Chris Jordan reviews the cult horror film, Lord of Tears.
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"Tis but a feather. A flea infested, disease ridden grotesque feather." |
Part ghost story, part love story, part rumination on grief,
and part Lovecraftian tale of ancient evil, this film is absolutely
spellbinding. On the one hand, it is the story of a man trying to come to terms
with a traumatic past, and find closure so he can discover love in the present.
On the other hand, it is the story of a foreboding, isolated mansion in the
Scottish Highlands, filled with dark secrets and tied to local legends of a
demon known as the Owl Man. What makes Lord of Tears so special is that
it handles both of these sides so well, with each complimenting and amplifying
the other. It is a film of great emotional power – quite poetic, in fact –
which also happens to be very, very creepy. And it is so creepy precisely
because we are so emotionally invested.
The film unfolds with a very deliberate slow-burn approach:
it is not interested in shocks so much as emotions, ideas, and atmosphere that
gradually build up to get under the viewer's skin in a highly unsettling way.
As the mysteries of screenwriter Sarah Daly's script unfold, it draws the
audience under its spell as surely as it does our haunted main character, with
the ethereal, hypnotic feel of a dream. On top of all that, the film has a very
memorable supernatural mythology surrounding the Owl Man – the title's Lord of
Tears – who is a bit like a combination of the Slender Man and one of H. P.
Lovecraft's elder beings.
In addition to its strong approach to horror storytelling,
the thing that stands out most about Lord of Tears is what an incredibly
well-shot, visually fantastic film it is. Director Lawrie Brewster and
cinematographer/art director Gavin Robertson have very talented eyes for
beautiful, haunting images; this is the sort of movie where any number of shots
could be made into art prints and hung on your wall (if you wanted to give your
house a pretty spooky atmosphere). It's so rare for indie films to look this
gorgeous, let alone indie horror films. Brewster and Robertson make fantastic
use of the richly atmospheric remote setting, filled with twisting, leafless
trees and crumbling old buildings silhouetted against a perpetually overcast
sky. And they must have carried cameras with them wherever they went to be able
to capture the perfect yet clearly spontaneous shots of nature that fill the film:
a spider weaving its web in intense close-up, birds taking off en-mass from a
tree, a deer standing in a perfectly-composed shot like an actor. This
naturally moody atmosphere helps give life to the Owl Man, who already makes a
very effective demon thanks to the excellent creature design. Simple and
stylized, yet highly effective, this creature is the stuff nightmares are made
of.
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"Your face is like a baby's bottom; soft and covered in crap. Let me kiss you." |
Lord of Tears is definitely essential viewing, for
horror fans and lovers of independent film alike. It deserves the sort of
attention that other genre-rejuvenating hits like The Babadook and House
of the Devil have gotten; I suspect the only reason it hasn't is because it
remains truly indie in distribution as well as production, and hasn't benefited
from a marketing push by a larger studio. Which is all the more reason why it
should be supported: this is exactly the sort of filmmaking we need more of.

-Chris Jordan

-Chris Jordan