Daytime Nightmare (UK 2020: Dir Katrina Grey) Grey plays Lucy, a teacher (although we never see her in that profession) who has aspirations to act. She signs on for an acting class where she's immediately attracted to fellow thesp in waiting Chris (Alexander Winters).
Home is a large house she shares with the rather taciturn Sara (Christiana Chaiwanna), a woman who seems somewhat unsupportive of her housemate's ambitions. As Lucy progresses in class, enjoying the camaraderie of her colleagues and inspired by her teacher, Mr Shaw (Jonathan Sampson), Sara is increasingly frozen out of her friend's life.
Increasingly mistrustful of her housemate, Lucy, who we learn has a history of schizophrenia in her family, experiences a downturn in her mental health, first through headaches and later nightmarish visions of friends and family trying to kill her. Lucy's life spins out of control, but is it all in her head, or are external forces out to harm her?
Apparently based on an actual experience with a stalker, Daytime Nightmare, written, produced and directed by Grey with musical assistance from her husband Randy Kalsi (who also has a bit part as a cab driver), is, as you would expect, intensely personal; at times it feels like we're intruding in a particularly gruelling therapy session. The problem is that, apart from Lucy's outbursts and her visions, everything else in the film is so understated that things progress quite flatly. It's ironic that, as a group of actors, Grey's company vary in their skills; there's no real compelling performance here, possibly to help the director stand out in her own.
To be honest, apart from the sometimes rather nightmarish visions, this is only marginally a 'Fantastic' film; shot in 2020 but released in the UK a year later. It looks lovely though, although the Thai locations are perhaps not expected, and it's certainly an at times uncomfortable watch.
Expiry (UK 2021: Dir Tom Gatley) Gatley's only feature to date is a disquieting, arid sci fi drama which nods to
The Handmaid's Tale in its story of one possible near future.
Jamie (Richard Miltiadis) and Sophie (Sarah-Louise Tyler), a married couple are, when we meet them, having trouble conceiving a child. The stress associated with this situation is compounded by a time limit placed on the union by unseen bureaucracy. The future in which Jamie and Sophie live places strict temporal boundaries on marriages which are incompatible; couples are bonded by bracelets which turn red once a marriage has reached its sell by date (five years). In the normal course of events (well, normal in relation to events in the film) both partners would be free to pursue other, more fruitful relationships.
But Jamie and Sophie are different. Their lives operate outside of the convention of this sort of marriage; they love each other and are keen to bypass the state's writing off of their union. But there's a complication; Sophie is a 'foreigner' from the western states, and an end to the marriage means that she will be returned there.
Expiry has some rather damning things to say about state intervention, the increasing isolation of society and the condition of marriage seen as something purely transactional. Jamie and Sophie both regularly attend (separate) therapy sessions, but in each case the therapist is a computer; just one more untrustworthy institution. Sofia's job in a restaurant is blighted by her fellow waitress, the wife of the owner, who pours scorn on her status; Sofia is to all intents and purposes a refugee, a successful marriage her only chance at establishing an acceptable identity.
There is, thankfully, a redemptive solution, but it's a cold. glacial journey to get there. Expiry boldly fails to rush its story which can make it a slightly soporific watch, and there's a sense of ennui over the whole thing, not helped by the bleak urban landscape which is the couple's home. But it's great low budget filmmaking, full of ideas; a shame that Gatley hasn't followed this up with another feature.
Manhunt: Kill or Be Killed (UK 2021: Dir Darren J. Power) This short just inches in to the
NWotBFF requirements (which states that, for inclusion, films have to be at least 20 minutes) and is, according to the title screen, a proof of concept for a bigger project, as yet unfilmed, called 'Manhunt; Follow the White Rabbit'.
Don't let the hockey mask in the poster fool you; this isn't some Friday the 13th fan film. But the premise is simple: Conard (sp?), played by Mark Sears, and his girlfriend Roxanne (genre favourite Tiffany-Ellen Robinson) are getting it on. Later Conard wakes up, having been knocked out, and Roxanne is missing. He's instructed by a remote voice to load a video cassette (appropriately marked 'play me') into a VCR, where he sees footage of two masked men with Roxanne.
