Earlier this year I reviewed the wonderful short fantasy film The Stolen Wings by Irish writer and director Gerard Lough and now he is back with another short film, this time a horror flick based on the short story The Boogeyman by Stephen King.
Stephen King Adaptations to date have had a very hit and miss track record but based on the footage on display in this trailer, Gerard Lough’s latest looks like it may be a genuinely scary effort.
Preview by Robert Mann BA (Hons)
© BRWC 2010.
Louisa Fielden’s follow up to her impressive little short Mr. Lewis treads on similar territory in so much as its a twisty narrative where the protagonist seems to exist in multiple realities at the same time and it’s up to the audience to figure out which – if any – are genuine. It also shares an actress in the shape of Natalie Loader, here she plays a girl cooped up in a psychiatric hospital meeting with her doctor about her narcolepsy. As the meeting continues she falls into an unexpected slumber where she’s stalked in her dream by a mute, menacing girl around crumbly hospital corridors.
Fielden has assembled a fine assortment around her, contributing well in terms of cinematography, set dressing, make-up, music and even title design, but unfortunately the film stumbles in terms of its narrative. Ultimately it feels like a clipping from a larger piece, there are too many ideas rattling around inside the film’s barely ten minute running time and the lack of real resolution is less ambiguous and, instead, disappointing. Very quickly the dream falls into the wobbly cliche of spooky hospital horror with the ‘evil girl’ barely registering any sense of threat or even, in a potential David Lynch nod, creepy weirdness during a subtitled exchange.
Atmospherically the film does reasonably well, some shots are particularly lovely and the film establishes a strong ambience and sense of place excellently. This serves to render this more of an experiment than an accomplishment, but the film itself flits by so hastily that it’s difficult to really judge it too much one way or another. If anything this feels like an extended preview of a larger concept, and perhaps that’s the greatest compliment I can pay it, that I would be interested to spend more time in this world and get to know a little bit more about the characters and envelop myself deeper into the situation and – hopefully – given a padded running time, Fielden could develop the bizarre and the spooky to an extent that it can really rattle the viewer. Mr. Lewis worked because it used a very simplistic three act narrative to tell a neat and nutty tale; trying to pull off a psychologically complex and scary thriller within such a short space of time is a huge task and one that this film doesn’t quite rise to.
Regardless the talent involved here, in every quarter, are ones to watch and it is no stretch of the imagination to expect Fielden’s name book-ending a cinematic release in the not too distant future.
© BRWC 2010.
“I’m not the Zodiac. And if i was, i certainly wouldn’t tell you.”
David Fincher’s epic crime drama surrounding the unsolved case of the Zodiac serial killer in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s California. One of the finest films in the last decade, with Fincher engaging you from the opening scene with simple but highly effective film making matched with brilliant performances from Robert Downey Jr (perfect as journalist/junkie Paul Avery), Mark Ruffalo as the unsatisfied cop on the case and Jake Gyllenhaal – in what is a difficult part to play as cartoonist Robert Graysmith who became obsessed with the Zodiac.
© BRWC 2010.
>> The Goldberg Standard <<
It takes a lot to make Whoopi mad
Whoopi Goldberg used to be in Star Trek: Next
Generation playing the Enterprise’s wise old sage,
Guinan. She’s certainly proving that life
doesn’t always imitate art.
First she provided a nice bit of support for
Roman Polanski when he was held in Switzerland,
saying “I know it wasn’t rape-rape”.
This week she was out on TV showing love
for another fellow celebrity, Mel Gibson.
“He may be a bonehead. I can’t sit and say that
he’s a racist”. (By bonehead we guess she means
someone threatening to harm his girlfriend,
and burn down her house because she once
went to sleep before giving him oral sex.)
Just in case you needed reminding why people –
obviously unreasonably, Whoopi – thought he might
be racist, this is what he said to the mother of
his youngest child:
“You’re an embarrassment to me. You look like a
f**king pig in heat, and if you get raped by a
pack of n**gers, it will be your fault.”
The leaked Mel Gibson audio:
http://www.radaronline.com/
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© BRWC 2010.