4
« on: 26 June, 2015, 11:09:31 PM »
I've watched quite a bit of late, during my recovery, but tonight's exploration into the weird is one I really have to talk about.
A Haunting at the Rectory (2015)
I have no idea. None at all. Was it the worst film I've ever seen, or one of the best? Was it an amateur fan film with occasional flourish, or a modern classic? Or none of the above? Or all of them?
Ostensibly based upon "True Events", I guess it's a story about Borley Rectory. The only way you'd gather this however, is because the titles proclaim it to be produced in association with "the Borley Rectory Company", otherwise it's never mentioned. Not once.
You'd think, it being the "true story of England's most haunted house" and all, it would be a horror film, yes? Ah ha, well you'd only be half right. What this is, is a peculiar drama about a love triangle, set sometime in the past, in which some ghosts appear for a bit.
The film exists in a strange absence of context. It seems to be some time around the turn of the last century... give or take twenty or thirty years. No mention is made of world events outside the grounds of the house, no historical context is given, and the characters exist in a weird limbo in which the three main actors display such varied and contrasting acting styles as to render the whole thing akin to an AmDram stage performance of Agatha Christie. Annemarie, the Lady of the house, seems to think it's a modern piece, her husband Lionel the reverend uses a naturalism more suited to an audition for Emmerdale's next vicar, and Frank the supposed Alpha sexpot who so violently upsets their life is played as a Welsh Rhett Butler by way of Uncle Frank from Hellraiser. I say Welsh, but I think that was just the accent slipping.
The vicar is warned Evil lurks in the rectory, by a woman in his graveyard and sure enough, we are treated to a couple of scenes of low level haunting. There's a literal skeleton in the cupboard, people are killed, other people are buried, and it stops.
And it sounds bloody awful. But, oddly, it's not. In fact I'm reminded of the first time I saw The Wicker Man on late night TV and absolutely hated it. It was only years later, after reading about it, obsessing about it, and seeing it with a huge audience, that I came to appreciate the "morbid ingenuities" of that glorious work of genius. And there's something, something, of that about A Haunting at the Rectory.
Sex abounds, and is surprisingly grphic for this sort of thing. An example of the dissonance between the acting styles and the tone of the piece comes late in the film, when Annmarie (in her 10s/20s/30s/40s twinset and pearls) shouts fiercly (I'll use rhyming so as not to incur moderator ire) "YES HE CLUCKED ME! I MUCKED HIS SOCK TOO. MUCKED HIS SOCK AND LET HIM CLUCK ME UP THE GRASS!" in a scene that quite possibly may become this film's equivalent of "Oh god! Oh Jesus Christ! Oh Christ! Christ!".
And it's shot on video, so certain scenes look like all "liney" and at one point bannisters look like old fashioned 3D because of the video artefacts surrounding them. But at the same time, the lighting is superb, and it looks as good as a high end BBC period drama.
As I say, I dont know what to think and I'd be hugely grateful if someone else who has seen it would share their view. At the moment, again like The Wicker Man before it that first time, I'm beginning to wonder if I hallucinated the whole thing.
SBT
Show Posts
