Three Films Make A Post: Killing for Two

Blood Born (2021): While this is a thing that has gotten better outside of the big blockbuster business (where the problem is probably caused by an audience that expects quantity for the not inconsiderable sums cinemas and Disney+ VIP ask for a ticket), there are still quite a few films that feel the need to blow forty-five minutes of material up to ninety elsewhere, too. An example is this sometimes somewhat satirical horror movie by Reed Shusterman about the horrors of childbirth and childlessness as exemplified via a childless couple turning to a weird sorcerer company for a last chance at breeding. There are a couple of fun, even poignant ideas in here, but everything feels too drawn out, the film repeating ideas much too often, losing the kick it could and should have because it needs to fill out one of those ninety minute cinema slots that don’t actually exist for films of this type anymore.

Kandisha (2020): I never got as much out of French directing and writing duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s much-loved first film Inside but absolutely loved their second one, the supernatural giallo fairy tale Livide. Their newest effort, Kandisha, doesn’t quite work for me, alas. I really like their portrayal of their three urban poor (and therefore two-thirds brown and black) teenage protagonists and the world they inhabit, their avoidance of poverty porn without denying the pain of poverty, and the quick and sure creation of the world their characters people. The supernatural element, on the other hand, despite being based on actual folklore, is curiously bland. The titular entity’s activities are as generic as possible, never connecting with the characters on anything but the level of physical threat. Disconnected as it is from the rest of the film, it might as well be a leprechaun.

Prevenge (2016): Returning to the horrors of pregnancy, writer/director/star Alice Lowe’s movie about a woman driven to murder the people she holds responsible for the death of her husband by the voice of her unborn child, does a rather more effective job at pregnancy horror than Blood Born. In part, that’s “simply” because of Lowe’s sharp, macabre and very funny writing (and her perfectly fitting lead performance). Yet it is also because her film expresses so many of the negative things about pregnancy, children and guilt we as a society dislike very much to talk about in such a brutally efficient yet compassionate manner. At the same time, the film finds quite a bit of unexpected genre resonance beyond macabre comedy and vengeance movie, effortlessly suggesting fairy lore and folklore and their dark undergrowth of the human spirit without ever making grand gestures towards these things.

The Ghoul (2017)

Warning: this is another one of those films you can’t talk about at all without invoking at least a minor degree of spoilers!

Either, Chris (Tom Meeten) is a detective going undercover as a patient to acquire information about a murder from a psychotherapist, or he is the new patient of said psychotherapist who daydreams about being a detective. Either Chris is shadowing people during a murder investigation, or he is stalking them. Either Chris is the lover of Kathleen (Alice Lowe), or he has had an unspoken crush more than bordering on obsession on his best friend’s girlfriend Kathleen for years. Perhaps Chris is threatened by a fiendish magic(k)al conspiracy, or he starts to believe in the delusions of a very ill guy who goes to the same therapist

How’s that for a short outline of what Gareth Tunley’s, whom I knew more as an actor – particular in the films of Ben Wheatley who also co-produces here - than a director before, horror film (or is it?) The Ghoul is all about? It’s a film whose thoughts about identity and reality seem informed by writers like Philip K. Dick as approached by way of British magical traditions, with an idea of the city and the way people move through it that seems influenced by psychogeography. In other words, it isn’t exactly your straightforward horror film nor is it the sort of mind-fuck film that really needs to get its twist out. Surprisingly enough, given the film’s ambiguous tone, its ending is concrete, even precise, and provides the audience with a rather clear answer to the question what has been going on throughout the film while also being so well constructed the clear answer never feels too clear. It does of course help that the film’s explanation isn’t exactly a logical one, just one that fits and makes sense inside of the rules it has established throughout its running time.

As a director, Tunley is very adept at using comparatively simple (this is certainly made on a low budget) visual techniques to disquiet the viewer, setting his film in a London that is a palpable, real place, yet one whose solidity can shift and drift away at a moment’s notice. Chris’s movements through the city at times gives the subtle impression of everything around him being part of a ritual he – and with him the viewer – can’t quite comprehend.

In the beginning, while you are trying to understand the connection between the two realities of Chris The Ghoul shows, the film is certainly confusing, but as a whole, its comes about its strange (well, Weird) mood and its part-time trippiness through precision rather than vagueness. There’s ambiguity, but it is a very consciously constructed one, if that makes any sense.

Tom Meeten’s performance is particularly effective, really projecting the sadness and the pain of the unhappy version of Chris in a subtle portrayal of mental illness that suggests an actual understanding of the character as a human being instead of a doll stitched out of bits of symptoms, and not laying it on too thick with the “normality” of the other Chris. This aspect of the film is particularly well written, too, with compassion and insight and without feeling the night for pathetic gestures.


But then, the whole of The Ghoul is rather well written (also by Tunley), full of intelligent little touches, foreshadowing that actually works (and isn’t quite foreshadowing inside the logic of what’s going on here, but I digress into more spoilers), and the sort of unhurried pacing that might look slow but is actually just right.

In short: Sightseers (2012)

When even a film as great as Ben Wheatley's last one, the brilliant Kill List, turns out to be somewhat divisive, I shudder to think what people will say about Sightseers, a black comedy of the most peculiar type.

Chris (Steve Oram) and Tina (Alice Lowe) go on a sightseeing trip through the English countryside (filmed in a subtly beautiful way). that trip also becomes a minor killing spree. Chris and Alice are a very British skewed mirror image of the serial killer couples haunting the imagination of the American mid-west, with all the sexiness (though not the sex) and the "youth in rebellion" replaced by the the hang-ups of beginning middle age, the quotidian grotesque, and the small-mindedness that so easily turns mean.

The film's humour is peculiar enough to take getting used to, seeing as it often works by just giving the slightly surreal parts of daily life (or the real world, if you want) a push towards the even more surreal, very much in the spirit that brought us other peculiar British things of the macabre yet (sometimes) funny disposition. It's also the same general spirit that brought us hauntology, the music of the Ghost Box label and Scarfolk, a spirit I think of whenever I - as a non-Brit - hear the word "British". I'm sorry, the Queen, but this is exactly what I want from your country. Just blame Rialto's Edgar Wallace movies and The Wicker Man.

Stylistically, this one's just as successful as Kill List was, with Wheatley effortlessly going from the petit bourgeois humour to hallucinatory dream sequences to sudden violence and back again as if it were no big thing, turning the film as dream-like as the best European horror movies, even though the plot is nothing like your typical European horror movie. Unfortunately, this description is the best I can come up with for Sightseers attraction, for it is one of these rather infuriating films I fall in love with during their first ten minutes, yet really can't ramble on about as much and as detailed as I would like to. Just treat this write-up as a placeholder for something better and a somewhat helpless attempt at a recommendation, while I insert a final, random shout-out for Sightseers' soundtrack.

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,in short,horror,comedy,ben wheatley,alice lowe,steve oram