Tag: suspense

The Coffee Table (La mesita del comedor)

Posted on by Paul Risker

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There’s a pleasure to be had in dark or absurdist comedies – the subversion of the written and unwritten rules of etiquette and decency. Spanish director Caye Casas and his co-writer Cristina Borobia’s The Coffee Table (La mesita del comedor), offers audiences a delightful helping of black Spanish humour. It feels decidedly f***ed up, in the best possible way.

The film opens with the screams of a woman in labour. From there we jump forward to a furniture shop, where first time parents, Jesus (David Pareja) and Maria (Estefanía de los Santos), are caught in the crosshairs of a sales assistant. In one moment, he says, “I guarantee that this table, due to its design and standard, will change your life for the better. It will fill your home with happiness.”

Maria runs him in circles, leading him through a series of instances where he contradicts himself. Jesus is besotted with the item because purchasing it against Maria’s wishes will empower him. It’s a decision that will have consequences beyond his worst nightmares, when the couple host Jesus’ brother Carlos (Josep Riera) and his eighteen-year-old girlfriend Cristina (Claudia Riera), who they disapprove of, for dinner that evening.

The filmmaker delays the inevitable revelation of what happened when Jesus was home alone. They carefully build towards their dramatic finale, by toying with interpersonal relationship dynamics, channeling traditional domestic tensions. They also use a dark and uncomfortable sub-plot, with a neighbour, to complicate an already emotionally explosive situation. The film is constructed around the concept of avoidance. It harks back to Alfred Hitchcock’s idea that the audience’s pleasure is in the threat of the bomb exploding. The filmmakers here understand that the thrill of their story is the anticipation, and wisely tease us until they’re unable to any longer.

A carefully orchestrated dance, the back and forth dialogue perfectly plays on what the audience implicitly knows, flirting with an almost sardonic wit that will alienate some audiences.

The filmmaker and the co-writer Casas and Borobia blur the line between black humour, absurdist comedy, and dramatic suspense. I found myself questioning whether I should perceive moments as comedy or the latter – the comedy and tragedy are interchangeable.

The film has a chameleon nature, shifting between the two depending on the point-of-view of the audience. That said, it’s effectiveness lies in the audience being receptive to the humour, as there are certain beats that are intended for a humorous pay-off. But one cannot ignore the pathos of the tragedy that unfolds, and the pleasure of the film is derived from genre tones complementing one another. Nor the interest in critiquing interpersonal dynamics, that drives the thematic interest in cause and effect.

Jesus and Maria’s marriage juxtaposes derisive and affectionate humour, that’s complicated by the feelings towards Carlos and Cristina. Maria derisively refers to him as a paedo, but at dinner, they appear amicable. It creates social tension and a suspicion of how the characters really feel about one another. While the table is viewed as the antagonist, leaning into shades of horror, the provocation is contentious power dynamics and interpersonal relationships. The Coffee Table is a critique of familial relationships snd how we orchestrate our own misfortune and destruction.

As the audience tries to anticipate how events will unfold, the filmmakers find ways to play on the anticipations in a dark and twisted way, especially in the final act. Even as we’re laughing, we appreciate how f***ed up it all is, but it’s so wickedly funny we can only hope for absolution later.

The Coffee Table has just premiered in the Rebels With a Cause Competition of the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

The Score

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

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You could bring a legal case against The Score for misrepresentation. It came billed to me as a “heist-musical”. I was deeply intrigued, having never watched a film combine such genres before. Sadly, it is neither a heist film — taking place after some unspecified ‘score’ — or much of a musical either — people standing in rooms while singing instead of providing the pleasures that such a genre usually dictates. Essentially, a play-set-to-film that features a few songs, it keeps the audience in a constant state of anticipation while delivering little to no payoff. Set in a cafe for most of its runtime, it’s like being promised a gourmet steak but the food arrives late and straight out of the microwave.

Mike (Johnny Flynn) and Troy (Will Poulter) have just stolen £20,000. One of their key dealers isn’t with them, so they have to wait at a secluded café for the drop. Like Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1991), it’s all about how they act while waiting for the final resolution as opposed to the nuts and bolts of the so-called heist. The dynamic is tested when Troy falls for pretty café worker Gloria (Naomi Ackie), threatening their need for a low profile. The remaining 90 or so minutes combines a love story, crime “suspense” and several musical interludes.

