After the excellent opening titles by producer/designer Marta Carracedo, director Aditya Vishwanath’s latest film Shadows Fall is definitely intriguing.

Senka’s (Dylan Quigg) life is miserable and she is on edge. Not surprising when you see the size of the fridge protruding out from the kitchen wall…an architect’s nightmare. Work deadlines, a wandering psychopath and nosy neighbours contribute to her nervousness. When she’s not consulting her voodoo book and having visits from Amis (Christian Wennberg), the Swedish demon she has done a deal with, she is having yet another soul-searching conversation with her husband, or at least staring at him.

Fortunately Raine & Willem arrive, the new neighbours, bringing both a necessary boost to the film as well as a comic element. But the major question and film’s premise is Jonas (Jener Dasilva) – is he there or not? His constant brow-wrinkling and confused state contributes to the dubiousness of it all. The visual clues – dead flowers, Senka looking progressively gaunt as the film progresses, Jonas taking on zombie qualities – suggest that things are definitely not right.

Combine that with a mediocre script of hons, dears, sweethearts and other limited conversations in the vein of “sweetie, is this everything you wanted?”, layer it with some haunting music and a smattering of clichés and the situation is dire. The only thing that kept me watching was wondering whether Willem was ever going to speak.

If Jonas really is dead, then Senka should have left him that way. Their co-dependency probably made them miserable. With a re-edit to knock off an hour, a rewrite and a resync, this film could have legs. And quoting Senka, it could also be renamed “Hell is us”.

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