The Green Knight

THE GREEN KNIGHT

Writer & Director - David Lowery(written for the screen by)

Stars - Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton

 

With ‘A Ghost Story’, Lowery took the archetype of the bedsheet ghost (I believe credited to MR James’ ‘Oh Whistle and I’ll come to you, my Lad’) and turned it into a somewhat goofy time-travelling mediation on grief. Lowery takes the same deconstructionist, meditative approach to 14th-century poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”.

 

It’s got ‘Excalibur’, but even Boorman’s film let the archetypes and mythos dominate. ‘Willow’ was also an apparent inspiration. ‘The Green Knight’ is seemingly more baffled and beguiled by the oddness and randomness of the medieval story, which is personified by Dev Patel as Sir Gawain (in another choice of post-modern casting, the kind indulged with grandiosely by Ianucci’s ‘The Life and Times of David Copperfield’; again, Patel is given a quintessentially white British role). Patel gives an increasingly soulful performance, capturing the doubt and determination of this knight and his aspirations for chivalric legend; it conveys a very human sensibility in a fantastical environment, not simply providing an avatar and embodying an archetype. Its arthouse and indie tendencies, its self-conscious awareness and playfulness, remind more of ‘The Tale of Tales’, or even the questioning of something like Jordan’s ‘The Company of Wolves’, where the stories that have been embedded in our culture for centuries are deconstructed, given a contemporary spin to see what it’s made of. Every character may be an archetype – King; Lord; Mother; Middle sister, etc – but an intelligent cast colour every role with humanity, bringing with them something jaded, for example. Lowery and Patel make Gawain a somewhat troubled soul, tortured by his need for courage when he all otherwise wants to do is to carouse.

 

If the original poem’s message is that it is always better to be honest, the emphasis here seems to be the attaining of courage, of facing death honestly. Although in this version, the accent feels more on the courage than the honesty. The vision Gawain ultimately has seems to lead him to see all the heartache before him and a unhappy ending, the kind of heartache that comes with just living a life (albeit in a fantasy context); but does this simply give him a moment of fatalism that lets him embrace death because of a forecast of suffering? The call to honesty is less apparent, but even if I have it wrong, the ambiguity is imbibed with the last line and the note it ends upon, and deliberate.

 

Even with ‘A Ghost Story’, Lowery was evidently a fascinating world builder, astutely atune to the otherwordly. All his films show this. The magic realism that Lowery favours, even with ‘Pete’s Dragon’, is given free reign here. However, ‘The Green Knight’ has such a lowkey approach that even ‘Excalibur’ is grandiose by comparison, and that was watermarked with dourness. It reaches the elegiac, its affections of poeticisms totally appropriate for the material. ‘The Green Knight’ has a permanent feeling of an individual lost in a fantastical world, and even incorporates a CGI fox without losing its sense of understatement. However, it does allow itself one moment of unbridled big awe with the encounter with the wandering giants (which gave me an ‘Attack on Titan’ vibe just through their threatening, uncanny size and otherworldliness). But that’s a little disingenuous because right from the opening design of The Green Knight himself – a sad human carved from a tree? – it is a film of loud human insecurity and quiet awe throughout.

 

 

GRIMMFEST digital: 'The Guest Room', 'Hotel Poseidon', 'Forgiveness', 'Two Witches', 'The Righteous'

The Guest Room

La Stanza

Director - Stefano Lodovichi

2021, Italy

Screenwriters - Stefano Lodovichi, Francesco Agostini, Filippo Gili

 

At once both modern and Gothic, the home invasion premise here spirals into something far odder, more metaphysical. Nicely played chamber piece in a looming guest house that always keeps undermining what's expected. Even when the meaning becomes evident, there's a lot of mystery still let intact, making this a fascinating existential horror.

