François Ozon's adaptation of The Stranger, while visually stunning, reveals the limitations of cinema in depicting the complex inner states of consciousness that Camus masterfully crafted in his text.
Obnoxious jewellery dealer Rodney Manderson has been killed outside the Bowery auction rooms, stabbed through the eye with the Victorian hatpin that his boss, Rose Bowery, has brandished in front of the nation on Bargain Hunt. As she discussed the pin's virtues as a deadly weapon as well as its millinerial uses, the fiercely loyal Rilke decides while feeling grateful to have skipped lunch and trying not to think of jelly to remove it before calling the police.
The first thing you notice about undertone is how quiet it is; not just in its audio mix, but in how it's shot - primarily steady wide shots that slowly pan across empty rooms, allowing your eyes to frantically scan for something amiss. It's an understated form of filmmaking that allows for the movie's scares to hit all that much harder.
Until recently, "liminal spaces" were only known to architects. But on the Internet, storytellers and amateur filmmakers have morphed these ubiquitous places you pass by on errand runs into caverns of cosmic terror. Now, a new A24 film from 20-year-old filmmaker Kane Parsons is set to kick off the summer and christen it the season of liminal horror.
This isn't your average pandemic thriller; here, the infected meld with inorganic material in their surroundings, until their outward contours and their personhood are gone. Thibault Emin's film starts with a little whiff of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's Delicatessen. After their one-night stand, hypochondriac Anx (Matthieu Sampeur) and impertinent Cass (Edith Proust) find themselves bunkered up in one corner of a madcap apartment block.
After spotting that Eli's rash guard conceals a red, flaky skin disorder, the boys have concluded that he has the titular plague, a contagious disease that affects social standing as much as it does dermatological well-being. If anyone ever touches him, they must thoroughly wash themselves before they're considered full-blown infected. Even something as innocent as Eli sitting at the same lunch table sends his teammates running and screaming.
I posted a rave review of the new Sam Raimi film, Send Help, the other day and triggered a debate I didn't expect: is it OK for Christians to watch horror films? Send Help a gore-laced plane-crash survival face-off, according to the Guardian review (which was less kind than mine) is more comedy-horror than horror, or maybe horror/thriller. But there's definitely horror there you get the point.