Musical music need not carry the plot forward, although it can help to integrate music and story together. It doesn’t necessarily need to be catchy either, as long as it is sung with passion and heart. The songs here, written by Flynn, are created in his usual faux country-mode, using monosyllabic utterances in place of words, layered guitar lines and encompassing themes of love and striving to be free. Shot more akin to Les Misérables (Tom Hooper, 2012) than La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016), songs are caught in close-up rather than in a traditional one-shots. Dancing and movement is minimal.

Charisma is sorely lacking, both in the underproduced music and in the undercooked performances. Johnny Flynn seems like a lovely person, but when in the wrong hands, he has a rather underwhelming screen presence. His semi-sardonic personality and self-deprecation, sometimes at odds with his rugged good looks, can be a strength in a film like Emma (2020) — one of the few Jane Austen adaptations that truly bounces off the page — but he is handled poorly here, the viewer unable to determine the arc or heart of his character. Will Poulter suffers similar issues — he can be intense and brooding in anything from the Maze Runner series to Black Runner: Bandersnatch (Charlie Brooker, 2018), but let loose and his energy quickly sputters. Together, the two actors occasionally hit sparks — especially when Flynn is allowed to constantly criticise Poulter’s compulsive actions and when Poulter strikes back — but most of the time they feel mismatched, both indulging their worst acting impulses.

There’s a solid, non-musical short film in all this. But there’s a reason the bus scene in Hitchcock’s Sabotage (1936) didn’t last 100 minutes. There’s only so much suspense that the audience can care for. After my initial disappointment regarding the misrepresented premise, The Score quickly exhausted my patience.

The Score plays in the First Feature Competition at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, running from 12th – 28th November.

The Pool

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Day (Theeradej Wongpuapan) wakes up. There’s a lot of blood. He’s at the bottom of a drained, six metres deep swimming pool with a crocodile advancing towards him. But how did he – and for that matter the crocodile – get there?

Flash back to six days earlier. Day and his girlfriend Koi (Ratnamon Ratchiratham) are working on a movie set. He looks after the swimming pool and as a bonus his dog Lucky has to heroically jump from the poolside over the water in the schedule’s very last shot. The dog leaps, the crew gets the shot, it’s a wrap, everyone’s happy. In fact, Day is so happy that when almost everyone else has gone, he dozes off on a lilo in the pool while its draining. When he wakes, the water level has gone down so far that he can’t get out. Somewhere on the ground nearby, a flier announces an escaped crocodile is on the loose.

Around this seemingly flimsy opening, going one day at a time up to seven days, director Lumpraploeng constructs an edge of the seat slice of narrative suspense which deserves a place in that pantheon of suspense thrillers which take place in small locations often with reduced numbers of characters. This pantheon includes:

Lifeboat (Alfred Hitchcock, 1944, in a lifeboat);
Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948, in one apartment);
Duel (Steven Spielberg, 1971, in a car pursued by a lorry);
Dead Calm (Philip Noyce, 1989, three people on two boats);
Cube (Vincenzo Natali, 1997, in, um, a cube);
Phone Booth (Joel Schumacher, 2002, in a phone booth);
Buried (Rodrigo Cortés, 2010, in a coffin);
Frozen, 2010, Adam Green, a ski lift);
Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg, 2012, in a stretch limo);
Locke (Steven Knight, 2013, in a car); and
Arctic (Joe Penna, 2018, in the Arctic following a plane crash).

None of those are what you might describe as creature features though, unless you include the brief sequence where a snake enters the coffin in Buried, the wolves on the ground below in Frozen or the bear in Arctic. But the crocodile in The Pool turns it into a full blown creature feature as well.

The trapped man in the pool’s obvious means of escape would be his girlfriend turning up and lowering a lifeline or ladder. She does indeed turn up, but then owing to a rapid-fire series of events, she quickly ends up injured, perhaps fatally, in the pool with him. Other possible ways out include a helicopter overhead, a drone, the latter’s owners descending into the pool to retrieve it and the lowering of a bamboo ladder at the poolside. There’s also a manhole cover in the middle of the pool, screwed down until our hero finds a way to remove the screws, leading to a small underground cylindrical service tunnel (shades of both Dr. No, Terence Young, 1963 and Alien, Riley Scott, 1979, the latter indubitably a creature feature, the former not so because the script cut out the giant squid Bond battles in the book) which might or might not provide a way out.

