13 FOR HALLOWEEN #2: Backtrack

Michael Petroni’s ‘Backtrack’ goes through several tonal shifts before reaching its conclusion. It starts out almost as a re-imagining of his earlier ‘Till Human Voices Wake Us’, in which a psychologist grapples with guilt, memory and the possibility of redemption. It then becomes a sort of inverted ‘Sixth Sense’ where the shrink is alive but his patients are dead (this revelation comes early enough in the game that I don’t consider mentioning it a spoiler). Throughout its first half, it’s a study in bereavement and coping mechanisms. Throughout its second, a study in regret. It throws in a generous helping of J-horror-style vengeful ghosts. Then the final act lurches into thriller territory.

By rights, ‘Backtrack’ should be a big old mess, and it certainly makes some narrative choices in the last half hour that are, how shall we say, shopworn. But it benefits from a cluster of solid performances, a script that’s smart enough to keep the human elements foregrounded, and focused but unshowy direction. That there are at least four simply staged but very effective scare scenes is also a boon.

Our protagonist – let’s not use the word hero – is Peter Bower (Adrian Brodie). He’s grieving for the daughter he lost in a traffic accident, blaming himself for not keeping an eye on her stringently enough, trying to retain a professional detachment as regards his patients while undergoing therapy himself with mentor Duncan Stewart (Sam Neill), and losing the ability to communicate with his wife Carol (Jenni Baird) as she stubbornly isolates herself from the world around her.

Petroni establishes all of this in a series of slow burn scenes that allow the viewer to fill in some of the lacunae. But not all of them. Some lacunae are the subject of a multi-layered series of reveals as the film progresses and the waters get muddied as regards what Peter thinks he knows. Beyond the first big genre beat – shrink realises all his patients are ghosts – the plot is best kept under wraps. Let’s just say that Peter is compelled to visit his old home town where he renews an old acquaintance (much to said acquaintance’s displeasure), causes his father (George Shevtsov) no end of worry, and prompts idealistic young police officer Barbara Henning (Robin McLeavy) to begin her own off-the-books investigation.

Although the pace increases with each supernatural occurrence, and the stakes rise with every new bit of information (or rather suppressed memory) that Peter uncovers, Petroni never rushes things. For a feature of just 86 minutes, with so many narrative beats and character nuances jostling for space, it never feels rushed. Some of the tonal shifts are awkward, though, and one or two “borrowings” from other, better films (in particular the “do you have a valediction” scenes from ‘L.A. Confidential’) left me feeling that the script would have benefited from another draft or two. Maybe it’s these problems that account for its low-to-middling IMDb, Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes scores. Far be it from me to argue with the critical consensus (he said, trying to keep a straight face), but I found in ‘Backtrack’ more to engage with than to censure

Possession

Imagine you’re a highly respected director, albeit one working under the strictures of state censorship. You’ve poured two years of your life and all of your creative endeavours into an epic science fiction movie. So epic that it’s going to boast a running time of three and a half hours. So epic that it’s the biggest budgeted movie ever to come out of your home country. Imagine that it’s almost in the bag when the Minister for Fucking Over Artistic Endeavours (or whatever title the shitty little apparatchik is glorying in) decides on a complete whim that your film is contentious. Before you know what’s happening, the production’s been shitcanned, the sets torn down and burned and even the motherfucking costumes have been buried in fucking big hole in the middle of nowhere. You’re left sans film, there’s a very real possibility that your career is over, and the powers that be have marked your card as a dissident.

That’s a pretty grim scenario, right? Now imagine, on top of all this, that your marriage disintegrates and your home is snatched away from you as brutally as your film was. I’m guessing that you’d be a tad pissed off. You’d be pissed off at the government, pissed off at politics, pissed off at petty bureaucrats who are allowed to wield too much power. Pissed off your ex, pissed off at whomever she’d throw you over for, and pissed off at the callous, unfeeling, utterly disinterested world that was continuing to go about its business without giving a shit about the heartache, rejection and soul-destroyed angst that you were going through.

