Irish farmers mourn the loss of one of their own, with screaming and songs.
Tag Archives: Grief
CAPSULE: THE THING WITH FEATHERS (2025)
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DIRECTED BY: Dylan Southern
FEATURING: Benedict Cumberbatch, Sam Sprueli, David Thewlis
PLOT: After the loss of his wife, a widowed man comes in contact with a mysterious human-sized crow.
COMMENTS: Dimly-lit interiors and catatonic acting clarify from the beginning that this will be a grim watch. And it is, as we follow an unnamed man, dealing with complex emotions after the passing of his wife, struggling with denial while trying to care for his two sons and to find comfort in his work as a comic artist. This is not a realistic tale, but an allegorical and elliptical one, with gothic flourishes as a human-sized crow gradually makes his appearance.
The narrative, based on Max Porter’s novel “Grief is the Thing with Feathers,” is divided into four chapters, each dealing with a different perspective. The first, focusing on Dad, remains close to typical horror conventions, with its slow-burning atmosphere culminating in a series of violent confrontations with the aforementioned crow. The intensity of one of those encounters is underlined by an excellent 360° shot. The aggressive, grotesque bird mocks our hero for his self-pity, and evens becomes physically violent, while calling him generic names like Sad Dad and English Widower. At the same time jump cuts bring us back into reality to create an ambiguity regarding the nature of the crow, which could just as well be a figment of the protagonist’s imagination.
The next chapters focus on the bird, the kids’ perception of the events, and a new demon plaguing the family’s home, seemingly an enemy of the crow. Events are open to interpretation as different monsters come to symbolize different aspects of the mourning process, drawing, through allegory, a distinction between grief, as a healthy way of dealing with loss, and total nihilistic despair.
We don’t have the most original and unique premise here. The central metaphor isn’t exactly something we haven’t seen before. However, thanks to a competent main performance by Benedict Cumberbach and an emphasis on dimly-lit interiors, the execution doesn’t completely disappoint. For fans of art-house psychological horror, in the vein of The Babadook and similar movies distributed by A24, this is an okay recommendation.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
366 UNDERGROUND: HAUNTERS OF THE SILENCE (2025)
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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.
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:
APOCRYHA CANDIDATE: SHE LOVED BLOSSOMS MORE (2024)
Agapouse ta louloudia perissotero
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She Loved Blossoms More is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.
DIRECTED BY: Yannis Veslemes
FEATURING: Panos Papadopoulos, Aris Balis, Julio Katsis, Dominique Pinon
PLOT: Three brothers try to cope with their mother’s untimely death.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Hallucinating your dead mom as a talking vaginal flower, complete with glowing clitoris, might be a totally natural Oedipal response for a son still processing grief and loss. But when Hedgehog then makes a psychedelic drug from said flower so he can hold a séance with a transdimensional severed head to perfect his time travel experiments, things get pretty weird.
COMMENTS: You can tell life just hasn’t been the same for Dummy, Japan, and Hedgehog since their mother passed away. They try to maintain some semblance of normalcy, coming together for meals and decorating their house for the holidays as Christmas rolls around. But they inevitably drift apart into their own mournful rhythms. Dummy, a failed scientist, spends all his time making and taking pharmaceuticals, then sleeping in the family car with his hands tied to the steering wheel. Japan, the computer nerd, prefers to play chess online before getting drunk on cognac and passing out in the bathtub. Only Hedgehog feels seriously devoted to their family and their ongoing project: he even sleeps in their mother’s Art Deco armoire, the very piece of furniture the brothers are converting into a time machine so they can bring her back from the dead.
After a series of experiments, with variable success (one results in a chicken with its head in another dimension), Mom’s garden has become a pet cemetery (where she also lies buried). Her sons need more money for additional equipment, but Hedgehog avoids taking calls from Logo, their mysterious Parisian funder. Logo (Pinon, in an excellent cameo) has set a daunting deadline, and seems to have questionable motives of his own for pursuing time travel.
When Dummy brings his dealer/girlfriend Samantha to join the party, an increasingly desperate Hedgehog begins hearing his mother’s voice, begging him to bring her back. During a heavy trip she urges him to “try it” with the girl. Needless to say, Hedgehog doesn’t interpret “it” the way most people would; but do his subsequent actions disrupt the time-space continuum. Or is everyone still high on grave flowers?
Like Panos Cosmatos, Yannis Veslemes clearly has a deep love of late seventies to early eighties cinema. A sensuous trippy vibe pervades Blossoms from beginning to end, but this is lo-fi sci-fi: a blend of neon light filters enhanced by distorted sound and visuals with the bluish static of cathode-ray televisions and glowing green text on early computer monitors. The strategic use of animatronics ups the weirdness factor as the plot veers into an uncanny valley. Veslemes may be the only contemporary director to have not only seen, but taken inspiration from the obscure films of Alain Fleischer (a close examination of the computer screen in the opening sequence reveals the user’s handle: “zoozero79”.)
