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366 UNDERGROUND: HAUNTERS OF THE SILENCE (2025)

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Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY: Tatu Heikkinen, Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen

FEATURING: Tatu Heikkinen, John Haughm, Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen

PLOT: Strange events beset a grieving husband in the wee hours of the night leading into October 31st.

Still from Haunters of the Silence (2025)

COMMENTS: The facts, as best they might be determined, are these: 1) the unnamed lead character has lost his beloved wife, and 2) his night-vision exterior surveillance camera picked up more than just a midnight rodent behaving in a silly manner. As for the rest of Haunters of the Silence, it’s just about all up for interpretation. A faded photographic image loses a balloon, a father (?), and finally a boy; ceremonial drumming may be a temporary cure for mind de-anchoring; and if a dream facsimile of your dead wife mutters “It’s okay”, perhaps it’s best to take her at her word.

Or not.

In the hopes of better explaining the Haunters of the Silence experience, I quote from director Tatu Heikkinen’s IMDb bio: “His work embraces abstraction and emotional stillness—rejecting the fast-paced editing in favor of grounded, contemplative storytelling.” This statement, as reflected in Haunters, is true in many ways. Heikkinen (and his real-life wife and co-director, Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen) embraces abstraction and emotional stillness. Abstraction comes in many forms, many of them being unlikely camera foregrounds framing background action, for instance, but also long stroboscopic sequences, and plenty of forays into straight-up dream imagery. (The protagonist retreating through a large storm drain through the center of the Shadow Man’s menacing outline in the cosmos is of particular note.)

Haunters of the Silence does have fast-paced editing, though. Shots hastily flicker from one to the next, which might risk leaving the viewer disoriented if weren’t for the meticulous, subtle, and grounding sound design: the listener, as it were, is rarely if ever jarred from the dream-logic ordeals put before them. This sensory-tension works nicely with the temporal-tension: time does not pass per usual in this film, and the Ancient and the Modern co-exist, with incense-burning and buzzing smartphones pulling upon each other across the millennia of human ritual.

As the reader will have noticed, my remarks fell into abstruseness more quickly than usual here, but I blame that on what I saw (and heard). Haunters of the Silence is a weird thing to experience—and it is more in the realm of an experience than a customary film. Tatu Heikkinen and Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen have built a precise sequence of sounds and images, which is as often baffling as it is beautiful. I give nothing away with this observation on the final scene when the Shadow Man emerges through the bedroom door of now-waking protagonist: life—like time, memory, and grief—does not finish so long as we are on this Earth.

If not longer.

Currently streaming on Relay, check the Haunters of the Silence official website for future updates.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Haunters of the Silence is avowedly experimental; this is not a narrative piece of filmmaking in any recognisable way, so this review opens with a proviso: it will not be for everyone, and in fact it will probably appeal to a very select band of film fans.” — Keri O’Shea, Warped Perspective (contemporaneous)

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER SUGGESTED QUEUE: IT COULDN’T HAPPEN HERE (1987)

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“I’ve just been fishing with Salvador Dali. He used a dotted line. . . caught every other fish.”

DIRECTED BY: Jack Bond

FEATURING: Neil Tennant, Chris Lowe

PLOT: From West End towns with dead end walls, the Pet Shop Boys travel around England before ending up at King’s Cross; all the while, singer Neil Tennant recalls his childhood memories in a narrative postcard to his mother.

COMMENTS: By 1987 the Pet Shop Boys had produced two hit albums with a number of chart-topping singles but they still couldn’t afford the expense of touring. When a planned concert fell through, their manager suggested they make a film, something like did with A Hard Day’s Night. Director Jack Bond, whose prior credits included the documentary Dali in New York (1965) and a series of experimental films with Jane Arden, proved integral to the project. Structured as a road movie, Bond turns the film into a Surrealist game of free association. Though punctuated by popular songs, It Couldn’t Happen Here sank into obscurity after being panned by film critics.

Anyone expecting this to be a typical band film must have been surprised by a movie that’s anything but. It lacks concert footage and behind-the-scenes interviews; instead, the Boys meander through a series of vignettes. Lyrics suddenly crop up in the dialogue as spoken word poetry or snippets on the radio. Fans of Tennant’s literate compositions, in which love, romance, and commerce all intertwine, will instantly recognize them. To anyone less familiar with the music, the isolated refrains make the film even more enigmatic.

The road trip begins at the seashore. Tennant stops by a souvenir stand to purchase  bawdy holiday postcards. He reminisces about his family nearly being kicked out of a boarding house due to his bad behavior. The scene then cuts to Chris Lowe, narrowly escaping the same overbearing landlady after he throws his breakfast in her face. “Chrissy, baby,” she moans, “what have I done to deserve this?”

