This is a film that improved in my reckoning only after I had seen it and discussed it a bit. When I was watching it, I took things more or less at face value and consequently I wasn't overly impressed but on reflection there was a bit more going on with this one when you analyse it a little. The story has a junkie called Brian head off to a cabin in a remote mountain area in an attempt to get off the narcotics. Two people enter his orbit, a female friend called Anna who wants to help him and a local cop hell bent on harassing him. All the while, he experiences frightening hallucinations that seem to be connected in some way.
Directed by Kelton Jones who plays the cop, with a lead actor Clint Carney who also wrote the screenplay, this is a film that I think suffers from not having better actors. While Jones is actually alright as the police officer, it's the lead actors Carney and Jaymie Valentine, who plays Anna, that let the side down here. Both are seemingly primarily musicians and it shows. Carney is more irritating than truly convincing as a troubled addict, while Valentine practically sleep-walks through the entire film. It's possible that this is an intentional stylised form of acting to illustrate the dream-like nature of events but my gut feeling is it's more likely just not terribly good acting. So from a dramatic perspective the film is pretty much handicapped from the word go on account of this. But the nightmare imagery that punctuates the story is very well done, it doesn't overdo it and it is quite effectively creepy. In the final section of the film, it has to be said things do get very disturbing indeed. Firstly, the police officer is dispatched with a gunshot to the face and soon after Brian's ex-wife, her new husband and little girl show up and are all murdered. The woman has a bottle stamped into her face and the little girl has her head cut off with a knife. This latter scene is extremely disturbing stuff with the girl's murder in particular shot in graphic detail. It crosses into territory you just don't see in movies (which is a good thing) but its visceral nature certainly is hard to forget and will no doubt give this feature some notoriety.
But it was only when you start to piece things together that the whole starts to emerge. My take on it is that this is the third occasion Brian has retreated to this location on cold turkey. The first time murdering the family, the second killing his friend Anna and then most recently shooting the cop. The clues are all there, including his visions of the dead woman and the headless girl. He also has an seemingly irrational revulsion associated with the kitchen knife and there is also the scene where he goes into the cellar where he sees something, which we see out of focus in the foreground – it seems clear that the bodies of the family are down here and that he did go down there on the visit that Anna accompanied him. What confuses things is that the narrative is non-linear with flashbacks interspersed side-by-side, along with hallucinations which is muddled even further on account of Brian being a very unreliable drug-addled narrator. It all adds up to a film which seems a little lacking if taken at face value but which has a lot more going for it when you realise it is very fragmented and more complex than it first appears. It still suffers on account of its poor acting but it is a film which has a story which is much more interesting than originally meets the eye.
Directed by Kelton Jones who plays the cop, with a lead actor Clint Carney who also wrote the screenplay, this is a film that I think suffers from not having better actors. While Jones is actually alright as the police officer, it's the lead actors Carney and Jaymie Valentine, who plays Anna, that let the side down here. Both are seemingly primarily musicians and it shows. Carney is more irritating than truly convincing as a troubled addict, while Valentine practically sleep-walks through the entire film. It's possible that this is an intentional stylised form of acting to illustrate the dream-like nature of events but my gut feeling is it's more likely just not terribly good acting. So from a dramatic perspective the film is pretty much handicapped from the word go on account of this. But the nightmare imagery that punctuates the story is very well done, it doesn't overdo it and it is quite effectively creepy. In the final section of the film, it has to be said things do get very disturbing indeed. Firstly, the police officer is dispatched with a gunshot to the face and soon after Brian's ex-wife, her new husband and little girl show up and are all murdered. The woman has a bottle stamped into her face and the little girl has her head cut off with a knife. This latter scene is extremely disturbing stuff with the girl's murder in particular shot in graphic detail. It crosses into territory you just don't see in movies (which is a good thing) but its visceral nature certainly is hard to forget and will no doubt give this feature some notoriety.
But it was only when you start to piece things together that the whole starts to emerge. My take on it is that this is the third occasion Brian has retreated to this location on cold turkey. The first time murdering the family, the second killing his friend Anna and then most recently shooting the cop. The clues are all there, including his visions of the dead woman and the headless girl. He also has an seemingly irrational revulsion associated with the kitchen knife and there is also the scene where he goes into the cellar where he sees something, which we see out of focus in the foreground – it seems clear that the bodies of the family are down here and that he did go down there on the visit that Anna accompanied him. What confuses things is that the narrative is non-linear with flashbacks interspersed side-by-side, along with hallucinations which is muddled even further on account of Brian being a very unreliable drug-addled narrator. It all adds up to a film which seems a little lacking if taken at face value but which has a lot more going for it when you realise it is very fragmented and more complex than it first appears. It still suffers on account of its poor acting but it is a film which has a story which is much more interesting than originally meets the eye.