Then there’s the crocodile which following a run in with Lucky (in which we won’t tell you if the dog lives up to his name) the crocodile ends up on the floor of the swimming pool. And the fact that the hero is diabetic and his insulin shot is sitting ready in a syringe on a table beside the pool, beyond his reach.

The crocodile must be mostly CGI because otherwise at least two cast members (three if you include the dog) would have been unlikely to survive the shoot. This educated guess is based on the plethora of animation and computer technicians on the end credits, not on the croc itself which is pretty convincing on every level. The two main actors put everything they have into their performances too and the director brilliantly rachets up the tension throughout so that, as the piece proceeds to its conclusion, you’re thoroughly gripped.

While it’s hard to locate this film in specific Thai or wider East Asian culture, it shares a certain kinship with Thai action star Tony Jaa vehicle Ong Bak 2 The Beginning (Tony Jaa, 2008) which has a heart-stopping sequence with the hero fighting for his life in a flooded crocodile pit. The Pool is every bit as heart-stopping from start to finish. If no enterprising UK distributor has yet picked this up, then one of them really ought to do so.

The Pool showed at the The London East Asia Film Festival, in 2019, when this piece was originally written. On Shudder in July 2020.

Homesick

Posted on by victorfraga

Jessica Klug (Esther Maria Pietsch) is a young and obstinate cello student preparing for a major performance. She moves into a new flat with her devoted boyfriend Lorenz Amman (Matthias Lier). She needs peace, quiet and privacy in order to rehearse for what feels like a watershed event in her life. But her nosy neighbour Hilde Domweber (Tatja Seibt, pictured just below) keeps making unexpected appearances, and very strange things suddenly begin to happen.

Homesick is a very well-crafted psychological terror movie. The young Austrian director Jakob M Erwa’s borrowed elements from his countryman Michael Haneke and the French-Polish master of suspense Roman Polanski. The ambiguous gaslighting of Rosemary’s Baby (Polasnki, 1968) prevails throughout the movie. Are Jessica’s neighbours and perhaps even her partner up to something truly evil, or is she just paranoid? The idea of the tormented music artist echoes The Piano Teacher (Haneke, 2001), while the fear of being observed may remind of Hidden (Haneke, 2005). Well, being in the land of Josef Frietzl and Natascha Kampusch, you’d be forgiven for being suspicious of what your neighbours get up to behind closed doors.

The fact that most of the action takes place inside the flat makes the experience particularly claustrophobic. The tension builds up slowly with a number of subtle elements. Jessica has a weird black pet cat that’s mostly unresponsive, there’s an unnerving doorbell mysteriously going off, a whistling kettle and strange noises in the house which strangely blend with the cello riffs as Jessica rehearses with her headphones on. But then things begin to escalate, and there is some violence and a death or two . Plus someone sends undertakers to collect Jessica’s body when in fact she’s still alive. Who could possibly pull such a bad taste prank?

The camera is mostly static and the settings are dark and bleak. A recurring image of the elderly Hilde on her window looking into Jessica’s flat is particularly creepy. You will feel trapped, scrutinised and even manipulated, just like Jessica, who predictably begins to have a mental breakdown. Pietsch is outstanding in conveying a sense of paranoia and vulnerability. And Seibt is marvellous as the creepy and overly attentive neighbour. Oh, and stay tuned for a dirtylicious at the end of the film!

This is a very convincing endeavour for a filmmaker just 33 years of age (at the time the film was made). Since, Erwa has directed the LGBT romance Centre of my World (2017), but I think he’s far more effective with a creepy and disturbing script to hand.

Homesick is out on DVD on February 12th.

Berlin Syndrome

Posted on by victorfraga

This is one of dirtiest and most arresting films of the year. It will keep you on the edge of your seat for about two thirds of the action. A truly disturbing tale of male obsession and violence towards women, and the the disturbing façade of normality attached to it, set in the trendy and yet bleak and cold German capital. Berlin is a charmingly ugly and dirty place.

