Already on a renewed hot streak thanks to Joy Ride and Mutant Mayhem, Point Grey Pictures have decided to stretch out into new territory by backing a straight-up horror movie. As a fan of Rogen and Goldberg’s work behind the scenes, I’m certainly curious about what such a thing would look like, especially since comedians seem to do well when they embrace their scary side (just look at Jordan Peele). Sure, this is written by Chris Thomas Devlin, who shat out Texas Chainsaw Massacre last year, but hey, I'm open to the possibility of improvement.
Well, while this is definitely several steps up from what in the hell he did to Leatherface, there’s a certain kitchen-sink pace to it. It’s about a kid (Woody Norman as Peter) who lives in an abusive household under Lizzy Caplan and Homelander himself Antony Starr as his parents. They’re the kind of parents who think a punishment dungeon in the basement is a sound idea. You can see why, when Peter starts to hear voices inside the walls, he not only welcomes them but forms a bond with The Girl he hears.
It sets itself up as a kind of 10 Cloverfield Lane deal, where the tension comes from the main character being caught between a mundane and terrifying situation, and a possibly supernatural but no less terrifying situation. There’s some occasional issues balancing the menace of both parties at once, along with the requisite bully whose older brother and his gang break into Peter’s house during the finale, and the girl in the wall serving as a Monster Allegory for childhood trauma.
It doesn’t quite come together as well as it could, possibly due to this clocking in at under 90 minutes, but again, this is the guy who gave us “Try anything and you’re cancelled, bro”; that it comes together at all is itself a minor miracle. Hell, compared to other Monster Allegory flicks I’ve looked at like Antlers, the monsterification of trauma fits with the larger Halloween horror aesthetic. When we eventually get a good look at her, it rides the line between fantastical and realistically twisted in a way that almost hitchhikes into the Uncanny Valley. Then again, the idea of something that’s supposed to be human and humane but isn’t is a pretty good description of remembering abusive family members.
Even when the script starts to show some cracks, the film craft from director Samuel Bodin and co. more than pick up the slack. Along with the creepily effective realisation of The Girl, the atmosphere created by Philip Lozano’s twisting and evocative camera framing (along with the effective editing from Richard Riffaud and Kevin “I made Saw cool again” Greutert) do a lot to make Peter’s home feel like the most soul-crushing place anyone could ever live in, much less a kid.
But it’s with the sound design that the film craft here really shines. The emphasis on how much the house creaks, from the floorboards to the door hinges, really got under my skin, as well as adding a bit to the subtext of parental abuse and trauma as an old problem. Sofia Hultquist (AKA Drum & Lace) really cuts loose on the soundtrack here too, applying the right kind of anxious strings and unnerving piano sections to weave a decent bridge between the Halloween aesthetics of the production and the ‘elevated’ horror aesthetics of the story.
This film is a wild ride. Starting out low-key and then gradually ramping up into an absolute bloodbath, this throws a lot of ideas together and, for the most part, they congeal into a gripping horror flick. It certainly helps to smooth out hopes for Chris Thomas Devlin going forward, along with Point Grey’s presence in the horror genre, and considering we live in a post-Nightmare Before Christmas culture… yeah, I reckon a cheeky gander at this during the holidays still works. Treat yourself.
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