Body at Brighton Rock (2019) is the first full-length feature film directed (and written) by Roxanne Benjamin, and it demonstrates that she is indeed a horror director to watch. Benjamin has also written and directed the “Don’t Fall” segment of the excellent all-female horror anthology XX (2017), which I review here. She also directed and co-wrote the “Siren” segment of Southbound (2015), reviewed here. Both of these provocative short films demonstrate what seem to be emerging themes of Benjamin’s work: a seamless blending of the supernatural and the psychological—especially when it comes to vulnerable (e.g., frightened, guilty) characters; and a preoccupation with landscape and the ways in which open, desolate land presses on characters’ weaknesses.
Check out the trailer for Body at Brighton Rock:
Body at Brighton Rock is about park ranger Wendy (Karina Fontes, “Siren,” Southbound), who is not exactly cut out for the rugged task she undertakes when she agrees to switch shifts with her friend Maya (Emily Althaus) and head out on a trail to tack up warning signs. Untrained, and not taking the perils she’s warning tourists about seriously herself, Wendy finally gets lost after inadvertently leaving her map behind. Finding herself on a ridge she thinks she knows, Wendy takes a selfie and texts it to Maya. But Maya texts back with two alarming messages: Wendy is not where she thinks she is and, in a chilling moment, Maya asks: “Who’s that behind you?”
Wendy (Karina Fontes) looks down to see the body
Looking over the edge of the rock on which she was just posing, Wendy sees what seems to be a dead body below her. After confirming the man is indeed dead, Wendy radios in to the park headquarters. Dispatch tells her she has to stay where she is and protect the possible crime scene until they can send a group out to her. Since it’s already late in the afternoon, Wendy has to stay the night with the dead body. Already terrified by the desolate location and the body, Wendy is further unsettled by the appearance of a strange man who says he’s been out there for days, presumably hunting or hiking, but who doesn’t seem to have any equipment or the phone he says he usually carries.
Casey Adams as Red
Something seems off about this man, but it’s unclear if, as viewers, we’re infected by Wendy’s increasingly unstable point of view. Panicking, Wendy tells the man to get away from her and the body, thus losing contact with a potentially helpful stranger. Now she does have to spend the night alone.
The body
What follows is an interesting stretch of Body at Brighton Rock in which the camera moves between objective reality and Wendy’s terrified subjective perspective. She imagines (maybe?) terrifying events which seem, at times, as if they are actually materializing. Benjamin expertly portrays how horror emerges from a mind that expects horror, that is primed to see it. As in her previous two short films, “After the Fall” and “Siren,” Benjamin makes it difficult for the viewer to know if the perspective of the protagonist is reliable or not—if she’s seeing what’s really there.
Body at Brighton Rock is particularly effective in its restraint. While Wendy thinks she sees some supernatural things during her terrified night alone, Benjamin frequently cuts away to shots of the landscape. Wendy finds the landscape almost as much a source of terror, and it indeed becomes so through her point of view.
A beautiful but terrifying nature
The film really pays off in the last fifteen minutes or so, which I absolutely loved. It’s a satisfying ending that the film has earned, as it pulls together lots of strands and clues that the viewer probably didn’t put together in the first viewing. It also delivers two truly shocking scenes and then a slow-dawning realization of something that terrifies in a quite different way.
Wendy clambers to what appears to be safety
I very much recommend Body at Brighton Rock, then. It’s a slow film that keeps the viewer interested because of Wendy’s hapless character, played expertly by Karina Fontes, because of the dread that inexorably builds, and because of the breathtaking landscape. Benjamin offers shot after shot of Wendy utterly dwarfed by the natural landscape –and this is part of what gets paid off in one of the terrifying scenes near the end.
You can rent Body at Brighton Rock on Amazon:
