Now 60, with but three features to his credit (none in the last 15 years), Philip Ridley seems to have stepped back from film. (Willingly?; he’s also a playwright & painter.) Judging by his debut as writer/director, he’s something of a missing link between David Lynch & Tim Burton, so the loss considerable. This one Rural Gothic Horror of high order, visionary & assured from start to finish. Quite a startling start at that, as three rural pals, ten-ish, barefoot boy with cheek of tan types, catch an enormous frog to use for a cruelly disgusting trick on a sinister local spinster. Seth (Jeremy Cooper, excellent), the boy who lives closest, just behind the gas station pumps, forced by Mom to apologize is unexpectedly brought into the crazed lady’s confidence, told she’s really a 200-yr-old vampire (Lindsay Duncan). Meanwhile, back on the farm, his father suffers a meltdown (literally) not long before over-stressed Mom zones out, fixating on nothing but the return of prodigal military son Viggo Mortensen. There’s a fever in the air, one caught by Mortensen who’s soon bedding the mysterious neighbor, looking older and noticeably thinner while she becomes robust and youthful. Shot in a sun-dappled honeyed glow by Nick Bicât fit for a countryside idyll, the progressive, prevailing darkness a constant outrage to narrative justice. The film both repels and reels you in. One of a kind stuff.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: For a more grounded take on a similarly unnerving farmland freak-out, THE OTHER/’72. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/02/other-1972.html
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