Ladies and gentleman, please give an empathetic Agitation of the Mind welcome to Andrzej Zulawski. And someone get the guy a drink, he’s earned it!

‘Possession’ – a film as brutally cathartic as David Cronenberg’s ‘The Brood’ (also inspired by the director’s divorce) – starts with Mark (Sam Neill) trying to reintegrate with his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) after a period of separation. It’s quickly established that during their time apart he’s been engaged in some level of espionage. The exact nature of his mission is never made clear, even when Zulawski revisits the subplot as Mark’s enticement back into the field ends violently in the final reel. Whatever Mark was engaged in, all we see is the aftermath – a debrief by a bunch of pompous men in suits; a payoff in grubby used notes; and finally a burst of gunfire. This, Zulawski’s saying, is politics.

A similar aesthetic characterises the scenes between Mark and Anna. They tear into each at every opportunity. Jealousy, recrimination, suspicion, dependency issues, sexual hang-ups – so much dirty laundry gets aired you’d be forgiven for thinking that the address Anna goes sneaking off to (much to Mark’s chagrin) is a laundrette. This, Zulawski’s saying, is marriage. Or, more explicitly, marriage in its death throes. Caught between the couple is their son, Bob (Michael Hogben). Between the significance of Anna’s name and the importance of their son in the drama that unfolds (or rather, the drama that spills messily across the screen), I’ll throw out a one-off reference to Tolstoy: ‘Possession’ as the most fucked-up take on ‘Anna Karenina’ ever made. Discuss.

In fact, file under “fucked up” in general. Let’s revisit that address Anna keeps sneaking off to. It’s a tenement in a shabby area of Berlin, the wall running alongside it like a scar. The wall is almost a character in its own right, but it never gets the monolith iconography that even the most dour spy thrillers afford it; here, it’s more of a presence, forever in the background or glimpsed from a window; unwanted, but a constant. Mark has a private detective follow her. MILD SPOILER (because frankly, when an overtly gay detective takes any case in a European film he’s got very little chance of making it to the end credits): a scene of violence ensues that’s as grand guignol as anything in Argento, but without the rococo stylisations. The lurch from downbeat character drama to geysers of bloodletting is sudden and disorientating, but it’s only a prelude to the major revelation: Anna’s liaisons with …

Ah, and there’s the rub. If you’ve seen ‘Possession’, or even know it by reputation, you’ll know what I’m referring to. If you haven’t seen, then I really don’t want to ruin the headfuck for you. Let’s just say that ‘Possession’ comes complete with the kind of imagery that earned it a place on the DPP’s “video nasties” list back in the 80s. European arthouse rubbing shoulders with exploitation quickies? Thank the tabloid-wielding guardians of public morality that my home country seems to breed. Needless to say, they missed the point.

‘Possession’, despite its title and imagery, is not horror. It is not exploitation. It exists at a pitch of emotional hysteria, the intensity of which never wavers. There’s a heightened emotionalism to all of Zulawski’s work. It’s present here in Mark’s confrontation with Anna’s new lover, Heinrich (Heinz Bennent) – a confrontation that commences with Heinrich’s homoerotic overtures to Mark and culminates in the revelation that he, too, has been cuckolded; in the scene where Heinrich’s fragile, self-delusive mother (Johanna Hofer) comes belatedly to terms with her son’s philandering; in Mark’s burgeoning obsession with Helen, Bob’s teacher and a dead ringer (if polar opposite personality-wise) for Anna; in Bob’s imploration to Helen at the end of the film, after an act of rebirth/substitution has brought an entirely new and unexpected dimension to the proceedings, not to open the door and admit … ah, but that would be telling; and it’s present, most spectacularly and disturbingly, in Anna’s almost balletic meltdown in a subway, a scene that seems to last longer than you can bear to watch it, that proves Adjani as both an utterly fearless actress and a force of nature, and that – cumulatively – renders Anna as desperate, delirious and – again, despite the title, dispossessed.

‘Possession’ is a difficult film to watch, even harder to like, and one that you’re only likely to forget if you’re clinically dead.