The present day continually blends with the past as Lowe joins Tennant at the seaside and a blind priest chases two schoolboys through a carnival. After Tennant recalls how his father once spent their family’s savings on a blue and cream-colored Ford Zephyr, the priest then reappears as a hitchhiking serial killer. While Lowe drives and Tennant lip-syncs to himself on the radio, the hitchhiker gleefully recounts his murderous exploits with Salvador Dalí as they continue their journey across the country.

A pitstop at a diner stars a ventriloquist’s dummy who rants about the nature of time, sparking an existential crisis in a pilot seated nearby. A plane and car-chase scene, reminiscent of North by Northwest, ends in front of a phone booth being vandalized by Neo-Nazis, who politely cease in their destruction so Tennant can call the landlady.

And so it goes, passing from one bizarre set-piece to another, the proceedings occasionally interrupted by MTV-style dance breaks. Tennant and Lowe retain deadpan expressions throughout, observing everything from a man on fire and zebra keepers with black-and-white striped faces with incurious nonchalance.

Re-considering It Couldn’t Happen Here, some commentators are kinder to it in hindsight, uncovering clever political critique lurking beneath the odd sensibility. Others are not so nice, declaring it a misguided foray best left forgotten. Dedicated fans of the Pet Shop Boys should seize opportunities to check it out on physical media or streaming; there’s a certain nostalgia to hearing the group’s hits again in this context. For others, it’s an interesting, if not entirely successful, attempt at making a film according to Surrealist principles; at least, that’s my impression.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…the result is as idiosyncratic to the deadpan duo as A Hard Day’s Night was to the Fab Four. The film takes second place in a Fellini-style phantasmagoria of British seaside life, mixing past, present and abstract surrealism…”–Eddie Harrison, film-authority

(This movie was nominated for review by “Chris R.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Pet Shop Boys - It Couldn't Happen Here (Std Edition DVD + Blu-ray)

Pet Shop Boys - It Couldn't Happen Here (Std Edition DVD + Blu-ray)
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366 Underground

366 UNDERGROUND: AFAR (2025)

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Recommended

“Cinema’s death date was 31 September 1983, when the remote-control zapper was introduced to the living room, because now cinema has to be interactive, multi-media art.”— Peter Greenaway, 2007

DIRECTED BY: Jason Trost

FEATURING: Jason Trost, voice of

PLOT: A private detective is tasked with finding a contestant from a doomed reality gameshow in the heart of the Australian wilderness.

Still from Afar (2025)

COMMENTS: A strange saturation fills the spectrum, bringing unearthly hues and twitches in the transmission—and I’m not just talking about Aurora Australis. (Those are the Southern “Northern Lights”, if you will; I know this, and you know this, and so does depressed-and-intrepid private detective, Brian Everett.) Jason Trost is a product of his times, and like so many of his (and my) generation, he has a strange nostalgia for the objectively inferior media formats of days of yore. Videotape can radiate the warmth of bygone familiarity, even while harnessed to augment creepiness.

And there’s creepiness, mystery, and tracking-issues aplenty in Afar, a film which takes multiple viewings to get a full grip on, because Trost has cut the story up into different kinds of journeys, selectable on-screen by the viewer. Do you want Brian to Run or Help? (One of those may kill him.) Do you want him to investigate the River Bed, or the Mysterious Ruins? (One of those will kill him, while the other only might…). And so on. Every few minutes or so, you will be presented with a choice to be made. There’s no “saving” your progress, but the director is good enough to allow a re-think on occasion after a jagged font informs you that Brian has snuffed it thanks to your poor decision.

Having made it this far into the review, I presume you wish to continue. Afar is a neat little movie, and I say that in no way to sound dismissive. Jason Trost has, once again, crafted something new and nostalgic on his own terms, staying true to a guiding ambition, and the result is both intriguing and entertaining. Presuming you enjoy Trost’s screen presence (which is something of a must, as he’s in the frame perhaps nine tenths of the time, as a cross between Tex Murphy and Henry Jones, Jr.), you’ll have a fine time digging around the various clues, back-stories, and pathways tucked within his interactive horror film. And while I enjoyed Afar on its own merits, I am hopeful that it will eventually stand as more of a “proof of concept.” I’d be most pleased to experience a grander, deeper, and more labyrinthine narrative interaction, even if it results in many more “You are dead” cut-screens.

The film is available to download on Steam (that’s a first), or to buy on DVD from Kunaki, There’s also a tie-in choose-your-own-horror paperback.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Afar appears to have been aiming more towards the trashy thrills of shot-on-VHS shlock than any serious kind of scares, and it still manages to nail the eerie survival horror vibe that really makes this kind of adventure worth experiencing.”–Luis H.C., Bloody Disgusting (contemporaneous)