The
Family
Director – Dan Slater
Writers – Adam Booth, Dan Slater
Stars – Nigel Bennett, Toni Ellwand, Keana Lyn
2021, Canada
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.
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