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Posted on April 26, 2018

10×10 and the Trend of Women Kept Captive

Dawn Keetley

10×10 is the first feature-length film for director Suzi Ewing. Noel Clarke wrote the screenplay and it stars Kelly Reilly (Eden Lake, Britannia) and Luke Evans (mostly recently in TNT’s The Alienist). The film’s plot is simple: Lewis (Evans) stalks Cathy (Reilly), abducts her, and locks her in sound-proofed (10×10) room in his home. At first, all he asks his captive is what her name is, but as she tries to escape, he gets more violent. As 10×10 unfolds, the viewer’s assumptions about what’s going on take some dramatic turns—and one of the most effective things about this film is precisely the way it plays with viewers’ expectations.

These captured-women narratives are undoubtedly saying something about men’s anxiety in an era of diminishing power—and of the rising power of women. The 2010s kicked off with Hanna Rosin’s major article in the The Atlantic: “The End of Men,” with her book of the same title following on its heels. On the other hand, as important as that general anxiety is, the films are all saying something different in their particular kinds of captivity, the different dynamics they imagine between captor and captive. 10×10 is no exception.

Posted on April 20, 2018

Ghost Stories: Best Horror Film of 2018

Dawn Keetley

Ghost Stories, distributed by IFC Midnight, is directed and written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman and adapted from their stage play which opened in Liverpool in 2010. The play was notable for its warning that no one under 15 should attend and also for its asking the audience to keep its “secrets.” Like the play, the film definitely deserves to have its secrets kept, and this review is without spoilers. I do know, though, that I’ll undoubtedly write about Ghost Stories in the future because it’s a film with an ending that needs to be talked about. And it’s brilliant. It’s the best horror film I’ve watched in 2018. (While Ghost Stories premiered at the London Film Festival in late 2017, so technically it’s a 2017 film, it didn’t arrive in the US until 2018.)

Ghost Stories centers on Professor Phillip Goodman (Andy Nyman), a profound skeptic who devotes his life to debunking what he sees as the superstitious and destructive delusions of believers. A short home video that plays near the opening of the film explains Goodman’s zeal. As he says, “My father’s religious beliefs destroyed our family.” To Goodman, religious faith, or any faith in the supernatural, is a product of humans’ having to confront mortality and death; it’s a way of dealing with “existential terror.” And he believes it’s a self-deceptive way of dealing with that terror. Goodman lives his life believing one must confront the terror of existence and death, not evade it through lies. His entire life is built on the bedrock of “material evidence” –of apprehending the reality in front of your eyes. The film, not surprisingly, challenges that view.

Posted on March 23, 2018

Pyewacket and the Consequences of Rage

Dawn Keetley

With his second feature film, Pyewacket (2017), Adam MacDonald is showing himself to be a distinctive director and writer of horror. His films offer spare plots centered on an intense, complicated relationship—a relationship then tested and torn apart by some kind of horrific force. His films are beautifully shot and make the most of the isolation of his characters.

MacDonald’s first film, Backcountry (2014), which I review here, centers on the strained relationship of Alex (Jeff Roop) and Jenn (Missy Peregrym) as they become lost in the deep woods on a camping trip Jenn never wanted to take. An encounter with a large grizzly bear, however, puts their troubled relationship in a very different perspective.

Posted on March 17, 2018

The Strangers: Prey at Night Is a Travesty

Dawn Keetley

Johannes Roberts’ The Strangers: Prey at Night is a travesty for anyone who watched and loved the outstanding 2008 film, The Strangers, directed by Bryan Bertino. I discuss Bertino’s Strangers here. It’s a brilliant horror film in the pure, enigmatic malevolence of the “strangers,” the simplicity of the plot, and the absolute terror induced by the way the strangers emerge silently into the frame, inside the home they shouldn’t be in. Strangers: Prey at Night is the opposite of all that. Which isn’t to say that, as a film in its own right, it doesn’t have some redeeming qualities.

Posted on March 4, 2018

Midnighters, the Cost of the American Dream, and A Simple Plan

Dawn Keetley

Midnighters premiered in June 2017 at the Los Angeles Film Festival and saw its theatrical release in the US on March 2, 2018. It’s the feature-film directorial debut for Julius Ramsay, who has directed two episodes of AMC’s The Walking Dead—two very good ones, I might add: “Still” (s. 4, ep. 12 [2014]) and “Them” (s. 5, ep. 10 [2015])—as well as an episode of Scream: The TV Series (2015) and of Outcast (2016). The screenplay was written by his brother, Alston Ramsay, and the film’s four main leads are well cast: Alex Essoe from 2014’s Starry Eyes as Lindsey, Dylan McTee as her husband Jeff, Perla Haney-Jardine as Lindsey’s wayward sister, Hannah, and Ward Horton as alleged FBI agent Smith. While the plot is a little predictable (I definitely saw the final reveal coming and wondered why none of the characters seemed to), it is acted and directed extremely well. The pacing is perfect with each escalation of the tension happening at just the right time. You should watch this.