[yasr_overall_rating]
After their parents’ death, the Rademacher twins travel to Michigan to close the family home. While there, they discover that they aren’t alone and must fight for survival – a fight that continues long after the violence ends.
It’s highly ironic that a film with such an in-your-face title as “The Horror” is so scant in its horror. The film is almost completely devoid of any jump scares, gore or the other tricks typical of the horror genre. And that shouldn’t be a bad thing in a horror film if it creates some building sense of foreboding or other visceral feeling of unease that creeps under one’s skin. “The Horror” seems to aim for both.
The Rademacher twins are in their 20s and have lost their parents in a car accident. Isabel (Callie Ott) spends her time kvetching to her psychiatrist (Schell M. Peterson in a performance so wooden one can literally hear it creak), whilst brother Malcom (Raymond Creamer) basically descends into madness. Malcolm’s morose descent really kicks in when the twins are attacked in their parents’ Michigan lake house by lanky home invaders wearing gas masks in a surreal dream-like sequence involving hammers but with no blood, not even dread. Michael Haneke’s nihilistic but scary as hell “Funny Games” it is not. “The Horror” wishes it came to the ankles of that masterpiece.
The plot of this film suffers because it’s so muddled. For example, the respective partners of the twins visit the lake house with them and then suddenly disappear, never to appear again in the film, which is a pity because the film’s best performance is that of Lexi Moeller as Annie, Malcolm’s exasperated girlfriend (and he is one exasperating creep). Moeller is emotionally pitch-perfect in her too-small cameo, and she is an actress to watch out for. Instead, we must watch Malcolm sledge hammer away at the ice on the frozen lake in the middle of the night or walk around stores looking ominous. And all the while we cut back time and again to listen to Isabel being pseudo-intense with her shrink (and divulging nearly all of the back story, of course).
And all this palaver unfolds because there is clearly lots of humongous unresolved grief, not to mention some psychopathy and other such psychobabble claptrap going on. Yes, yes, we get it. The screenplay (co-penned by Creamer) is the film’s weakest point in its muddled incoherence in which plot plays second fiddle to psychological intent. The narrative is confused from the outset, which is distancing and, ultimately, off-putting. And there are few things more annoying in modern cinema than the clichés of autumnal steely grey landscapes, drab rural vistas and the languor of empty roads, topped by quirky camera angles and a brooding electronic music score. “The Horror” has those clichés in spades.
Low-key, supposedly psychological and cryptic horror seems to get some moviegoers and critics into a real froth of excitement. Unfortunately, what too often occurs is ponderous filmmaking that is pretentious rather than filled with portent, and which really defeats the purpose of what is horror. This film is slightly reminiscent of last year’s “It Follows” in its unseen malevolence and symbolic undertones. But whilst “It Follows” was frankly overrated, it at least had its share of genuine creepiness and memorable scares, which is more than can be said for this dull, trite little film. “The Horror” has all the bleak emptiness of the wintry Michigan landscape it depicts – and it left me just as cold.
On Digital VHX and Limited Edition VHS April 1st
