Woodland Grey

 

Woodland Grey

Director – Adam Reider

Writers – Adam Reider, Jesse Toufexis

2021, Canada

Stars – Jenny Raven, Ryan Blakely, Art Hindle

 

 At Grimmfest Easter.

Deep in the woods, an isolated man stumbles across an annoying woman (she can’t even say “Sorry!” without being aggravating) who wakes to discover that she has wondered into a horror scenario. The girl locked in the shed is the least of it.

 

About halfway in, William (Ryan Blakely, nicely unhinged and distressed) starts to say things that make the whole story open up – things like how he wasn’t even sure if she was real; or how he doesn’t even know how to lay traps. This mystery is the most gripping stuff, as the interaction and dialogue of this partnership gets increasingly interesting, even as it feels the need for flashbacks. The pace and tone may be inconsistent at times, and it may be too inconclusive for some (think ‘Koko-Di, Koko-Da’) but the aim for a kind of folk horror about grieving and being trapped in the inexplicable wins through.

Ego

Ego

Director – Alfonso Cortés-Cavanillas

Writer – Jorge Navarro de Lemus

2021, Spain

Stars – María Pedraza, Alicia Borrachero, Pol Monen

 

At Grimmfest Easter. 

19-year-old Paloma is suck in Madrid lockdown and still getting over her breakdown. However, she seems a typical brattish young woman until she seems to be victim of identity theft by a doppelgänger.

 

Unless we don’t get the point, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” is a constant motif, but it’s soon apparent that beneath Paloma’s bullish exterior, there is a troubled soul. María Pedraza’s remarkable performance only gets more involving and devastating as Paloma feels that her identity, her reality is being threatened. By herself. And no one will believe her. A supernatural peril or a portrait of increasing mental instability, the film carefully maintains ambiguity – ‘Repulsion’ is an obvious comparison, but there are moments when it verges on ‘Insidious’ style scares – and it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that, as Paloma gets into more of a state, you suddenly realise that you are likely just as unnerved for no good reason – which is exactly her plight and distress.

 

Not only a horror incorporating the digital world but also a bona fide lockdown drama using the horror genre to empathise with the mental health crisis running alongside as a direct result of the pandemic years. Some may begrudge that there is no big showdown, but the film ends with something more insidious and heart-breaking. And the final symbolism implies this is just one of many.

The Family

The Family

Director – Dan Slater

Writers – Adam Booth, Dan Slater

Stars – Nigel Bennett, Toni Ellwand, Keana Lyn

2021, Canada

 

At Grimmfest Easter.

Starts as it means to go on with a scene of humiliation and abuse justified by religious pontificating. An aging couple reign over a group of young adults/children with a merciless rule of Etan (although it wasn’t clear to me what the “children” are toiling over).

 

It’s atmospheric rather than a mood piece, and therefore it has a story that needs to be served but always seems on the verge. There’s slow burn and then there’s reverting to cycles of humiliation, abuse and religious beratements when the point has long been made and we’ve long since worked out the clues that have been laid. When every scene is about breaking the spirits of the characters without another point being made, it becomes misery porn.

 

The joylessmess of oppressive religion is a given, but there is nothing here but a climate of abuse. There’s a committed cast, there's smart direction (even if it is too long),  drained but crisp cinematography and oodles of pseudo-religious speak, but without nuance it registers as one note. 

 

But one thought, watching this on the back of ‘A Pure Place’ and ‘Ghosts of Ozarks’, is that stories about manufactured faith and unhinged cults sure seems to be a trend when, horror being a pretty good barometer of societal concerns, we live in times when the cult of celebrity and Fake News dominates politics.

Ghosts of the Ozarks

Ghosts of the Ozarks

Directors – Matt Glass, Jordan Wayne Long

Writers – Sean Anthony Davis, Jordan Wayne Long, Tara Perry

2021, USA

Stars – Thomas Hobson, Phil Morris, Tara Perry

 

1866, and a young black doctor (yes, there were a handful it seems) is invited by his uncle to practice in a walled off community in the Ozarks. The walls keep out the ghosts in the trees and red mist that kill and terrorise the townsfolk.

 

An odd offering as its seems both overcooked and underdone: overcooked in that, for example, the musical cues are often too on-the-nose, intrusively so; and underdone in that for all its elements, it never quite seems to gel. It’s obviously admirably developed by a small group, in that many cast and crew had multiple jobs; and its ambition isn’t in question, alluding to themes of slavery, social safety and purpose, but also corruption and power, etc. (It steps on many similar notes to Grimmfest’s ‘A Pure Place’). But all the allowances for the rough edges can’t quite make up for laziness in writing: for example, where our main protagonist just seems to wander into the red mist a number of times. Or the moments where the soundtrack goes country-twee. Or simply that, despite a vivid location and interesting premise, intriguing characters and decent performances, there is just something in the telling that lacks a magic ingredient.

A Pure Place

A Pure Place

Director – Nikias Chryssos

Writers – Nikias Chryssos, Lars Henning Jung

2021, Germany-Greece

Stars – Sam Louwyck, Greta Bohacek, Claude Heinrich

 

At online Grimmfest Easter.

 

A prime pleasure of diving into festivals is that you can enter a film knowing nothing. If you’re happy to just plunge in. (There was a moment when I wondered if ‘Cross the Line’ would turn supernatural; I try to know as little as I can (I didn’t even know Dano was in ‘The Batman’)). ‘A Pure Place’ pretty soon reveals itself as a cult narrative, but there’s a lot of offbeat edges that leave it a slippery beast, such as Jodorowsky, a nod to magic realism, a hint of ‘The City of Lost Children’. On a Grecian island, a delusional man has created his own narcissistic religion and class system with homeless orphans working below and white-wearing upper class above. They earn money by making soap, which fits Fust’s fascistic obsession with cleanliness. Furst’s mixture of unforgiving fascist classism mixed with Hygenia as its God makes for a credible belief system (and no telling how ugly it would all be if race was a factor), topped with Romanesque pomp and theatre.

 

Beautiful imagery, courtesy of the Greek island and heightened set design, and layered with themes of exploitation, delusion, class, abuse, etc.; but it leans towards fairy-tale rather than horror in its tone. Indeed, there’s a permanent doubt of just how much this is set in the real world, being somewhere between Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s ‘Evolution’ and Ariel Kleiman’s ‘Partisan’; and even the poverty magic realism of ‘Tigers are not Afraid’. The acting highlights are Sam Louwyck’s performance as Furst, his natural dancer’s tendencies giving the character an innate elegance and charm, and young Claude Henrick’s feisty turn as Paul.

 

Intriguing, entertaining, sunny, slightly ethereal and slightly disturbing, the tone is one where lacunas barely matter. Certainly, in discussion, Chryssos talks of its grounding in real cases of cults, but the tone is not one that relies on veracity. A curio which maintains its oddness to the very end, where escape is a strip joint.

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The Woman with the Leopard Shoes

 The Woman with Leopard Shoes

Writer & Director: Alexis Bruchon

2020, France

At online Grimmfest Easter.

There’s the gialloesque title, a crime plan set-up and a jazz-spy music that raises expectations of a playful crime-film homage. But what we have is more of an Escape Room scenario: he’s stuck in the room with a dead body so how does he avoid detection and get out using just cell phones and letters that he finds?

The black-and-white helps up the stylishness, and it’s fun just watching the burglar figuring things out. Clues are clearly laid out with other people conveyed only by voice, texts and footwear. It follows films like ‘Bait’ and ‘Sator’ in its wholly homemade quality – it’s a family affair with brother Paul Bruchon as the burglar and filmed in parent’s house, etc, and just look at the credits: mostly just Alexis Bruchon, including the music. Another triumph of vision and good writing over resources. Normally this would be short film stuff, but at 80 minutes, ‘The Woman with Leopard Shoes’ stays fun and engrossing throughout. There's fun in watching obvious talent play out.

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Cross the Line

Cross the Line

No matarás

Director – David Victori

Writers – Jordi Vallejo, David Victori, Clara Viola

Stars – Mario Casas, Milena Smit, Elisabeth Larena

 

At online Grimmfest Easter.

