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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2021 film review - cinema & festival watches

So, I did go to the cinema a few times this year.

 

The first one to call me back was the cinematic re-run of Scorsese’s ‘Taxi Driver’ which I hadn’t seen in at least a decade and was just, of course, one of the best. At my friend’s invitation, I thought it a great film to return to the cinema with. Earliest De Niro was so good at portraying people that, should you knock and pry, didn’t have so much indoors. By which I mean a troubling absence of a key piece, and this made them scary.

 

…Of course, this rerun was the apparent design of some cinemas to keep things bubbling over by showing recognised classics again. Which was nice and I wish the big chains would keep it up, but this was dropped as soon as the regular schedule was back in force. For a while, maybe...

 

‘Freaky’ (Michael Landon): undemanding genre-savvy fun where, like the ‘Jumanji’ revival, the “body swap” angle proved acres of comedy potential, and Vince Vaughn throws himself in with often hilarious aplomb. Lightweight but entertaining.

 

Aso musing: the gaming in-jokes gave ‘Free Guy’ (Shawn Levy) a lot of mileage, Ryan Reynolds can do this in his sleep without losing your interest, and it was fun but a little too tied to convention to truly break the mould.

 

James Gunn’s ‘The Suicide Squad’ was a film I felt I would enjoy more the second time. It was bold in that, with The Starfish Conqueror and Polakadot Man and many other choices of b-villains, it fully embraced the goofier side of comics that the usual MCU and Zack Snyder aren’t interested in. But Gunn also cares about this superhero world, giving it proper purpose, not just amusement. And on the first watch I cared less for the Starfish Conqueror stuff, but I find myself siding with its goofy gusto.

 

‘Spider-man: No Way Home’ (Jon Watts) was acres of fun and cheered everyone up. Overstuffed to a pleasant degree. Me, I couldn’t quite get past the fact that it all happened on a whim of Dr Strange to help Peter Parker without discussing what the crucial spell would mean until they were in the middle of casting it, causing all the problems; especially as Strange seemingly knows all about the dangers possible (the irreverence and flippancy of MCU superheroes also makes them careless). Just as ‘Homecoming’ (slacker Spider-man thoroughly got me interested again) took from Miles Morales, ‘No Way Home’ took from ‘Into the Spider-verse’ (the best), but all the multi-verse stuff was well handled, the cameos surprising and pleasing, the fight scenes seemed better than usual and, overall, a whole shebang of entertainment. Tom Holland is my favoured incarnation of the webslinger, but the stuff with the others only retroactively made them better, with lots of neat and loving interaction. All the mushy melodrama doesn’t shake me, but there was a lot for fans to be moved by. Definitely better fan-service.

 

I did not see any other superhero films at the cinema except for ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’, which had superior melee sequences, an enjoyably light touch and a neat dragon. We expect effortlessly dazzling CGI special effects (has it taken away the awe?) so physical and well-edited fight scenes are where it’s at.

 

Nia DaCosta’s revival of ‘Candyman’ was overstuffed too, but perhaps biting off more than it could chew at the expense of a streamlined, fully coherent ending. But the conversations around black culture and the history of ghettoization, art and slavery were vital and engaging, using a horror bogeyman as the unleashed Id. It looked great too, even before the end credits shadow-puppet show chilled deeper with real horror than any genre tropes.

 

Ben Wheatley’s ‘In the Earth’ surprised me in how divisive it was: even friends I thought would like it on principle, being Wheatley fans, did not. Again, overstuffed with allusions and homages to Seventies British genre and topped with psychedelica and Clint Mansell’s buzzy score, I enjoyed how it feinted this way and that and thought it would hit better on a second watch and that it would gain reputation more over time.

 

Scott Cooper’s ‘Antlers’ married monster mayhem with family miserabilism. There was the sense that it didn’t quite gel, despite a beautifully desaturated palette and a considerable monster. It was fun in a downbeat way, but didn’t quite excel.

 

For simple, excellently executed monster fun, you didn’t have to go much further than John Krasinki’s ‘A Quiet Place part II’. The ‘A Quiet Place’ formula was for me all about the thrills and chills of the set-pieces over full explanations, and this sequel didn’t mess with that, and in fact felt even more assured.