Clare (Teresa Palmer) is an Australian photojournalist visiting Berlin and trying to capture some of the city’s essence with her camera. As both a female and a foreigner who doesn’t speak the language, the actress conveys a sense of extreme vulnerability without coming across as clueless and stupid. There’s lingering fear in her eyes, even in the most trivial actions such as having a glass of wine or crossing the street. She soon falls for the handsome and charming local lecturer Andi (Max Riemelt, who you may recognise from playing Wolfgang in the Netflix series Sense8), who seems caring and doting at first. Until he locks her in his flat in a deserted building (there are many of those in Berlin, those familiar with the city will know), and turns her into some sort of wife and sex slave.

As time goes by, it becomes clearer that Andi has no intention of letting her go, and the violence escalates. Clare remains locked up as Andi carries on with daily routine of going to work, meeting friends and so on. He can also be kind and gentle to her, in an attempt to forge a relationship in his own head. Clare begins to play his game, as she devises an escape plan.

Berlin Syndrome is Polanskian in so many ways. There’s a splash of gaslighting from Rosemary’s Baby (1968), the psychotic mind of The Tenant (1976), the captivity of Death and the Maiden (1994), the female fear and vulnerability of Repulsion (1965), plus the deeply twisted sexuality from all of these films. The difference is that this time the filmmaker is a female, and her stroke is no less masterful. The gaze is never exploitative, instead the Teresa is often filmed from very unflattering angles, such as with protruding ribs. Clare doesn’t paint a golden girl in good Gustaf Klimt style. She’s much more Schiele – in fact his paintings even feature in the movie.

The action is supported by a subtle sound score and excellent sound engineering. Excellent attention is paid to the panting, squelching, slamming and so on. Just about enough to keep you tense and hooked, without spoiling the experience.

The dirtiest aspect of Berlin Syndrome is that, unlike in the syndrome named after the Swedish capital, the victim here does not gradually begin to identify with her kidnapper. The frail and vulnerable foreigner here defies all expectations and instead morphs into a headstrong escapee. It’s remarkable that female directors are embracing the male-dominated field of suspense and horror, and to dirtylicious results. We recommend that you also watch Julia Ducarnou’s French horror Raw, released earlier this year.

Berlin Syndrome is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, June 9th. It’s the perfect treat for a first date, as long as you don’t let him/her take you home afterwards.

This is on out top 10 dirtiest films of 2017 – click here for the full list.

Panic

Posted on by victorfraga

London can be a lonely and threatening place, where communication with strangers is scarce. Most people hardly meet their neighbours, particularly if you live in a soulless and gloomy high-rise. That is, except when you bump into them in the corridor, on the elevator or see them through their window across. Yet no one interferes with each other’s lives in the name of privacy and anonymity, but at the expense of solidarity.

The indie thriller Panic was filmed in just three weeks in the East End, and it deals with a number of very pertinent issues, such as illegal immigration, labour exploitation of and underground crime. The novice helmer Sean Spencer explains what the film is about: “London’s intricate and often brutal ghost economy, and the ever-growing feeling of social alienation in our urban environments.”

Panic tells the story of music journalist Andrew (David Gyasi, pictured above), a recluse healing from a vicious street attack. He constantly watches his neighbours from his window, often with binoculars, in good James Stewart style, from the Hitchcock classic Rear Window (1954). One day he decides to meet a woman online and invites her for a very awkward encounter in his flat, where she accidentally witnesses through the window a very violent episode involving a Chinese woman. Andrew then sets off on a mission to save his neighbour from the hands of very dangerous criminals.

The Hitchcockian tale then suddenly turns into a frenetic, action-packed and testosterone-fuelled thriller, where a black man confronts the criminal underworld of gangsters and illegal immigrants in order to save a hapless woman. The movie then becomes remarkably similar to Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things (2002), except that the illegal being here is the female and not the male (click on the title film in order to accede to our review). Here it is the old-fashioned nobly selfless macho hero the rescues the weak and vulnerable female, who is unable to fend for herself.

Panic is good Friday entertainment, particularly if you live in East London and can relate to the murky and oppresive vibe of the movie. The performances are strong enough to sustain the narrative, even if they sometimes lack of the emotional depth required for some of topics addressed. They are supported by a music score composed exclusively for the movie, which sounds a little like creepy “Also sprach Zarathustra” (the theme from Stanley Kubrik’s 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey) – maybe the strongest element of the movie.

Panic showed in cinemas in November 2016, when this piece was originally written. It is available on iTunes, Google Play and most VoD platforms on August 29th, 2017.