 

Mild-Mannered people-pleaser Dani (Mario Casas) has devoted his recent life to caring for his father, but now it’s time to move on and start anew. And he’s on the verge when he crosses paths with the kind of domineering good time girl that you know is going to be trouble. The film makes exceptional use of music as it goes from dad’s unremarkable dying room to neon nightmare as Dani finds that straying from his caution only gets him deeper and deeper into trouble and desperation.

 

Victori is obviously going for something more poignant here with the title (online translator says the original Spanish translate as “You will not Kill”?), but the fun is following how things, pretty realistically, spiral out of control, forcing increasingly desperate and extreme reactions. Like ‘Victoria’, there’s a sense of playing out in real-time across the city, the handheld camera staying close to the protagonist– in this case, across Barcelona. It won’t win any friends with portraying the threat as a wild side female, in noir style or a nineties “yuppie peril” scenario, but Smit’s performance is compelling. However, it’s Casas’ portrayal of a man being altered for life by one night, the toll taken showing increasingly on his face, that really grounds the film. Perhaps the film ultimately overreaches for sadness rather than closure, but it’s a vivid and entertaining thriller with lots of panache.

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The Batman

The Batman

Director – Matt Reeves

Writers – Matt Reeves, Peter Craig (Batman created by Bill Finger & Bob Kane)

2022, USA

Stars – Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Jeffrey Wright

 

Well, there’s enough room for every kind of Batman. Bruce Wayne and his crime-fighting alter-ego have a humongous history that spans, across decades, exuberant camp to the bleakest urban experience to outer space and everything in-between. I have been a lifelong Batman fan, although I no longer collect everything concerning him so don’t know all the nuances of the last decade, although I am familiar with the major beats. There are just too many titles to keep up with and spend on, so I keep up without being comprehensive. I mean, the Bat-family is big now.

 

But concerning the fight between camp and The Dark Knight, I would say the seminal ‘Batman: the animated series’ had the balance right. The final episode of ‘The Brave and the Bold’ ends with the protest that Batman will always be as much bright and fun as dark and traumatised, but the films are still beholden to the latter interpretation. Pop culture still hasn’t recovered from Moore and Bolland’s ‘The Killing Joke’  and Frank Miller’s ‘The Dark Knight Returns’. And of course, the character will always be reflective and reflexive of the times. Tim Burton had a good balance (Batman with Prince!!), but Joel Schumacher’s interpretation felt too condescending to work as all-out camp, or indeed as the comedy of the Sixties series. There is no doubt a future where there will be a brighter Batman, reactive to decades of grim interpretation, but that’s not currently the vogue.

 

So, this is from Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson, flippantly branded emo-Batman. A three-hour tale of urban corruption and grimness where Batman is just starting out, where the emphasis is more on detection rather than solely wham-bam action. Here he wanders crime scenes around disapproving cops. The feel is almost more introverted than Nolan’s Batman trilogy because, despite the voiceover, the emphasis is on happening rather than reflection. Indeed, Pattison is arguably more one-note, the narrative being less interested in the character’s duality; it is more Batman and his alter-ego Bruce Wayne, a tilt more in line with darker interpretations of Batman. And of course, this will be one of the criticisms: not enough Wayne. The tone is more in line with the current and impressive ‘Batman: One Dark Knight’ by Jock: centred on Gotham and gangs, dark tones and shading, sprawling and epic, downbeat but actually fun, focused and propelled by its action-based chase-narrative.

The voiceover too is one of the things I was wary of going in, and this will not win anyone over as it’s unremarkable writing. Indeed, comments call it reminiscent of sixth-form writing, which actually seems appropriate to Batman’s themes of dressing up and putting wrongs to right, of beating down on all the dystopia you see around you. I have also seen defence of the voiceover as personifying Batman’s commentary articulated in the comic’s text boxes: I can accept that, but it’s unremarkable in execution. Ultimately, braced for the voiceover as I was, it did not impress me, but neither did it undermine the enjoyment either, occurring far less than I expected. I thought the runtime would be a major error, but it’s a narrative that’s always on the move, always throwing new revelations without much downtime, moving from murder crime scene to the underworld and onto Batman’s rogue’s gallery and terrorism. Reeves justifies the runtime as “immersive” and that’s certainly my experience.