Veslemes composed scores for films before turning to directing and, also like Cosmatos, he displays a interest a soundtrack that adds to the film’s unique ambiance. She Loved Blossoms More features mainly neoclassical compositions, with some electronics, but avoids clichéd over-reliance on imitating the stereotypical sounds of ’80s movies. The music always complements the visuals without trying to overpower the imagery’s otherworldliness.
The story provides no plausible explanation for how hooking electrodes up to a closet could create a time machine. Blossoms requires a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief, or perhaps outright cynicism. The characters’ plight generates sympathy; the retro technology on display leaves the viewer wondering whether we’re actually witnessing groundbreaking DIY research, or a family caught up in a collective delusion. As the identity of Logo and the backstory of Mom’s tragic death are gradually revealed, it only adds another layer to an already ambiguous reality.
As Hedgehog, Papadopoulos gives an understated performance that sometimes recalls Jake Gyllenhaal in Donnie Darko, displaying a similarly creepy dead-eyed intensity. It’s an interesting point of comparison, given that both films explore ’80s nostalgia, weird physics, and altered states of consciousness, though in entirely different ways.
As with most time travel narratives, the story loops around on itself, but the ending is not quite the same as the beginning. You can’t travel through the back of the wardrobe and come out unchanged.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
CAPSULE: DANIELA FOREVER (2024)
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DIRECTED BY: Nacho Vigalondo
FEATURING: Henry Golding, Beatrice Grannò, Aura Garrido, Nathalie Poza
PLOT: A man enters a secret trial for a drug that exponentially enhances lucid dreaming, but instead of following instructions, he brings his dead girlfriend to life in a dream world.
COMMENTS: Modern mystic Alan Watts once delivered a lecture (which became the basis for an indie movie reviewed here) that suggested that if we could achieve our every desire through lucid dreaming, we would eventually become bored with omnipotence and return to the exact waking reality we once fled. Daniela Forever‘s Nicolás is determined to test that theory. After his girlfriend dies in a freak accident (for which he irrationally blames himself), all he wants is to live a simple life with Daniela alive and back in his apartment, forever. A lucid dreaming clinical trial gives him the opportunity to create that fantasy in a simulated world where he has almost total control over every aspect of reality, from the position of the sun to Daniela’s every mood, along with the ability to pause, rewind, and restart the flow of time. As he gains more and more facility with the process, he finds himself able to expand his dream-world from his cozy apartment to encompass most of Madrid (although he can’t create areas he’s never seen in waking reality, which show up in the dream as undulating grey walls). But he becomes surprised when Daniela suddenly appears to be developing free will and having thoughts of her own he didn’t place there. Meanwhile, the story moves forward in the waking world, where Nicolás deceives his clinical overseers about his real intentions, creating fake reports about assignments he is ignoring. How long can he keep it up?
While the dream-world is vibrant widescreen, Nicolás‘ everyday reality is shot in dingy, washed-out color (filmed in Betamax, to wit), and presented in a cramped, perfectly square aspect ratio. Distinguishing dreams from reality is thus not an issue for the viewer, at least not in the movie’s first two acts. While the film features some visual experimentation—mostly glitches like improper lighting schemes and stuttering, which are explicitly pointed out by the characters—there is no dream logic to the story. It all plays out instead with speculative realism. There is an interesting motif that shows up in Daniela’s artwork, however, where shadows skew in impossible directions: perhaps a nod to Last Year at Marienbad, that dreamlike smudge of a story in which a man and a woman’s memories of their relationship never match up. That suggestion may point towards the film’s weirder aspirations, and in the third act, Nicolás finds a way to boostrap the dream world, leading to unpredictable results, dreams bleeding into reality, and flirtation with meatier psychological thriller territory.
The creative scenario is rife with intellectual implications. Ethical questions proliferate in both the real and dream worlds. Nicolás‘ godlike abilities create one set of conflicts; his romantic fixation creates another. His dreambuilding also mirrors the evolution of a relationship, beginning in an infatuation stage where the lovers seem mystically simpatico in their mutual desires, but gradually revealing a frustrating separateness that undermines the utopian illusion.
What’s good about Daniela Forever is its thought-provoking premise. The execution, however, does not always match the conception. The pacing is a bit off; although it gets to the point quickly, it may spend a bit too much time locked in that apartment in repetitive scenarios of self-indulgent domestic bliss. I was surprised to read critical praise for Henry Golding’s performance; I found him almost unbearably bland and difficult to sympathize with—or to figure out what Daniela saw in him in the first place. The ending also feels emotionally forced, for reasons that unfortunately can’t be disclosed without spoilers. Of course, none of these small complaints kill Daniela Forever; they just hold it back from rising to the heights of such forebears as Open Your Eyes and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which would be lofty company indeed.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: