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| Tracy Willet as Carrie in Animosity |
The Fantasia Film Festival certainly started out with a "bang" with Brendan Steere's
Animosity (2013), a twisty indie horror film that kept me guessing right until the end...and left me with a few questions. I like films that still have me thinking after they are over. In the Q&A afterwards, I didn't want to know the answers to all of my questions, so some mysteries are still left intact. I'll try to be careful of what I give away, but inevitably there will be some spoilers...
This film definitely reminds one of the "perils of home ownership," as viewers are introduced to the leads, Carrie and Mike, as they are buying a new house. They arrive shortly after the house's former owner has seemingly killed her daughter (and that opening scene is truly a stunner). Immediately, one thinks "what's wrong with this house?" Yet, the film flashes forward to Carrie and Mike days into their moving in, with boxes still packed and the house without phone or internet service (so they've bought the place, but they are isolated). So far so good.
Thankfully, the film takes place almost entirely through Carrie's subjective perspective. She's a composer who is currently scoring a "B" horror film, while Mike works at some lab with Carl and Nicole, who carpool with him to work. The film's slow burn comes from Carrie's days at home, where she hears strange sounds and encounters her creepy neighbor, Tom, who likes to shoot at things with a sawed-off shotgun. Steere states that the first half of the film is reminiscent of
Rosemary's Baby, and the way that the film hews close to Carrie while making everyone else seem rather enigmatic--especially Mike--contributes to that feeling of creeping dead. Inevitably, weird sh** starts happening and no one believes Carrie. Or they are working hard to convince her that she's imagining things. The male characters are pretty damn despicable throughout, and that might be the film's one flaw--it's hard to sympathize with Mike (Marcin Paluch), and one gets the sense that we should toward film's end. His loathsomeness is balanced beautifully by Tracy Willet's truly remarkable performance as Carrie. She is simultaneously sympathetic and fierce, and wholly riveting.
At the 40 minute mark, the film takes a rather dramatic turn, and offers up revelations that serve to further complicate the mysteries involved.
This film really does have
everything. Beyond
Rosemary's Baby, the recipe calls for some
Haute Tension, a touch of
Texas Chainsaw, some
Evil Dead, and a healthy dose of
Pet Cemetery--with even some mad science thrown in for good measure. In the Q & A, Steere said that he really wanted to make
Solaris, but he couldn't do outer space, so he shot it at his parents' place in Pennsylvania. These woods are seriously, seriously eerie, and the film's sound team does an excellent job of ratcheting up the tension. Most of all, despite any small plot fissures, this film is wickedly smart, not relying on the jump scares and "final girl" cliches that are so common to contemporary horror cinema. The film's world building may reference other films, but in many ways, its wholly original and a strong showing for a first feature.
Steere jokingly suggested that the film leaves an opening for
Animosity 2, and the film has the kind of "trick film" structure that merits repeat viewings and a continuation of the film's mythos. Still, don't call it
Animosity...the title is the least interesting thing about this film. Perhaps naming it something else would have given too much away, and hopefully I haven't done so in reviewing it. I now appreciate the film's poster even more. Where can I get one??