 

 

Go here for my original notes on Hotel Poseidon. Further reflections make me think that this is a stream-of-consciousness narrative, certainly as the director Stefan Lernous says he is still trying to figure it out its meaning, that it has elements of autobiography. When asked about accusations of “style over story”, his reply is that aesthetics have meaning, that he likes mystery and cut-up narratives, suggesting that “eye-candy” itself is meaningful. I would agree to this for the most part; didn’t Christopher Lee say the real hero of Hammer was the set designer Bernard Robinson? Isn’t that why Lynch’s ‘Dune’ is still fascinating? Perhaps I would now think of 'Hotel Poseidon' as a William Burroughs cut-up filthy version of Peter Greenaway’s theatrical cinema.

 

 

Forgiveness

Writer & Director - Alex Kahuam

2021, Mexico-USA

Stars - Tasha CarreraHoracio CasteloLaura de Ita

 

A dance troupe is seemingly let loose in an empty building and we get a dialogue-free narrative of women stumbling around, being humiliated, beaten and subjected to broad mime. Anyway, purgatory? Superpowers? A room where apparently they are trying to film a micro-budget ‘Cats’? And next door, maybe a no-budget 'Animal Farm'? Very much the kind of thing that works best as a short rather than a feature, perhaps. The conceit and ambition are commedable, and it's not quite ‘The Seasoning House’, but it’s not ‘Martyrs’ either, despite the religious symbolism. And there are only so many scenes of characters performatively grappling with one another you can take before it becomes repetitive.

 

 

Two Witches

Director - Pierre Tsigaridis

2021, USA

Writers - Kristina Klebe, Maxime Rancon, Pierre Tsigaridis

 

Some shonky drama, some very “witchy” acting, but some well executed creepiness (even if the dialogue is set half the volume of non-diegetic). We start with a moody pregnant woman and her mansplaining boyfriend given the evil eye by a random witch who’s… hungry? But the film is perhaps at its best in chapter two where the witch taps into the fear of the jealous psychotic roommate. Rebekeh Kennedy goes to town as Masha, as this is not a film for subtlety. It’s at the Heavy Rock end of the genre, so simultaneously down-to-earth and ham-fisted. It loses focus in the epilogue and a post-credits scene (why put an ostensibly key scene later the comedown of the credits? But the filmmakers seem to have a hopeful eye for a franchise), but there are several good creepy montages and gore (and any film that doesn’t lose me with “witchy” acting is succeeding at something).

 

Based on the Q&A, the writers seemingly want us to root for the “bad ass” women, the witches, just because they can kick ass, but that doesn’t land. It’s best moment of turning the tables is when Masha treats a man as a sex object in the way typically relegated to women, using her powers to violently rip off his clothes. But the scary stuff is surely generated by these women picking on you and destroying your life on a whim. Chapter one ends arguably with its onus on the fears of the boyfriend of his girlfriend and of saving her; chapter two has the crazy roommate destroying your life. It’s this that resonates although it is uneven elsewhere.

 

Tarumama

(Llanto Maldito)

Director - Andres Beltran

Writers - Andres Beltran, Anton Goenechea

2021, Columbia

Stars - Jerónimo Barón, Mario Bolaños ,Paula Castaño

 

A couple retreat to a cabin in the woods to resolve their fraught relationship after the loss of a child… now, you see, there’s your problem. There’s a nice sombre tone and desaturated colour palate, and the performances are the same. Pretty soon, there are creeping disturbances at night. Nobody believes the young son that there’s a woman prowling the house, although mother has experiences of her own and is thinking that the place is haunted too. And her husband, a decent sort, can’t quite help mansplaining, which is typical in these scenarios, and dismissing his son’s outpourings as childish imagination. Of course, it’s all runs concomitant to her own grief and increasing unstable mind as well as her family’s fears that she’s becoming unrecognisable, uncaring and violent. She doesn’t want to be depressed anymore, she says in a moment of possession that speaks from her old self.

 

But it loses it’s grip midway (in a moment of hysteria, she stays in the forest for hours until it’s pitch black and the storm is in full swing? He doesn't look earlier? And isn’t there a cut foot that gets forgotten? When too many of these questions intrude, something is lost). But it’s solemn tone and restraint stops it from going full bombast and, although there’s ultimately nothing new, it’s a fair haunting with a proper eeriness.

