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Apocryphally Weird

55*. IN FABRIC (2018)

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“The idea came from shopping really, specifically at second hand stores. You’re immediately aware of death. There is a haunting there; you can find stains on clothing, sometimes you can smell the areas of outfits. It’s a weird thing because you’ll never really know what that person looked like. It activates the imagination and it lent into things I wanted to explore through these visceral reactions whether it be body dysmorphia or fetishism.”–Peter Strickland

“Nothing attracts attention like a little red dress.”–Laura Bush

DIRECTED BY: Peter Strickland

FEATURING: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Fatma Mohamed, Leo Bill, Hayley Squires, Julian Barratt, Steve Oram, Richard Bremmer, Jaygann Ayeh, Gwendoline Christie

Still from In fabric (2018)

PLOT: Sheila, a divorced bank teller, gets ready for her first newly single dating experience by visiting the local department store and splurging on a red dress; a series of unusual, life-threatening occurrences ensue, all seemingly related to the dress. While attempting to return the outfit to the store, she learns that the model who wore the dress for a promotional catalogue was later killed in a traffic accident. Later, the frock finds its way to meek appliance repairman Reg and then his assertive fiancée Babs, both of whom have strange encounters with a mysterious sales clerk and a pair of inappropriately nosy bank managers.

BACKGROUND:

  • In Fabric was Strickland’s fourth narrative feature. We have previously reviewed two of those, The Duke of Burgundy and Berberian Sound Studio, as well as the follow-up, Flux Gourmet. Mohamed has appeared in all of his movies.
  • An early draft of the script featured six people receiving the fateful dress and facing the consequences. Strickland realized this would require a six-hour film to give each character their due. In order to secure studio support, he trimmed the screenplay accordingly.
  • The setting of Thames-Valley-upon-Thames is modeled after Strickland’s hometown of Reading. The fictional Dentley and Soper’s department store was inspired by Jacksons, a Reading retail mainstay for more than 130 years until it closed in 2013.
  • Winner of the 2019 Méliès d’Or, awarded for outstanding achievement in European science fiction, fantasy, and horror films.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Strickland successfully dodges the silliness factor associated with trying to showcase a demon-possessed piece of clothing. As it flutters in the rafters, creeps under doors, and swirls about in erotic delight, the dress reads as dramatic rather than laughable. But when it comes to outrageousness, the garment takes a back seat to the craziness going on at the store that sold it. After the doors close for the evening, the saleswomen begin the delicate process of bringing the mannequins to the back of the house, removing the clothes, and gently bathing the dummies with sponges and tongues. The intensity ramps up as the fake human is revealed to have a very realistic pubic mound, and eventually it begins to menstruate. It’s a sight that moves the proprietor to indulge in full self-gratification. One does wonder what goes on in the store’s sporting goods department.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Prepping the mannequin; the erotic power of washing machine maintenance

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: We are always up for a movie about a homicidal haunted object. A haunted house, a haunted bed, even a haunted tire have all earned a spot in our august halls. (Haunted bulldozers and motorcycles, not so much.) So a haunted dress is totally welcome to join the party, but it has to bring something extra. In Fabric delivers two such elements. One is the bizarrely creepy department store that is a portal to hell, watching over its customers with an attitude that is both patronizing and carnivorous. The other is an earnest sympathy toward its characters, neither of whom have class  privilege or easy socialization, and who turn to retail to give them a lift. In Fabric knows that these are decent folks looking for a break, and turns their exploitation by retail and advertising into a horror show.

Original trailer for In Fabric

COMMENTS: Sheila could use a win. Her ex-husband has taken up Continue reading 55*. IN FABRIC (2018) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: IN THE EARTH (2021)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Joel Fry, Ellora Torchia, ,

PLOT: During a pandemic, a park ranger guides a young scientist to join up with a lone biologist conducting an experiment deep in the forest, but an ancient spirit may be stirring.

Still from In the Earth (2021)COMMENTS: It seems that a forest has grown over that old Field in England through the centuries, but ancient necromantic and alchemical evils still have their roots deeply embedded there. Locals talk of the legend of the pagan demigod “Parnang Fegg,” who may haunt the woods into which Martin and Alma venture in search of the reclusive Dr. Wendle. As they penetrate deeper into the forest, the scary-enough realities of their pandemic-ridden civilization are overrun by cthonic horrors. Is the evil caused by the vengeful forest deity; by a misunderstood alien biology, as Dr. Wendle suggests; or is it merely a group madness stemming from the local fungi that jet their spores into the atmosphere?

“I wouldn’t try to make any logical sense of it,” cautions Dr. Wendle. Indeed, In the Earth isn’t built around logical explanations, or even around its characters. Instead, everything exists for the sake of three intense and immersive psychedelic montages—all flash and bang, sound and light—evoking horrors both ancient and current. Protagonist Martin grounds the film in bodily insecurity; he’s out-of-shape due to lack of exercise during quarantine, and  suffering from a nasty recurrent case of ringworm, too. As the film goes on, characters will suffer gruesome injuries, dwelt on in sickening closeups—anyone with a foot trauma phobia may want to avoid this one. But when the spore mist fills the air, the horrors migrate from the body to the mind.

