyed by each filmmaker.

If we look back to 1999, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project (Sánchez and Myrick, 1999) are more likely to spring to mind before David Koepp’s Stir of Echoes will, in spite of it being a very good film. Faith’s film is likely to share a similar fate, the shy and quiet child opposite the much-lauded Saint Maud. An interesting question for anyone with an interest in storytelling, albeit it’s one without a definitive answer, is to question why certain films overshadow others?

The Power is an angry cry, a scream even about the cruelty that has scarred many a soul. It’s an example of catharsis through storytelling that’s so often denied victims of trauma in the ‘real world.’ Val is the outsider, a victim of life experiences that have made her afraid of the dark.

A simple and applicable reading of the film would be to assert that its message is of the need to confront our fears to find resolution and catharsis. We might suspect that the film is Faith’s own expression of anger that communicates the empathy many of us feel towards victims of abuse. As an act of catharsis, it has shades of the revenge film, but more deeply it’s a meditation on how each of us belongs to certain social tribes, and how we feed off the energy of others, that creates harmonious and contentious connections.

The film is attempt at bringing order and justice to trauma and cruelty, but as the end credits begin and control slips from Faith’s grasp, if we are to be honest, the evil lurking in the everyday reality will reassert its control over the characters. The Power is film and story as a dream, a soothing mechanism for the horrors that blacken human civilisation. We cannot escape into the shadows of this safe space forever – we must return to the light of day.

The Power is streaming exclusively on Shudder.

Our dirty questions to the Canadian helmers

Posted on by Paul Risker

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.

Violation is streaming exclusively on Shudder.

The Queen of Black Magic

Posted on by Paul Risker

In Kimo Stamboel’s reimagining of the 1981 Indonesian horror classic of the same name, Hanif (Ario Bayu) returns with his family to the rural Indonesian orphanage where he was raised. He’s joined by his best friends who have returned to pay their respects to the gravely ill director. Their homecoming turns into a nightmarish ordeal when they’re terrorised by someone using black magic to avenge past evil deeds. The men will learn the truth of the events that they played their part in years before, but will they or their family leave alive?

The Queen of Black Magic is a frustrating and drawn out experience that struggles to impress itself upon us. By exceeding the 90 minute mark, the filmmakers fail to appreciate brevity, especially as it’s a lean film without an emphasis on ideas and themes. It’s the type of horror that relies on suspense and a delight of gruesome set-pieces, yet unfortunately, it struggles to satisfy on this rudimentary level.

Stamboel and screenwriter Joko Anwar struggle to show an understanding of rhythm and tone, of building to a crescendo, and even before its end, it has let us off the hook.

Stoking this frustration is how we’re ready for it to become a horror film long before it does. The competing tones of the drama, the suspense, and the supernatural horror are a hindrance. Early on the film shows signs of promise, when the camera doesn’t immediately cut away from an empty hallway once the characters are out of frame. Holding on the space provokes an uneasy feeling of a presence that we can’t see, but is either there or is near by. There are other moments early on that tease, but the mishandling of rhythm and tone thwarts the suspense paving the way for the visceral horror that is to come.

At around or just past the halfway mark, there are a couple of terrifying sequences, after which it’s a decline that feels like an exercise of smoke and mirrors – the horror is all bark and no bite. Also troubling is rather than the normalcy of the drama being interrupted or intruded on gradually by the suspense, the shadows are not closing in on the characters, the suspense is being overwhelmed by the drama itself. Add to that a clichéd twist that injects a little energy into the film, or hope that it’s a turning point, but The Queen of Black Magic is haunted by mistakes of rhythm and tone that it cannot escape.

The Queen of Black Magic is streaming exclusively on Shudder now.

Hunted

Posted on by Paul Risker

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, but Hunted 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.

Downrange

Posted on by victorfraga

Scientist and novelist Isaac Asimov once said: “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent”. Questioning neither the truth nor the wisdom of his words, incompetence in the context of violence is contradictory. Whilst yes, it is a flaw to reduce oneself to such base instincts, there is a strategic art to violence that the words of Shakespeare, from his play Macbeth perhaps most aptly describe: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.”

