Rating: C-
Dir: Paulo Leite
Star: Celia Williams, Iris Cayatte, Elizabeth Bochmann, Norman MacCallum
I had queued this one up as the Portuguese entry for 31 More Countries of Horror, but in both style and content, I felt I could find something more local for that. This is entirely in English, has an English lead actress (who both Chris and I independently decided, was what you get when you order Helen Mirren on Temu), and the inspiration for it is clearly the work of British SF/horror veteran Nigel Kneale, best known for creating the character of Quatermass. In this case, however, the closest parallel is Kneale’s The Stone Tape, both films coming at the nexus of science and parapsychology, attempting to apply technology to events traditionally considered more in the spiritual realm.
The “Professor Quatermass” here is Helen (Williams), who is both a medium and a scientific researcher. Her field of interest is figuring out the mechanism by which memories are stored, so they can be unlocked and retrieved, for example, from Alzheimer’s patients. But after she inherits an apartment inhabited by spirits of the deceased, she decides to try and investigate what memories they retain. The man funding her research, Steinman (MacCallum) is less than convinced, but allows her to proceed, in the hopes of her work leading to something profitable. Helen brings in two other sensitives: her assistant Rachel (Cayatte), and Elsa (Bochmann), an artist who has repeatedly been attacked by an entity, pushing her to the end of her tether.
Initially, things go well. Contact is made, and the spirits provide Helen with plans for a machine which, when constructed (aren’t 3D printers wonderful?) allows for easier communication between the two realms. However, Steinman is unimpressed with ghost blueprints – “What can be patented is all that matters” – and cuts off her funding. Helen, naturally, ploughs on, though it becomes clear that there are dangerous forces circling, not least in the apparent shape of the entity which had been hunting Elsa. It all ends, and this is no exaggeration, in ten minutes of non-stop strobing. I’m not photo-sensitive, but even I felt shaky by the time the credits rolled, and would also be hard-pushed to explain exactly how everything was resolved. Beyond “confusingly,” at least.
There are some decent ideas here, and Williams’s performance is good, straddling the line between mysticism and science. However, the rest of the cast are on less solid ground, particularly MacCallum, and they’re not helped by dialogue which sometimes feels like it went through Google Translate. There is one stunningly shocking moment, where the film suddenly shifts from subtle to utterly graphic, and subsequently adopts a much harder, more confrontational approach. I’m not sure it pulls off the transition successfully: up to that point the movie has been a bit too chatty, and after it, feels in need of better exposition. An epilogue of a couple of minutes might have gone a long way to correct this. Instead, the third act problems are too much to overcome.