When the girl's uncle, Moe (Ben Caplan) escorts Isaac to the location of his charge, the latter is disconcerted to find that the house is on an island - and he can't swim. Further details emerge. The niece, Olga (Leila Sykes) has a fear of men, being touched and pretty much everything else, and Isaac will be obliged to wear a full bridle, anchored in the cellar, but which gives him access to the whole house except Olga's room. Olga's mother has died, and her father took his own life; hence the need for, what? A companion? A housekeeper?
With two hundred reasons to say yes, Isaac accepts the terms. The isolation is intense, the only sound to be heard being the scream of foxes, and the strange company of Olga, who warily brandishes a crossbow on their first encounter. But Isaac's curiosity gets the better of him, and a search of the house reveals that Moe's explanation isn't quite correct; worse, it's possible that he's been to the house before.
There's a certain fairy tale quality to Caveat, setting the film up as an exercise in atmosphere rather than telling a story. The question here is not 'why did Isaac accept the position?' but 'what's the nature of the threat?'. In some ways the film is a reimagining of the classic 'governess with eerie child' tale, but, taking place as it does in a house bereft of anything resembling a home, one filtered through the lens of the Quay Brothers. If you accept Caveat on the premise there's a lot to, if not like, admire, there are one or two sequences which are genuinely frightening. Sykes's elegantly deadpan delivery as the troubled Olga is central to the movie, against which French's increasingly spooked Isaac plays well. Macabre and unsettling, I liked this a lot.
Censor is a low budget meta movie that takes its subject seriously (Kim Newman is an executive producer, for flip's sake). Enid (Niamh Algar), prim, buttoned up and extremely serious, is one of a group of censors navigating the choppy waters of the early 1980s. Their work is, pun intended, cut out for them as they decide how much eye gouging, stabbing or beheading to excise from the films they review or, as sometimes preferred by their risk averse boss, whether to ban the thing altogether. It's a strategy that gains credibility when a real life crime is seized upon by the press as mirroring the events in one of the films passed.
While the political climate tries to associate the viewing of such items with an increase in violent crime, Enid's motivations seem triggered by an event which has already happened to her; the disappearance of her sister Nina some years previously while both were out playing in the woods as children. The decision of Enid's parents to finally declare their missing daughter dead is a tipping point for the guilt ridden censor who sees, in one of the productions of the exploitation duo - shadowy Frederic North (Adrian Schiller) and unctuous Doug Smart (Michael Smiley) - a cast member who looks like Nina. Enid's determination to uncover the truth takes her through the video booth looking glass and into the movies themselves.
As well as the whole 'video nasty' gatekeeping issue, many of the film's detractors did not like Censor's rather abstract denouement, which contrasts with its relatively coherent first half. But this is a psychological film whose subject suffers the fractured end result of compartmentalising her life to cope with trauma, and there are no easy answers. This is Bailey-Bond's first feature and at times it feels like it, but it's also bold filmmaking which makes for distinctly uneasy viewing, not least its Stasi Germany take on the early 1980s.
Sandwiched between these films is the director's intimate but ambitious sci fi mindbender, filmed on an iphone and with a cast comprising, well Mrs Butler-Hart and a couple of borrowed luvvies. Let me explain.
At an unspecified point in time (the future? Present day?) the discovery of an alternate earth, albeit one which is war torn, has excited scientists and occasioned much experimentation, including human subjects.
One such is Jane (Tori Butler-Hart) who wakes up tied to a chair in an otherwise empty room. Managing to free herself, Jane experiences visions of the other earth, but is initially unable to leave without being returned to her original position. A gradual understanding of her situation - and how to liberate herself - enables Jane to escape by car (her drive through empty suburban streets is chilling both visually and as a reminder of the very real weirdness of the pandemic). Eventually Jane happens across the Wytness Centre, a building which houses those attempting to understand the 'paraverse'. But her discovery of files and recordings only deepens her concern about her role in the search for scientific answers.
Abandon hope anyone expecting a fast paced sci fi thriller; Butler-Hart's movie is deliberately slow, focusing on Jane's anguish and slow realisation of the truth, with only occasional CGI interventions which frankly aren't really necessary. Tori is the centre of the film and acquits herself well considering she's in every scene; well every scene except those featuring a rather bemused Sir Ian McKellen and a scientist (Conleth Hall). I: SU isn't for everyone. I got a real sense that this was Butler-Hart, frustrated at the limits being placed on him as a filmmaker and deciding to make his 'fuck the pandemic' movie.
It's a witty piece in thrall to video gaming of the late 1980s/early 1990s, and what you get out of it rather depends on how nostalgic you find the setup.