In director Japanese Ryuhei Kitamura’s thriller Downrange, six American college students travelling cross-country find themselves stranded on a desolate stretch of country road when one of their tires blows. To their horror, they quickly learn that this was no accident; the tire was shot out. Pinned down by a strategically astute sniper, who mercilessly picks the group off one at a time, isolated in the searing heat, they attempt to escape their seemingly impossible predicament.

Many a riveting story has been crafted out of an uncomfortably tense predicament, yet the plot of this thriller has the capacity to touch a raw nerve within the American social consciousness. Nor is it one likely to be lost on the international audience with gun violence rife in the U.S, including sniper attacks. Cinema and storytelling is a space in which we shed our morality and fear, revelling in the company of psychopaths and vicariously feeding our primitive survival instinct through the safety of the screen. It presents the queer side of human nature, the seeming disconnect as we pursue entertaining thrills opposite the real life suffering perpetrated by those who take refuge in violence. It is a discussion this review is not equipped to tackle, yet it is a question that strikes at the very heart of storytelling and human nature, as well as story as expression. Perhaps it is even a reflection of the fact that suffering is personal and subjective, hence art as its creators and audience lacks empathy with the wider world.

The jovial banter, the taking of a selfie picture and struggling attempts to post via social media lends the group an irritating vibe, leaving one dreading the prospect of their company for even the short eighty minute run time. Although this may say more about this introverted, selfie hating critic. Yet the ensuing ordeal does manage to create a bond as we become invested in their plight. Whilst Todd (Rod Hernandez) and Sara’s (Alexa Yeames) story in particular may seem in hindsight contrived, within the immediacy of the drama it provides an effective touching beat of the emotional and human bond even in the midst of fear and terror.

Kitamura could be accused of crafting a thriller that exploits his audience by way of the pulsating struggle for survival that inevitably appeals to our dramatic instincts, without which the film flounders as superficiality of plot, over intent. This however strikes at the very essence of this type of cinema, which is in fact not without intent, but is crafted with a deliberate and attentive purpose for the sake of, over some deeper intent or ambition. These films have an adolescent appeal, one we risk shedding with age, yet at a certain juncture of our lives can be a reminder of our once primitive and adolescent tastes. Acknowledging this is to understand that cinema is transportive, allowing us to momentarily re-experience a previous version of our selves that is otherwise lost to time; art a stimulus for re-engagement. And here is the dilemma, the conflict one can sometimes feel of looking at storytelling through a more intellectual or cognitive prism, whilst that inner child provokes conflicted feelings.

The important aspect to storytelling is the creation of provocation or conflict, which the antagonist needs not only be the source of. Here the spatial acts as a provocative presence, albeit an ironic one in which the rural is oppressively claustrophobic. Part of the appeal of a plot such as Downrange is firstly the question of whether anyone will be fortunate enough to survive, but equally our interest in the tactical “to and fro”-ing of the dual or struggle. This perhaps taps into an innate fear of the loss of control and the futility of our actions in opposition to the mystical or metaphysical force of fate to control it. Of course, fate is merely a projection of human consciousness onto a world void of consciousness, hence suffering derives from the actions and choices of man; this single sniper representing a philosophical truth.

A troubling impression overshadows the film, specifically by way of exuberant cinematography, albeit only a few occasional shots in the set-up. These creative choices have the feel of a filmmaker trying to forcefully elevate the work, Kitamura failing to exercise control and to justify the necessity of every shot. Or rather, to not commit stylistically, and in hindsight as much as Man on Fire (Tony Scott, 2004) was a head spinning sensory ordeal, at least there was a commitment to intent that is lacking here. In spite of such an inconsistency, it remains a solid piece of filmmaking, but lacks that sense of presence that gave simple plot driven films such as The Hitcher (Robert Harmon, 1986) or Duel (Steven Spielberg, 1971) a certain special aura that has allowed them to endure. Downrange is for some generations that transportive film, whilst for others it is a reverie in which a love for cinema is being forged.

Downrange is available to watch now exclusively on Shudder, the streaming service for horror movies. You can watch it for free if you subscribe to their trial service.