 

The Righteous

Writer & Director – Mark O'Brien

2021, Canada

Cast - Henry Czerny, Mark O'Brien, Mimi Kuzyk

 

An impressive chamber piece for writer-director-producer-key actor Mark O’Brien. The influence of old masters like Bergman, Dreyer and Tarkovsky are evident, not least in the crisp black-and-white photography (cinematography by Scott McClean), the small cast and the big questions about faith, guilt, past sins and repercussions, and of course – facing your own demons. But where Bergman was canny, tricksy and ambiguous with his use of horror and investigations of Faith, O’Brien’s film goes a more traditional home invasion genre route, with a few supernatural touches. And, you know, that guy has a blaring warning flag on him from the start. And of course there's the narcissism of the religious to think it's all about them. But the excellent performances and smart script make this solid and riveting, with an apocalyptic ending more prone to, say, something Paul Schrader or the Coens might go for. 

GRIMMFEST digital: 'Midnight', 'Faceless'. 'We're all going to the World's Fair', 'The Free Fall'. 'The 3rd Day'

Midnight

Writer & Director - Oh-Seung Kwon

Stars – Wi Ha-Joon, Park Hoon, Ki-joo Jin

2021, South Korea

 

A hearing-impaired daughter and mother get mixed up with a devious serial killer. Well, it should be profoundly deaf, because the sound design makes it clear they can’t hear a thing. This allows sound monitors of various kinds all over the place (they must have spent all their money on them?) which aren’t quite used inventively enough. However, the portrayal of Kyung Mi (Jun Ki-joo) is mostly sympathetic although her hearing impairment is, of course, just a conceit to rack up tension and misunderstanding. It’s no mistake that the killer’s ability to talk himself out of situations is the counterpoint to her desperation to be understood; he represents the constant threat of the verbose on her impairment. Wi Ha-Joon makes for a handsome and slick killer

 

It pummels along, but it relies on everyone being a super-runner and the fumbling and stupidity of police and a little convenience-contrivance to keep things going. And going. Perhaps it’s twenty minutes too long because all the way through, the balance swings towards suspense and then rolling your eyes or shouting at characters (you may do this from the first scene) and it’s a little tiresome come the last act (No! Don’t turn your back on the killer! etc). There is a little of the debate about citizens responsibility to one another, a fine melee in a police station and a fine solution to stop him talking his way out all the time.

Faceless

Director - Marcel Sarmiento

Writers - Ed Dougherty, Marcel Sarmiento, Freddie Villacci

2021, USA

Stars - Brendan Sexton III, Alex Essoe, Terry Serpico

 

A small time trouble-maker wakes up with someone's else's face and a case of amnesia: uncovering the mystery ensues. Shadowy alleys and bars and murkier medical experiments are all there. Sexton III puts in a vulnerable performance as he experiences existential angst and identity crises, trying to piece together what happened.

 

A film of face trauma and a plot that is both conspiracy and film noir convolution. Uncomfortable throughout for the constant face abuse, packed full of too many questions (Sarmiento says this himself, but one shouldn’t fault a little over-ambition) but ultimately satisfying for the body horror and plotting in a slightly confused and confusing noir manner.

 

 

 

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

Writer & director - Jane Schoenbrun

2021, USA

Stars - Anna Cobb, Holly Anne Frink, Michael J Rogers

 

With another remarkable young performance from Anna Cobb, this is something like ‘Eighth Grade’ and ‘Wild Tigers I Have Known’ for horror girls. Friendless video teen Casey (Cobb) plays The World’s Fair, an internet horror game that is meant to possess you. The vibe is American slacker suburbia - but more shoegaze ‘Wild Tigers’ than the metal of ‘Gummo’ – with the protagonist creating her own world online, although she may be talking to no one. But then she is contacted by the dubious MJR, and afterwards she becomes increasingly unstable.

 

The pace is slow and immersive, utilising long takes and a modern teen’s ease with being on camera. Details like the colourful interior of Casey’s room are vivid and diegetic sound of rain on the roof and traffic passing becoming increasingly create unsettling ambience. It creates a convincing depiction of experience through online videos (expect your screen to buffer frequently) but, like ‘Eighth Grade’, it sides with the kids in that they know exactly how to navigate the artificial and performative world online. Empathetic and weirdly creepy as we seem to be watching a girl’s loneliness turn to mental instability, it maintains its elusiveness to the very end. A character study of teenage malaise and escapism.