 

But I wanted more out of Ilya Naishuller’s ‘Nobody’ than just the usual action movie kick-ass fantasies. I was excited to see Bob Odenkirk in this scenario, thinking it may have something to say with him at the helm, but Derek Kolstad’s screenplay didn’t really get past his ‘John Wick’ template.  For that, it was shallow fun and had great bus fight, the equal of that in ‘Shang-Chi’.

_______________________

So I didn’t see so much in the actual cinema and so caught up with new releases through streaming and, of course FrightFest and Grimmfest festivals.

 

Cody Calahan’s ‘Vicious Fun’ was as the label said and colourful, even if it had a protagonist that ran a commentary about things as they happened. And of course, the satirical recognition of genre serial killer types was post-modern anyway, but it had more plot than its frivolous nature perhaps implied. Conor Boru’s ‘When the Screaming Starts’ trod similar territory, also funnin’ with genre tropes but had a little more to say about the derangement of serial killer super-fans.

 

But seriously:

Marc Fouchard’s ‘Out of the World’ was one of those deathly earnest and grim killer films that want to put you through the crusher someway. It proved an evocative, haunting character study. Keane McCrae’s ‘Shot in the Dark’ had similar near-dreamy/nightmarish aesthetic, often a narrative mosaic to relay the fractured nature of mindsets and memory. James Ashcroft’s ‘Coming Home in the Dark’ was another not for the faint-hearted; another gruelling family-under-siege drama that took the Home Invasion outside as a reminder that there is nowhere to hide from past horrors.

 

For straightforward thriller delights, there was Oh-Seung Kwon’s ‘Midnight’, the kind where some physical difference (hearing-impaired) accentuates women’s vulnerability to a serial killer. It proved hugely popular, and South Korea excels at this kind of thing, but for me it started to drag when the point was well made and yet was more cat-and-mouse games to come. Far more interesting to me was Hong Eui-jeong’s ‘Voice of Silence’, this time with the fantastic Ah-in Yoo as a man who inadvertently kidnaps a young girl with his colleague; this is what happens when you’re a clean-up crew for organised crime. Nothing new, but beautifully shot, a little farcical and pleasingly wry.

 

Kyle Rankin’s ‘Run Hide Fight’ proved a little uncomfortable and misfiring in making its high school massacre just a backdrop for another kick-ass revenge fantasy. Meanwhile, Martin Guigui’s ‘Paradise Cove’ was just too pedestrian to be of interest.

 

A film like the impressive ‘Slapface’ (Jeremiah Kipp) pulled together real and imagined horrors, coming-of-age and supernatural, and hit the marks when exploring the consequences of violence and unleashed Ids. In this, was more successful in this than ‘Antlers’. For bildungsroman, Jane Schoenbrun’s ‘We’re all going to The World’s Fair’ was more an articulate portrayal of how fans are self-aware and utilise the genre. It was more a character drama than horror, with an exceptional young performance from Anna Cobb. Also, the fact that it all took place over the internet coded it as a lockdown film, although surprisingly colourful for that.

 

Jeanette Nordahl’s ‘Wildland’ was a more traditional coming-of-age drama with a young protagonist has to battle with fledgling morality and being plunged into a criminal family. No Id’s unleashed here, just the tension and threat that comes with family relations against a drained background and Sandra Guldberg Kampp’s great performance. Michael Meyer’s fun ‘Happy Times’ also played on the horrors and selfishness of family, this time turning a dinner part with a wealthy family into violent farce: the natural end of privilege is to kill to keep what you have… or just from grievance. Yernar Nurgaliyev’s ‘Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It’ was the more rumbunctious violent farce, more broad in its humour, a little suspicious in its gender politics, but also fun.

 

For visual delights, Alexey Kazakov’s ‘Mara’ presented colourful heightened realities, energetic aesthetics and psychedelic visual play to the witch genre. Jaco Bouwer’s ‘Gaia’ was also quite beautiful with a hint of fairy tale, mixing off-the-grid delusion, eco-horror and body horror is a fascinating mix that felt as if it just fell short of its target, although not denying its fascinating quirks.