Despite the minimalist four-characters-in-a-forest setup, In the Earth will play best in theaters; you need that big screen and surround sound for the complete experience. It all starts with the sound design, embedded in the rustling forest and anchored by another superb Clint Mansell score, all highlighted by a disturbing electronic cacophony played from the speakers hooked up to the trees. (The soundtrack can get startlingly abrasive, but it always puts you right in the middle of the film’s nightmares: it can be hard to distinguish the diegetic effects from sonic hallucinations added in post-production.) Then the visuals come on: fast cuts of experimental effects, mushrooms and dandelions bent by fish-eye lenses, red dyes spreading through oil, shots that look like you’re staring right through the floaters in your retina and the veins in your eyelids as bright light penetrates your eyeballs. Shadowy figures flash for milliseconds in the strobe lights. They aren’t being overcautious with that epilepsy warning, folks. I’d predict this one will end up as a minor drug culture favorite.

Wheatley conceived and wrote In the Earth soon after the pandemic hit, and shot it even faster (a fifteen day shooting schedule was all that was required). Still, it doesn’t feel rushed so much as in-the-moment. There is a certain refreshing humility to In the Earth—this is not a lavish, elaborately-planned-out multi-million dollar spectacle, but something the director has made out of necessity, adapting to circumstance. He made it because he has to make movies with whatever resources are available; if Covid-19 has temporarily shut down the studios, he’ll take his camera and a skeleton crew out to the woods. Good for him.

My only reservation is that In the Earth feels a little too much like an update of A Field in England, with flashier color trips and an overlay of pandemic anxiety, but minus the eccentric feel and esoteric setting. In the Earth isn’t entirely new ground for Ben Wheatley, but it taps into the zeitgeist and delivers its hefty payload of cosmic/folk/body/WTF horror with spiffy efficiency. If you’re a reader of this site, there’s an excellent chance that it’s right in your wheelhouse. After all, check out a small but representative sample of negative IMDB reviews: “Beyond weird and horrible”; “i have no idea what it was about”; “makes me feel like I should’ve taken acid before going to the film so I could understand what was going on.” If those quotes don’t get you excited to check this one out, I don’t know what will.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Wheatley’s always been most effective prowling around in the murky depths of the subconscious, and ‘In the Earth’ — which is raw and weird and deeply unsettling, like a fungus found growing in some long-ignored abscess — well, this piece of work has his fingerprints all over it.”–Peter Debruge, Variety (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: IN FABRIC (2018)

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DIRECTED BY: Peter Strickland

FEATURING: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Leo Bill, , Hayley Squires, Julian Barratt

PLOT: Sheila, a divorcee in the market for a new man, purchases a new red dress for a series of dates; things do not turn out well for her. Separately, Reg Speaks is a washing machine repairman about to marry is longtime girlfriend; after wearing that same red dress on his stag night, things turn out poorly for him, as well.

Still from In Fabric (2018)

COMMENTS: For capsule reviews, we aim to describe the action in one sentence. However, among the number of odd things about In Fabric is the fact that this is really two films in one: a pretty good feature-length story about Sheila’s experiences with a cursed red dress, and a much weirder, shorter film about Reg’s experiences with that same dress. There are plenty of strange things going on in this movie, and in many ways it should qualify for apocryphally weird status. Unfortunately, while the graft is forgivable, it fails overall.

Peter Strickland, who wrote and directed, clearly has an obsession with 1970s exploitation—his two previous films both focus on that decade and that genre—and his penchant for shines through brightly. The red of the dress and the red lighting of the strange advertisements for “Dentley and Sopers Trusted Department Store” are the most obvious tributes, with the movie’s palette generally mimicking whatever evil form of technicolor was used by the original giallists. In Fabric could be viewed as a love letter to that arty vein of horror, albeit a letter with an incredibly long postscript.

I enjoyed watching this, despite a glaring flaw: it was difficult to commit to the characters. Sheila’s tale ultimately left me indifferent, but the story of “Reg Speaks” was more in the transcendent mold, almost literally. Reg’s last name is strange, but apt. Though a lowly washing machine mechanic, he has something of a super power: the ability to bring listeners to an orgasmic trance while speechifying on the finer details of the problems vexing broken machines. In the world of In Fabric his reputation is such that even the bank managers whom he sees about a loan know about it, and want him to do a “role-playing” exercise so they can enjoy his mesmeric talents. (Julian Barratt plays one of these bank managers, with a performance that expertly rides along the razor’s edge of hilarious and mundane. Describing a memo about having a “meaningful handshake”, he explains, “It’s written in a fun, easy language, with a cartoon at the end that summarizes key points.”)

Fatma Mohamed, as the chief store clerk, stands out among the madness. She makes one believe she could be an alien, a demon, or perhaps a mannequin brought to life by some eccentric paranormal force. Her lines (“The hesitation in your voice: soon to be an echo in the spheres of retail” or “dimensions and proportions transcend the prisms of our measurements”) sound like ornately translated Italian as delivered by a supernatural facsimile of a saleswoman.

Strickland will hopefully sort his visions out enough to make that truly weird, and truly worthwhile, movie in the future (under the guidance, perhaps, of Ben Wheatley, executive producer here). But, measuring In Fabric, we find all the pieces are there, but he’s crafted something altogether ill-fitting.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“What’s less engaging is the suspicion that neither of these stories was substantial enough for a feature film on their own, and so they were combined to make a justifiable whole. The film’s demented satire of consumer culture and weird diversions into psychosexual nightmare fuel are less reliant on a coherent narrative arc, however, and Strickland’s unique ability to convey the sense of touch in an audio-visual medium isn’t dependent on story at all.”–Katie Rife, The AV Club (contemporaneous)