 

 

The Free Fall

Director - Adam Stilwell

Writer - Kent Harper

Stars - Andrea Londo, Shawn Ashmore, Jane Badler

 

Slick but prosaic with obvious scares and gaslighting, starts all Gothic ‘Rebecca’ before a touch of ‘The Shining’ and ‘The Conjuring’ universe and ‘The Exorcist’. Possibly camp fun? It didn’t strike me the way Grimmfest’s synopsis did as “a chilling commentary on the seductiveness of Hollywood's dreams of dark romance.”

 

On the 3rd Day  -  Al Tercer Día

Director - Daniel de la Vega

Writers - Alberto Fasce, Gonzalo Ventura

2021, Argentina

Stars - Mariana Anghileri, Arturo Bonín, Diego Cremonesi

 

Like de la Vega’s previous ‘The White Coffin’, this too features a woman running around in the middle of something supernatural with a child’s life at stake. The influences and homages to Seventies films are evident (red and yellow raincoats, anyone?), but de la Vega makes the somewhat choppy pacing and nightmare logic of giallo into a pell-mell ride through tropes and mystery. There’s nothing you wouldn’t guess here, but de la Vega’s style always feels like it can’t stop to be obvious, always throwing into hints of something else that implies it could go off in any direction (the silhouette of a man wielding a crowbar in front of a house is straight out of a slasher, for example). This makes for a fun and artful ride through genre, heading for a classic last image before the credits. But there’s also more after the scrapbook credits.

 

Normally film stills in credits and post-credit codas aren’t something I like, but there is something “everything in!” about da la Vega’s style that I go even with this.

 

And the very entertaining 'Night Drive' also featured in Grimmfest today.

GRIMMFEST digital: 'Motherly', 'Shot in the Dark', 'The Spore, 'The Pizzagate Massacre'

Motherly

Director – Craig David Wallace

Screenwriters – Ian Malone, Craig David Wallace

2020, USA

 

One of those thrillers that relies on its twists, with a spot of home invasion thrown in. With her husband convicted of murdering a little girl, a mother and her bratty daughter are hidden away in a small town with only a somewhat shabby policeman for contact with the outside world. It’s slick and entertaining; clues are parcelled out in dialogue and unreliable flashbacks, but any seasoned genre fan will likely see where this is going. It’s lifted by good performances and characters that are convincingly flawed and relatable for that.

 

 

Shot in the Dark

Director – Keene McRae

Screenwriters – Kristoffer McMillan, Keene McRae, Lane Thomas

Cast – Kristoffer McMillan, Lane Thomas, Keene McRae, Austin Hébert, Christine Donlon, Jacqueline Toboni, Brandon Sklenar, Kelley Mack

 

Elliptical and fragmented, this serial killer film won’t be for everyone, especially since it features the conceit of a guy reflecting on the past whilst tied to a chair as a victim. But it’s a film just as concerned with reflection and capturing the dead-end malaise of small town lives as it is recapturing the terror and suffering of, shall we say, “torture porn”. Its performances are smouldering rather than showy, the aesthetic and temporal play are reminiscent of Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammel, but the trippiness born of close-up montages remind of Harmony Korine’s ‘Spring Breakers’ or Andrea Arnold’s ‘American Honey’. It will likely be on a second watch where the pieces and details come together, but it is the poignant social commentary about friends and inertia that distinguishes this from run-of-the-mill killer films.

 

 

The Spore

Writer & Director – DM Cunningham

2021, USA

Cast – Haley Heslip, Peter Tell, Jackson Ezinga, Jeannie Jefferies

An infection horror with an ambient, mood-piece feel initially, helped immensely by Dreaming In Neon’s score. Leaving radio broadcasts to deal with the big picture stuff, ‘The Spore’ focuses on a few characters, providing vignettes of their encounters with a lethal spore that kills and mutates. An audience will likely spend several moments shouting at the characters onscreen not to act stupid (“No, DON’T go and check it out!”; and who goes backpacking when the news is full of coverage…? But then I remember the behaviour of some during this actual pandemic, so…), and perhaps the acting is a little hit-or-miss, but the ambience is good and the mutations increasingly fun. It’s beautifully shot with good use of the green of the forest and garage neons. The radio broadcasts are well done, and the infected are nicely sickening (body-horror fans will be satisfied) before it gleefully goes all goofy practical mutations, quite winningly.