The control voice issues a simple instruction; if Conard wants to see Roxanne again, he must murder some people. If he fails he'll die; the 'kill or be killed' of the title. Which for the second half of the 20 minute short he does, using various implements including, but not limited to a plastic bag and a hammer, despatching various guys in masks. The murders over, Conard moves to get Roxanne back, but the big cheese, Bishop Howser (Howy Bratherton) has other ideas.
You can watch Manhunt: Kill or Be Killed here.
The Censor (UK 2021: Dir Guerrilla Metropolitana) Welcome to the 'esoteric' part of the round up. Subheaded 'A British Horror Tale of Real Politics and Social Moral Code', Guerilla Metropolitana's work is "influenced by expressionism, neo-realism, surrealism, pop-art, erotica, underground and other styles".
Against a background of riots and civil unrest, Sir Philip Reginald Tangen III (Metropolitana) is President of the National Film Censorship Association, responsible for safeguarding the nation's morals. The author of a new Obscenity Act, following the activities of one Graham Bright MP back in the 1980s (the politician who led the fight back against the so called Video Nasties), he has identified at least 32 movie titles which he wants to ban.
But Tangen has another life; we see him proposition a young man on a skateboard (also the director), drug and, off camera but captured through sound and visuals of naked men, serially abuse him. And this guy is not the first; he is the 34th young man to have gone missing, the assumption being that Tangen is responsible for, as the caption suggests, these acts of 'Exoletus'. But it looks like The Censor's latest victim might also be his last.
Although only 44 minutes long,
The Censor is true cinema as art. Choral music and strange sounds (created by 'Monoxide', Metropolitana's previous band) provide the aural backdrop to a succession of harsh, filtered visuals, exposing the scummy outskirts of a city. Hard to follow these images might be, but they have a rancid power. The horror here is concerned with power and manipulation.
You can watch
The Censor here
Deadly Nightshade (UK 2021: Dir Benjamin Rider) And the esoteric offerings in this round up continue. So did you ever have a moment where your world went all pear shaped and you found you were actually the subject of a TV show? No, me neither, but that's the predicament in which Victoria (Suzie Houlihan) finds herself when she gets back to her flat in Brixton, hoping to be whisked away on a romantic weekend with boyfriend Marcus (Matthew Laird). Instead she finds a stranger at home in the shape of Adam (Christopher Blackburn), supposedly a friend of Marcus's, who has been given permission to stay at the apartment while the couple are away. Adam wants her to listen to some tapes; firstly of an obscure band and later a recording of an exorcism.
The return of Marcus, complete with bloodied hand, takes things a step further; apparently he witnessed a car accident and rescued one of the vehicle's occupants. Shaken up, he retires to bed; Victoria then experiences a series of visions which are only the beginning of her nightmare weekend.
Described as a 'mostly improvised feature film', Deadly Nightshade has some good, at times vaguely Lynchian ideas, with a big thank you to 1998's The Truman Show, but squanders them with a confusing setup and flat characters. The TV/game framing is well mounted for what must have been a COVID limited production, but the presence of the ubiquitous Eric Roberts, as a dog collared expert on the supernatural, adds nothing to an already messy project. Well done for getting the thing together at all in the midst of a pandemic, but there's little to take away from this film besides a mild sense of confusion.
Shunner (UK 2021: Dir Michael Fenton Crenshaw) You want more esoterica? Walk this way. The third instalment of the director's 'Left Hand' trilogy, commencing with 2017's
The Left Hand Path and then 2020's
The House of the Laughing Cuckoo Clocks,
Shunner is a no more or less difficult watch than the previous two films.
Set in the liminal spaces of the Essex coast and countryside, several extended scenes tell a loose story of ritual and magick: a dirty old man tries to seduce a passing woman who may in reality be a decomposed body, which he attacks and beheads; the same dirty old man puts on a pair of black gloves and has sex with a blow up doll in a grimy concrete shelter, but is shamed by a distant voice (he will eventually be stabbed in the forest by a pair of witches for stealing an amulet); a very odd convenience shop sells tarot cards, a blood tipped stake, masks and religious artefacts.
All of this is clearly heavily symbolic and rather baffling. Sound and vision are stretched and mutated, and characters from other trilogy instalments here re-appear. Some probably not rights cleared music - in particular by David Last House on the Left Hess - plays awkwardly against the odd goings on. Crenshaw is a filmmaker of some considerable experience; his features are willfully obscure but never boring. But they sure are headscratchy.
You can watch
Shunner here.
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