13 FOR HALLOWEEN #5: Event Horizon

The horror movie in space is a dodgy concept. Occasionally, a movie comes along that gets it right. That movie is called ‘Alien’. The rest of the time we get things like ‘Hellraiser: Bloodline’ and ‘Jason X’.

Paul W.S. Anderson’s ‘Event Horizon’ falls between two stools. It’s a quantum leap from the abject pieces of dross epitomized by Pinhead-beyond-the-stars and Jayce-in-space. But it’s still a good few parsecs away from presenting any real competition to Ridley Scott’s classic.

Ironically, the main flaw is also its biggest plus point in terms of it being a guilty pleasure. ‘Event Horizon’ is derivative. Hugely. And not in a “hmmm, I reckon we can sneak this through without anyone noticing” kind of way. ‘Event Horizon’ is derivative in a way that can only be described as a cross-between ‘Wacky Races’ and ‘Supermarket Sweep’ populated by plagiarists. “Mwuhahahahah! I am going to steal this and this and this and this!”

The film starts with the crew of the rescue ship Lewis and Morse Clarke going into suspended animation prior to a little jaunt out to the far side of Neptune. They’re joined by the standoffish Dr Weir (Sam Neill), a man who is troubled by visions of the wife he lost to suicide. Before you can say ‘Solaris’, they’re at Neptune and Dr Weir is briefing them. Eight years previously, an ftl ship he designed (the eponymous Event Horizon) disappeared, with the loss of its full crew. Now it’s reappeared. The Lewis and Clarke’s captain, Miller (Laurence Fishburne) isn’t too happy about this, the Event Horizon having something of a reputation as a ghost ship, and neither are his crew.

Quick pause to meet the shreddies crewmembers. We’ve got medical technician Peters (Kathleen Quinlan), chief medical officer D.J. (Jason Isaacs), the feisty Lieutenant Starck (Joely Richardson), and disposable grunt types Smith (Sean Pertwee) and Cooper (Richard T. Jones). Smith is notable for scowling a lot and saying “faakin’ ’ell“ in an East End brogue that suggests he fancied his chances in a Guy Ritchie production but turned up at the wrong audition.

Anyway, no sooner do the Lewis and Clarke group instigate docking procedures with the Event Horizon than Weir is seeing manifestations of his dead wife while Peters is being haunted by glimpses of her son. This particular lad is given to popping up in the background, a dwarf-like figure in a hooded coat, finally luring Peters into a nasty encounter. Before you can say ‘Don’t Look Now’, our heroes turn up some footage that indicates the previous crew, isolated and lost, died in spectacularly gory fashion. And before you can say ‘The Thing’, it becomes apparent that the Event Horizon itself is a malignant entity, possessing those who roam its endless corridors. And before you can say ‘The Shining’, one of the characters has gone bonkers in the worst possible way – lacerations all over his face, mind polluted with sybaritic evil and babbling about the wonderful and terrible things he has seen. And before you can say ‘Hellraiser’ … well, you get the picture.

‘Event Horizon’ doesn’t have a single original idea in its airlock. Even the set-design puts you in mind of other films: the needle-like mid-section of the Event Horizon has a very ‘2001’ vibe, while the interior of the Lewis and Clarke, bizarrely, put me in mind of ‘Red Dwarf’. What ‘Event Horizon’ does have going for it is a decent build-up to the horrors the demon ship launches on its unwary interlopers, a pacy second half, a cast who bring some quality to the proceedings and – best of all – a well-realized concept of the titular ship. Corridors are the shape of eyes, guardrails and steel-mesh walkways crisscross the superstructure like a skeleton, and the ftl device rumbling darkly at the core of the ship has a retro-industrial look, something that could conceivably have been forged in one of Blake’s “dark Satanic mills”.

Style over substance, then, but I’m not going to complain when it’s as darkly stylish as this (a shot, very near the start, where the camera slowly glides out through a portal and threads its way through the architecture of a space station which recedes to a speck as it drifts into the depths of space, is enough to make you stand up and applaud), or when the 18-rating gleefully justifies itself in the full-blooded finale.