 

The Pizzagate Massacre

Director – John Valley

Screenwriter – John Valley

2021, USA

Cast - Tinus Seaux, Alexandria Payne, Lee Eddy, Mike Dellens, John Valley

 

John Valley’s film (and it is his film as he directed, wrote, co-scored, produced and undoubtably made the coffee and acts in the key role of the bad guy) lays its cards on the table at the start as a commentary on modern toxic media and macho militias. When a reporter, Karen Black (Alexandria Payne), is fired from a despicable conspiracy-spewing right-wing television show, she sees her opportunity in making a mark by following up a conspiracy regarding a small pizza outlet (pizzagate was one of the most catchy and inflammatory Trump-era conspiracies). For this, she befriends Duncan Tinus Seaux, a deluded militia man (and David Koresh offspring) trying to pull himself towards something better but unable to quite let go of the conspiracies.

 

Even though the whacko behaviour of the militia is played for comedy at the early stages, Valley’s film isn’t just lampoons and caricatures. These militiamen act as if they are in their own action movie, and Valley says in the Q&A that this is what he’s observed himself; but Valley is more interested in humanising the deluded Duncan, and in this he is helped by an increasingly nuanced and excellent performance by Tinus Seaux. Alexandria Payne is adamantly unreadable throughout, her motives murky but evidently mercenary. Valley as Philip is potentially the most comic-bookish, but provided with such a reflective context, he comes across as the loose cannon he is, both laughable and dangerous. Lee Eddy is manic and hysterical as the conspiracy spewing Terri Lee, but that seems totally in keeping (note how the producer keeps reminding her of her contract when she’s threatened with death). It’s in these details that a complex web of motivation and complicity it conveyed. Who’s making the money?

 

It's funny and thoughtful and ultimately a plea from the inside to stop pouring toxic and crazy shit to the susceptible.

Looking at the two posters for this film, called ‘Duncan’ in the US, one plays up the conspiracy theory mind, but the other plays to the action grindhouse road movie angle. Both have merit, although the former implies a far trippier film.

GRIMMFEST digital 2021: 'Slapface', 'The Night Belongs to Monsters', 'For Roger', 'Father of Flies', 'Happy Times'

GRIMFEST digital 2021

 

SLAPFACE

Writer & Director: Jeremiah Kipp

2021, USA

Cast – August Maturo, Mike Manning, Libe Barer, Mirabelle Lee, Dan Hedaya

 

Kipp frontloads his film about abandoned, simmering youth with the game of “slapface”, where the two orphaned brothers slap each other’s faces to vent pent up anger. Domestic abuse and bullying are the themes – underlined by end text – where the older brother Tom (Manning) is ill equipped to deal with bringing up his slightly wayward younger brother, Lucus (Maturo). Lucus is friendless and bullied by three girls, one of whom he carries out a clandestine friendship of sorts and flirtation, but things take a turn when he befriends a witch he discovers in an abandoned Gothic building. The witch is deliberately the kind found in old fairy tales, but is here a manifestation of his latent disturbance and violence, and by being mostly kept as a looming shadow, is properly eerie.

 

In fact, the whole tone is a mixture of the consistently eerie and the dejected realism of, say, ‘River’s Edge’, or the second half of ‘Ham on Rye’. It’s not quite the supernatural unleashing the child’s psychopathic side, as with an example like ‘The Pit’, for Lucus is just a troubled, misunderstood kid and the witch – which he seems to have summoned as an unforgiving feminine force – becomes a loose cannon protective monster for him. Maturo puts in an excellent performance, by turns dejected, feisty, frustrated and sad.

 

And in scenarios like this, we’re often left taking the blame for the monsters we have unleashed or have affinity for. As with all the best horror-bildungsroman, it conjures a troubling emotional charge.