It's Brooklyn in 1990. Sarah (Isabelle Allen) just loves games, particularly playing 'Max Cloud' with her friend Cowboy (Franz Drameh), much to the annoyance of her father Tony (distinguished TV actor Sam Hazeldine).
Sucked into the game via a Space Witch (Jason Maza), she becomes one of the game characters, Jake (Elliot Langridge), a chef who, with his boss Max Cloud (Scott Adkins), have crash landed on Heinous (yep, rhymes with 'anus'), a notorious prison planet. Heinous is home to the evil Revengor (the John Hannah) and his deputy Shee (Lashana Lynch); Max and his team must complete various level missions to escape the planet, while Cowboy, back in Sarah's room in New York, assists.
TIAoMC has a great setup, zigzagging between 20th Century USA (actually the whole thing was filmed in a studio in Yorkshire) and the world of the game (with some fab graphics depicting the characters on screen in all their 8 Bitness). It also has a witty script; unfortunately everything runs out of steam way too quickly as the restrictions of the budget prohibit any real development of what we're seeing. But everyone looks like they're having a good time and go to hard man Adkins steals the show as the chisel jawed, unreconstructed Cloud.
Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) is young, talented and besotted with the 1960s. Living with her grandmother (Rita Tussingham) in deepest Cornwall following her mother's suicide, she's in for a shock when, securing herself a place in a London fashion school, she finds that the 'big smoke' is a far cry from the swinging decade she idolises.
When she arrives, as well as the casual misogyny she encounters on the streets, Eloise experiences a different type of threat in the form of the city raised girls on her course, whose bullying behaviour exploits her rural upbringing. Leaving the pressure of student housing she rents a time capsule like bedsit run by Ms Collins (Diana Rigg in her last role) which hasn't been redecorated by the owner since the 1960s. But once installed in her room Eloise, who her grandmother has described as 'sensitive' (in more ways than one), begins to tune in to an older London, and in particular the spirit of an aspiring singer and performer Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), who may have occupied Ellie's room back in the 1960s. Eloise finds it increasingly hard to separate the past from the present, and wonders whether the poor mental health fatally experienced by her mother has passed on to her, as the visions of Sandie and her tortured life in Soho intrude into her present day existence.
Wright's love of the giallo movie is also thoroughly explored in Last Night in Soho's exponentially nasty setup, which balances elements of the ghost story narrative with the director's trademark production flashiness. I actually gasped when, in the first of Eloise's increasingly dreamlike visions, she walks down an alleyway and into a stunningly rendered 1960s West End, complete with bright marquee lights, rain slicked streets and a mile high poster of the (then) latest James Bond film above the cinema (actually London's Haymarket). The movie is far from subtle; cast wise, with the exception of caring fellow student John (Michael Ajayo) all the blokes are awful, and most of the women not much better. But this is an Edgar Wright film of course, a director with great vision but often little maturity; Last Night in Soho has lots to savour but leaves a distinctly bitter aftertaste.
But Mundy, supported by the Scott Jeffrey Jagged Edge production machine, doesn't even need all 12 as the inspiration for his Sawney Beane/TCM style backwoods chiller; just the first - and most well known - verse is enough. In a prologue two children, Jack and Jill, are urged by their mother to run up a hill (geddit?) not to fetch a pail of water but to escape their berserk dad; mum sacrifices herself for their safety.
The two kids grow up feral; they're also possibly deformed, although it may be that their misshapen faces are the result of them wearing masks of human skin; this, like so much in the movie, is never explained. What is known is that a succession of hikers are reported missing in the area; intrepid local reporter Bernice (Sarah T. Cohen) is sent to investigate and comes a J&J cropper; the assumption is that the missing become dinner.
The main 'action' in the movie centres around a group of friends who travel out to the same area to help one of their number, Eden (Beatrice Fletcher) get over the suicide of her boyfriend. Much hand wringing follows as everyone examines their own grief; friendships deepen - there's even a same sex unfulfilled crush - and then J&J work out that their version of a Deliveroo order has arrived; and then the killings begin. The fact that the hillside killers live about half a mile away from the house where the group are staying (the ubiquitous Jeffrey youth hostel, one supposes) strains the concept of their lonely feral existence, but let that be the least of your WTF moments. On a more positive note, James Morgan's rural cinematography is often rather striking, and as Jill scream queen regular Antonia Whillans manages to elicit pathos in her role of a cannibal who perhaps would rather not be; but then Mundy mounts a climax where our two villains live to fight (and eat) another day; indeed, Jack and Jill 2 and 3 would be just around the corner.