 

‘Hotel Poseidon’ was also compelling in its set design, as a blacky humoured tone poem about surreal decay; like ‘Delicatessen’ on downers, or an aimless Peter Greenaway. It’s the kind of film to make you want t turn the heating up and to have a bath afterwards.

 

Alexis Brushon’s ‘The Woman with Leopard Shoes’ proved a visual delight too, which was surprising as it centred on just one man in a room (and filmed in his parents’ house) – must have been the black-and-white. Mark O'Brien’s ‘The Righteous’ also had gorgeous black-and-white photography, and one of those Arrival Of The Stranger With Secrets scenarios that always allow for a riveting slow burn. A smart, intriguing script that turns apocalyptic made this stand out.

 

Films such as Lluís Danés’ delightfully theatrical ‘The Barcelona Vampire’ and Francesco Erba’s impressive labour of love ‘As in Heaven, So on Earth’ had a formal daring that showed that these tiny films on the edges are happily and thankfully working outside the conventional, or even neo-conventional. ‘Heaven/Earth’ especially was bold in its insistence in telling its tale in large part with animation, offering both gothic and contemporary “found footage” horror. That the time-jumping and shuffling aesthetics held together and provided some decent frights was all the more impressive. The shadow-play of ‘Candyman’ shows that occasionally these formal tricks can stretch to the mainstream, but mostly its in these outskirts that films go where others won’t.

Then there were films gleefully playing with genre. There was ‘Night Drive’ (Brad Baruh and Meghan Leon), that showed its hand late in the game so the film you thought you were watching… wasn’t. And then there were adaptations of graphic novels that allowed surprises galore in narrative and genre play: David Prior’s ‘The Empty Man’ was a tribute and full-hearted ride through many different facets of horror. And I shall never forget having to go to the bathroom during the first act of Rob Schroeder’s ‘Ultrasound’ (unforgivable, I know) and re-joining it to realise I was in a totally different film, and one I couldn’t wait to see a second time now that I knew what it was.

 

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The topical:

 

Emerald Fennell’s ‘Promising Young Woman’ came over as a usual female revenge narrative, but it was far more complex and colourful than that, frequently and upsettingly usurping expectations and convention. There has been a lot of exciting female-centred genre lately, showing that the horror excels in articulating their experience in particular topics, and ‘Promising Young Woman’ came over as a culmination of the discussion.

 

And Natasha Kermani’s ‘Lucky’ pushed the limits of horror as allegory for this discussion. Writer and star Brea Grant’s previous ‘24 Hour Shift’ (which she directed) had a pleasing and naughty unapologetic edge to her female anti-hero, but this was something else entirely, fully immersed in the anxieties of women constantly under threat of male violence. ‘Lucky’ was also surprisingly moving by the end. These films were a welcome, more thoughtful alternative to murder as feminist statement. Speaking of which…

 

‘Last Night in Soho’ looked like it was muscling in on this too, and it looked great with Wright’s reliable razzle-dazzle, but using ‘Puppet on a String’ to signal the exploitation of the girls’ was not at all subtle, and, ultimately, it was asking us for sympathy for a serial killer. It was a film that, despite the agreeable “nostalgia kills” theme and obvious artistry, seemed undercooked upon reflection.

 

Randall Okita’s ‘See for Me’ seemed to misguidedly let its obnoxious privileged lead off the hook for her despicable behaviour because she was upset about being blinded. It was one of those scenarios where she causes the worst of the thriller dilemmas through her selfishness, but we are meant to celebrate her as an anti-hero and her overcoming, despite the deaths. A film like Ryan Gover ‘The Strings’ showed a film can have a detached female protagonist without insisting we relate and assume they are worthy of empathy.

 

To backtrack a little: ‘Lucky’ was also the kind of film happy to end on the abstract and unsolved, and I found my genre taste moving more in that direction. Because irresolution or/and not quite knowing, that’s a horror too. Jim Cumming’s ‘The Beta Test’ did a similar thing, hinged on another brilliant performance by Jim Cummings. After the favourite ‘The Wolf of Snow Hollow’, Cummings is obviously genre-friendly, but his fascination for the lost men he plays, conflicted between wanting to do good and their innate assholeness and latent violence – means that he’s just as interested in character studies, producing quite fresh horrors. ‘The Beta Test’ was also relevant to the #MeToo and post-Weinstein discussion, an essential peer to Kitty Green’s excellent slow-burner ‘The Assistant’.