For those criticising the relentless nocturnal darkness and the pathetic fallacy of constant raining, Robert Pattinson explains:

 

“There’s this combination of stunningly beautiful buildings surrounded by decay and grime. That’s sort of how Bruce sees the city. It’s this city that used to be great, but has been taken over by really toxic elements.”*

 

It’s the manifestation of Bruce’s relentless worldview. Central to Bruce Wayne is the longing for and nostalgia for a time when parents were alive, before they were murdered in front of your eyes and you realised the city is overwhelmed with crime and supervillains. Bruce’s tale is one of PTSD too. The only shaft of true sunlight and brightness in the film that we see is in Bruce’s parents’ bedroom. And, of course, it ends with dawn when Bruce has learnt a little more of what he wants Batman to represent and be. If it’s overlong, I found myself fully engaged so that when it moved onto another phase and expanded, that was fine by me.

 

The biggest weakness of the film is the lack of women with agency. There are indeed female cast members listed in the credits, but it’s only Catwoman that is truly memorable. Luckily, Zoë Kravitz has enough warmth and presence to hold the whole film together, providing it with the emotional content to counterbalance Bruce’s vacuum.

 

Pluses: seeing how Alfred – an underused Andy Serkis – and Bruce work together far more as a problem solving team in this incarnation (Serkis is perhaps an unusual casting choice, but reinterpreting Alfred is also in vogue); Colin Ferrell’s amazing Penguin make-up and performance; a genuinely creepy guerrilla-like Riddler (well, Paul Dano does this so well); a gangster underworld based more from ‘The Godfather’ and Scorsese than ‘Dick Tracy’; fighting where Batman actually looks like he’s putting in physical effort (yes, yes, I mean compared to usual; there is no way he could’ve survived a collision with a bridge, of course, but there were moments where he seemed more human and getting hurt than superhero invincible).

 

And: Simon Mayo thinks the Batmobile disappointing, but I had a pal texting me that he thought it was great. I know I got a thrill from it. Having the monomaniacal version of Batman means that there really isn’t much room for Pattinson to flex his acting muscles, although he does brood well. Perhaps the murder mystery doesn’t amount to much in itself, just being a starting point for bigger things; ‘Batman: The Long Halloween’ offers a more legitimate murder mystery. Initially, there isn’t much argument with John Quinn’s conclusion and generalisation that it offers the “same old hypermasculine heroes, sexualised women and disfigured baddies”. But, upon closer reflection, I don’t think mopey Wayne-Pattinson matches the requirements for anyone into hypermasculinity, and the violence he metes out is less celebratory than typical. As for Selina Kyle, she uses her sexuality as a weapon rather than being constantly set at “seduction” as the character is often portrayed. The “disfigured baddies” is still a thing, as it always has been for Batman and other heroes – villains often being manifestations of the hero’s suppressed monstrous side – and although comics can and do delve into and confront this trope more, one might argue that only ‘Joker’ has truly grappled with this in related films. But yes, the increasingly nuanced and inclusive thinking in culture concerning such subjects has yet to reach a mega-franchise such as Batman.* (There's a question if the discussion even can cut through the Batman template).

 

There's not much new here, but it's done well. If perhaps I seem a little wavering or uncertain in my investment in ‘The Batman’, a little murky in my assessment, I haven’t been alone in this. I mean, it’s an easy target, right? Perhaps it was first the surprise of not being disappointed or having to make a lot of allowances. I kept waiting for it to fail, but it didn’t, and I knew that a second watch would be even more pleasurable. In fact, I was looking forward to seeing it again, as I finally came to the conclusion ‘The Batman’ is almost great and a that maybe a second viewing might push it over the line. I predict its long-term stature will be solid but always divisive.

 

·       * A promotional interview page featuring across DC comics; this passage quoted from ‘Batman vs Digby! A Wolf in Gotham #6’, DC comics, April 2022.

·       ** I am thinking of the calls from disability groups for the James Bond behemoth to be more conscientious in its portrayal of villainy signified by scars, for example.