Rating: C+
Dir: Daniel Lasker
Star: Anja Taljaard, Daniel Lasker, Eddie Sandifolo, Lionel Strasky
You could consider this a bonus entry for 31 More Countries of Horror, coming as it does from Zimbabwe. That’s a new one, though it’s not excessively localized in terms of colour. Indeed, if it reminded me of anything, it was a Gothic Victorian mystery, written by someone like Wilkie Collins. Spooky mansion? Check. Family secrets? Check. A dogged detective? Check. Insanity and murder? A two-fer check. Plucky heroine Katheryn Bekker (Taljaard) needs to do slightly more flitting through the corridors in her nightgown, holding a candelabra. Then again, I tend to believe many movies would be improved with an increased amount of flitting. It’s a bit of a lost art these days.
She returns from the UK to her family home in Bulawayo, after getting a concerning phone call about the health of her father, Ryland (Strasky). Concern proves justified, as he keels over and is taken to hospital. Before going unconscious, he mutters something about the basement to his daughter. When Katheryn investigates ‐ a prime flitting opportunity, I’d say – she’s startled to discover a young man, Cullen Landon (Lasker), chained up in an underground room. I must say, quite why she doesn’t immediately call the authorities, is a little unclear. I mean, she was just complaining to a friend about how she wasn’t able to connect with her father. Cullen begs to be freed, but Katheryn figures there must be a good reason for his unofficial incarceration. Possibly connected to a recent string of local disappearances.
Katheryn begins to investigate what was going on, and finds a potentially disturbing connection to her own mother vanishing, a still unsolved incident. Doing so makes her cross the path of local detective Thabani Ndlovu (Sandfolo), and the film does a nice job of quietly noting the difference in lifestyles between that enjoyed by the Bekker family, and the far less luxurious accomodation of Det. Ndlovu. This doesn’t make him any less competent or persistent: he investigates the missing people from the other end, though both he and Katheryn end up at the same conclusion. Is Cullen an innocent victim of a mad old man, as he claims? Or is he a silver-tongued psychopath, whose confinement is best for everyone?
Lasker pulls triple duty here, also co-writing this, and graduates to his feature debut after cutting his teeth on a series of short. It’s a solid piece of work, with some imaginative flourishes that catch the eye, such as a foot chase in which Ndlovu pursues a suspect. The performances are reliable enough too. I think it’s the script which is the weakest link: outside of Katheryn’s weird inability to contact the authorities, there are a few other points where things occur, for reasons necessary to the plot rather than as an organic result. These moments definitely shook me out of being fully absorbed, though it kept reeling me back in, until an ending of which Wilkie Collins would likely have approved.
[The film is available on VOD and Amazon now]