 

The Night Belong to Monsters

Director – Sebastian Perillo

Screenwriter – Paula Marotta

2021, Argentina

Cast – Lu Grasso, Esteban Lamothe, Jazmín Stuart, Gustavo Garzón, Agustin Daulte, Macarena Suárez

 

Again, set in a downbeat world of a troubled teen. Sol is uprooted from her beloved Grandma’s to live with her mother’s new lover, who mum can’t stop pawing. Bullied and friendless, vulnerable in a new bedroom where the door doesn’t close, Sol saves a trapped white dog with seemingly preternatural abilities, telepathically bonding with it so that it becomes her violent defender.

 

Again, centred in a strong young performance from Lu Grasso, Perillo’s film is low key and mostly nocturnal, its vibe moody and downcast. It suggests a bond between violence and sex, primal reactions to adolescent angst, etc, but it never quite has the poignancy promised by its title. Ultimately, it leaves Sol codling her violent manifestations, a happy ending. Miserablist coming-of-age with a supernatural uplift.

 

 

For Roger

Director - Aaron Bartuska

Screenwriter – Aaron Bartuska, Gwyn Cutler, Derek Pinchot

2021, USA

 

Cabin in the woods; a masked assailant: yes, it’s low-budget homemade horror time. It takes close to an hour before things kick in, otherwise it’s Roger watching home videos of being a passive-aggressive dick to his late girlfriend. A slow burn isn’t an issue, but there is the sense that nine out of ten shots last too long. In the end, despite sparks of insight into gaslighting and the “My Life On Film!” generation, the home invasion horror gives way to Roger’s self-pity.

 

 

Father of Flies

Director – Ben Charles Edwards

Screenwriters - Ben Charles Edwards, Nadia Doherty

Cast - Nicholas Tucci, Camilla Rutherford, Davi Santos, Sandra Andreis, Page Ruth

 

Comes across as a wicked witch/stepmother tale. It’s perpetual oddness and conflict between naturalism and affection, even a hint of giallo, and the ever popping-up threat of a cheaper horror of ‘The Conjuring’ variety make for an odd concoction. Again, another film grounded in a notable young performance from Keaton Ketlow as the boy through whose perspective this is mostly filtered. Camilla Rutherford plays up the English Oddball Stepmother That Must Not Be Trusted for all its worth (the massage mask signals her otherworldliness and untrustworthiness to the max).

 

For a while, this oddness and fairy-tale affectation reminded me of Philip Ridley’s work. Ultimately, it ends up both more satisfying and cruel than maybe predicted.

 

Happy Times

Director – Michael Mayer

Screenwriters – Michael Mayer, Guy Ayal

Cast – Michael Aloni, Iris Bahr, Shani Atias, Liraz Chamami, Alon Pdut, Ido Mor, Mike Burstyn, Daniel Lavid

 

A dinner party that starts out privileged and ordinary enough descends into violent farce via grudges both petty and large, as well as bigotries both quiet and vocal. It’s a class thing with almost everyone a money-making professional – one character laments why they can’t have a party with just “normal” people – so the thin line between the monied and savagery is a given, but it’s also a very pointed criticism of Israeli machismo, stubbornness, misogyny and prejudices. It's this that is most provocative, but it’s a satire that knows what it’s doing: no one is spared when the violence and grudges start and there’s only one way it can end. And watch how a character knows how to spin prejudice and accusations of prejudice to get rid of the police.

 

Not so broad it becomes wanton slapstick, it keeps its eye on the allegory, is well performed, escalating organically from insolences and pettiness already in place. And it’s funny.

 

**

 

In the Q&A for ‘Slapface’, director Jeremiah Kipp spoke of how horror is an ideal genre for dealing with domestic horror just by throwing in a monster of some sort, and all these films adhere and prove that. ‘Happy Times’ has no supernatural element, but the violence and gore belong to the horror genre (the horror being their prejudice, privilege, etc). The use of the genre in all these films lay bare  the dysfunctions and disturbances in a way otherwise not possible, resulting in emotional content and affect not reachable otherwise.