 

And speaking of work: Noah Hutton’s ‘Lapsis’ used that reliable low-budget location, the woods, to present a science-fiction scenario that satirised and prodded at the abstract nature of modern work life. People are paid to trail cables through woods to plug into giant boxes for something digital, the quantum trading market. And that simple but direct metaphor for man’s technology desecrating the natural world was just one of its thoughtful ideas. Understated, low-key but germane and timely, its quiet veneer hid a critique just as barbed as a Ken Loach drama.

 

And whilst we’re on this subject, just a mention of ‘Black Friday’ which was a B-monster movie (customers are monsters) that was at its best when letting its staff/victims casually discuss work.

And maybe a little on Covid films:

 

Paul Schuyler’s very home-made ‘Red River Road’ seemed to me to catch the feeling of the sense of unmoored reality during lockdown. And I do mean very home-made: starring his family; named after the street they lived on… a very lockdown film that was impressive by using this to imply an increasingly imploding existence with instructions but without clear definition. Stay out or in? People disappear without explanation? What is all this? Another film where the irresolution seemed essential and chilling. Impressively unsettling and capturing that feeling of introspection spiralling into failing reality.

 

Even more claustrophobic was Alexandra Aja’s ‘Oxygene’. Although a film set entirely within a cryogenic chamber may seem like it will be a chore, the chamber is always active, bright and futuristic, and Mélanie Laurent’s performance always compelling. Of course, there are a few flashbacks (which the trailer of course makes good use of) but for the most part we are entombed. And when it does open out, it’s satisfying, if not spectacular, starting with the intimacy of sci-fi ideas and then getting bigger and bigger. Also it’s a broadening for Aja who, with this film, swapped his typical ruthlessness for humanity with this one.

 

DM Cunningham’s ‘The Spore’ came across initially as an art-horror with little dialogue and pretty takes of that favoured low budget location: the woods. Any film like this will of course immediately be seen for its allegorical affinity to the COVID era; but aside from two characters arguing whether to go outside or not, it’s not a film to be made more poignant by the pandemic context. We know this stuff; it’s why there were studies that showed horror fans dealt better with lockdowns. It got better as it went along, turning into a portmanteau of interconnected tales about a virus creating agreeably goofy practical effects monsters. Those goofy monsters and the initial pretty forest segments won me over.

 

And Ben Wheatley’s divisive ‘In the Earth’ was a Covid film in that it was conceived and made and is set in the time of the pandemic (like ‘Oxygen’). Some were disappointed that the pandemic wasn’t a prime antagonist, but acknowledging this period was more Wheatley’s aim. Besides, it also presented a somewhat passive protagonist that wants to know things and falling into an unhinged world torn between faith and science both trying to know an abstract force, which was surely totally of its time.

 

Films like John Valley’s ‘The Pizzagate Massacre’, ‘Lucky’ and ‘The Beta Test’ also felt of the moment, as well as Jacob Gentry’s creepy ‘Broadcast Singal Intrusion’ for its portrayal of a man spiralling downwards and irretrievably into conspiracy theories. And excepting ‘Pizzagate’ and like ‘The Empty Man’, they all ended in the kind of existential terror that really makes a film haunt. Perhaps a slight open-endedness or vagueness of terror and resolution is a product of very unstable times. It’s the kind of ambiguity you can only find in indies, unless you are Paul Thomas Anderson.

 

John Valley’s ‘The Pizzagate Massacre’ was thoroughly of the moment, and certainly the title directly referencing the Trump period (although called ‘Duncan’). A film looking at those caught up in a right-wing conspiracy cult, looking to humanise some and give them complexity. Starting out seemingly a lot broader, Tinus Seaux’s performance of Duncan supplied the complexity the film aimed for, even as it kept it’s broad strokes. It’s no mistake that the most vacuous and ultimately manipulative characters are of the media. It certainly felt heartfelt and authentic in intention.

 

And that’s what I got to see at the cinema and the bulk of festival watched.

Oh, I left Denis Villeneuve's 'Dune' feeling quite wowed.