It's the Letterboxd Season Challenge! Theme eight, part three - a foreign horror film!
(Chosen by John!)
Just reading the synopsis for Polterheist makes me unreasonably angry. Two stupid criminals need to extort some money from their mate lest their boss have them beaten to death, but they've already killed the bloke, so they kidnap a medium and force her to channel his spirit so they can find what they're after. Those of you in the know about your supernatural entities will understand straight away how possession by the recently deceased has nothing to do with poltergeists. A poltergeist is very specifically the invisible paranormal manifestation of pent-up negative emotions, usually from a child or teenager, which makes its presence known by violently moving objects with intent to frighten or harm. Granted, Poltergeist doesn't fully get this right, hitting the mark as it does with the whole household items getting stacked and thrown about whilst explaining it all as the result of a desiccated Native American burial ground (again, not really a poltergeist!), but Polterheist is off the mark entirely. You might wonder, "Why get upset about a punny title for a ghost-infused crime movie that tells people, 'Hey, there's a ghost in this thing, just thought you should know,' by virtue of most people only knowing 'poltergeist' means 'ghost thing?'" It's a valid question, and I'll tell you why: because if I ever write and publish a screenplay about some crooks breaking into a mansion inhabited by some shitty repressed millionaire's teenaged kid and teaming up with the poltergeist within to execute their heist, I cannot use the accurate and awesome title of Polterheist because the people behind Polterheist wasted it on this film.
(Harry Potter gets a pass for making Peeves a physical manifestation because Hogwarts is a deeply magical building filled with hundreds upon hundreds of teenaged witches and wizards for over one thousand years, so of course all that negative psychic energy would coalesce into an awful little man.)
Mark you, the actual film behind the title contains plenty reason to hold the product itself in disdain. Polterheist is a technically uneven film, occasionally looking pretty darned alright for its limited budget and inexperienced crew, mostly showing the detrimental effects of four camera operators and two editors working without a strong voice to unite their styles. The visuals aren't at all consistent from shot to shot, with such highlights as a master shot and its three close-ups somehow all featuring different lighting, and an otherwise fairly tense sequence suddenly cutting to what looks for all the world like test footage for no good reason. Such notably shaky visual language permeates the film, and extends to its sound department whose work renders loud voices and quiet environmental effects alike loud as all holy hell. The editing team seemingly struggled with prioritization, as we spend way too much time in a black and white flashback that gives us tons of information we shouldn't get based on the presentational context, linger on jokes way longer than is at all funny, and infrequently cut over to gawk at the main mob's goings on without ever finding anything of great interest or import.
It's a sloppily made film for certain, which I can excuse to an extent due to the crew pulling something from practically nothing given what they had, and also because the main character dynamic is quite a lot've fun. Jo Mousley runs away with the film in her part as Alice, the medium possessed by murdered criminal Frank, spitting out foul-mouthed lines and getting across a nice sense of tension through her bodylanguage throughout. They've got nothing but profanity and damnation for anyone around them when provoked, and time spent in a more amiable mood sees her playing well off her costars. Sid Akbar Ali and Jamie Cymbal make a good teaming as well-to-do Tariq and Northern fuck-up Boxy, trying their hardest to sell jokes the editing is determined to ruin, and bouncing against Frank's disdain for his murderers in an enjoyable manner. Mousley and Cymbal get a few quieter scenes together round the middle, and I start to feel there's more going on beneath the surface here than "funny bad men do a funny bad thing." Give it a few passes in the writing room, and Polterheist could make a reasonable play for being about guilt and reconciliation and whether that's all possible in a criminal enterprise. Elsewhere in the film, though admittedly completely contrary to the point I just made, Pushpinder Chani is capital A Acting his ass off as deranged mob boss Uday, and gets me really excited to see what happens when this absolute vicious maniac comes into contact with the main trio and learns what they've been up to behind his back.
Alack, Polterheist lets us all down. The conclusion takes some turns regarding a hidden cache of diamonds and Frank playing Tariq and Boxy against one another, which seem fine on paper, but rely on the film's main enjoyable dynamic falling apart and vanishing for the final ten minutes. What should play as a satisfactory revenge twist lacks the time and focus necessary to make it land, for Chani also drops straight through the floor, rendering all our cutaway to his goings on a pointless drain on the central trio's story resources. Instead, Mousley shifts from Frank to Alice for these final movements, and despite Alice only appearing in a restrained, almost demur performance for a brief period towards the start and a briefer reprieve from possession round the middle, she has total command of the last several scenes, and drives them with a personality wholly unlike the one glimpsed before. You could possibly construe it as possession addling her brain or an additional layer of revenge against the morons who used her as a meat puppet, but her actions are both far too vindictive and far too contrary to what our understanding of her place in the midst of a sea of angry dead would indicate should happen. Yes, I am going to out and out say the ending is bad because she abandons a dog in the middle of nowhere, and no, I am not going to apologize.
Jackie, John, Connie, and myself all agree - Polterheist is a film with a lot've potential and a solid core dynamic that stood a chance at becoming good if more care were paid to its story. The technical stuff, I don't think you can do much without the funding to hire a better crew or the time necessary to get this one more experience, but the premise and its main characters interactions are worth enough as they appear here to justify further attention and development. Even if it doesn't become much more than more consistent, satisfying schlock, I'd still appreciate it more if they got it working by giving us a little more Alice and having the villains properly factor into the finale. Hell, it's already a black comedy: maybe instead of stopping with someone on top, just have everyone keep screwing each other until they're all ghosts and can't be rid of one another. That's a solid punchline to build towards.
2/5
No comments:
Post a Comment