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Movie review: Seance (2021)

27 Monday Sep 2021

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Affiliated more for his penmanship among the mumblegore movement, especially alongside Director Adam Wingard’s You’re Next, Simon Barrett has been slowly etching his way to his own turn behind the camera calling the shots.

His opportunity arises in Shudder’s latest Exclusive and Original feature Seance.

Barrett’s name alone gets me excited to see what he would produce when in charge of the lens and I’m happy to say that I wasn’t disappointed.

There are familiar elements at play here, with the kick-ass action sequences that come from the unexpected, plus the spiritual component that was drawn in Temple.     

That isn’t to say that Seance doesn’t carve its own narrative for the audience to be lured by.

The tale that is woven centers on a Girls Boarding school, Edevine Academy for Girls, following the mysterious death of one of the school girls when a prank goes wrong. But is there more to play beneath the disciplined exterior of the prestigious learning facility?

Newcomer Camille Meadows certainly suspects that this could be the case when confronted by a not-so warm welcome from some of the other girls and an even frostier reception from something or someone that haunts her room each night.

Have the girls stirred something from beyond when they practice a seance to get in touch with the girl who died? Is there something more untoward? Camille must navigate her new terrain and take on the role of sleuth, to uncover the truth and potentially face a haunting prospect that pushes her to the brink of the living world.

The Diagnosis:

Barrett generates a familiar plot but manages to weave it with a level of cool and panache that marks Seance with its own identity.

It helps that the actors on show are engaging and provide a little more than the two-dimensional tropes that we often expect on screen. Notably Suki Waterhouse’s (Assassination Nation) whose Camille shows levels of vulnerability and hardship throughout the film, coupled with the notion that nothing and no one are who or what they seem to be.
Plus Tobias Vethake’s score is truly captivating, ensnaring you into the celluloid world with ease, adding to the depth of the film.

Roll on Barrett’s next feature, a stepping stone into expanding the VHS franchise with V/H/S 94.

  • Saul Muerte

Seance is currently streaming on Shudder from Thursday, September 30th.

Movie review: The Bad Batch

24 Sunday Sep 2017

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Cannibalism, amputees, Jason Mamoa, and a Cult leader / DJ called The Dream, who lures people into a false sense of sanctity played by Keanu Reeves.

Throw in a dash Giovani Ribisi’s quirkiness and Jim Carrey playing an estranged hermit living on the outer rim and you have all the ingredients that take up Ana Lily Armipour’s sophomore outing following A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night.

Both The Bad Batch and Armipour’s previous effort deal with isolation and the notion of the outsider struggling to fit into a post-apocalyptic world.

In this instance, The Bad Batch sees Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) as our protagonist, forced to suffer an early ordeal at the hands of a family of cannibals living by their own means in a desert landscape.

In what feels like a deviation from what the trailer and film write-up had promised, Arlen soon resolves her predicament albeit with the loss of her arm and leg on her road to recovery.

And therein lies the beginning of a series of thinly-veiled metaphors that are riddled throughout the movie.

One could forgive this, if the plot line was strong enough to carry you through buy even this falls on the light side, so much so that the films failings become even more noticeable.

Not that it doesn’t have some strong points. Armipour certainly has a strong eye for creating some visual imagery from Arlen’s pop-culture style shorts to The Dream’s trance-like rhythms. Plus, you know, the whole Jason Mamoa brooding thing.

Whilst part of me really wanted to like like this film, because I genuinely like Armipour’s style and strongly believe that she is a talent to watch with a keen eye, ultimately  The Bad Batch struggles and much like Arlen limps its way to finding a conclusion or a way to ‘fit-in’.

Having said that, I don’t believe the movie needs to bow to conformity.

In doing so would go against the grain of the filmmakers vision.

With a little more time though, Armipour could well have crafted a stronger narrative that would have continued her unique style and story.

Instead it comes across as a unfinished symphony a half thought, waiting to be voiced with any sense of clarity as we’re left trailing like a tumbleweed in the wind.

  • Paul Farrell