Philip Gelatt's indie thriller They
Remain premieres this weekend at
the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, OR. The film is the
second to be directed (as well as written) by Gelatt, the
screenwriter of 2013's indie sci-fi favorite Europa Report,
and is based on a novella by Laird Barron. Like Europa
Report (which took a bit of
loose inspiration from At the Mountains of Madness),
They Remain draws from
Lovecraftian ideas and themes to inform both its mythology and its
approach to slow-burn sci-fi suspense. But while those narrative
aspects are inspired by the great early-20th-century writer of “weird
fiction,” the style of the film is decidedly modern, and extremely
minimalist. Its focus is on creating a cold, icy hostility and sense
of alienated dread which at times feels almost antiseptic in its
modernity. It also plays out almost entirely as a two-actor show,
building up the distrust and tension between co-stars William Jackson
Harper (The Good Place)
and Rebecca Henderson (Manhunt: Unabomber).
The result is a film which transposes Lovecraftian ideas onto a very
different genre approach. The results are uneven and the final
product a bit flawed, but it is nonetheless a compelling, well-shot
and acted indie thriller.
Harper
and Henderson play two scientists who have been sent by a mysterious
corporation to investigate an ecological “dead zone” which,
despite having normal-seeming vegetation, appears to be totally
lacking in animal life. The area used to be home to a mysterious cult
which ritualistically killed a huge amount of people on the land –
begging the question, are the history of occult violence and the
ecological anomalies linked? The film follows their months-long
investigation – and the way in which they both begin to
psychologically unravel and mistrust each other as the isolation and
macabre work plays with their heads. The focus of the film is largely
on the latter: the occult concepts and ecological mystery are quite
intriguing, but it is the psychological fallout of them, and the
effects of isolation on the two paranoia-prone minds, with which the
story is most concerned. The film's best scenes are either subjective
nightmare-visions reflecting the characters' mental cracking or
dialogue scenes between the two, in which reticence and mistrust fill
the gaps of what goes unsaid.
This
is where the movie is at its strongest: Harper and Henderson both
give strong performances, particularly when they are working with
silence and facial/body language to convey this unspoken tension. The
film's cinematography by Sean Kirby is likewise very strong in both
of these aspects, bringing an icy hostility to these dialogue scenes,
and a dreamy sense of unreality to the sequences which may be
nightmares or visions, or may be real. The film is quite atmospheric,
and strongly captures the sense of psychological subjectivity central
to Gelatt's script. Kirby likewise was the cinematographer for the
2007 Lovecraftian horror/thriller Cthulhu (a
very interesting and ambitious queer-cinema take on The
Shadow Over Innsmouth), which
boasted a similar coldly dreamlike atmosphere; his work on that film
made him a naturally excellent choice for this one.
However,
the film has some significant flaws in the script department. While
the tension between the two main characters works well, the larger
story which frames this tension leaves much to be desired. Neither
the ecological mystery nor the Lovecraftian cult mythology are
sufficiently fleshed out, and sometimes feel more like macguffins in
service of the characters' story than a story unto themselves. This
is definitely a problem, since both of those plot threads are really
interesting in concept (they are, after all, why both the characters
and the viewers are here), and it is a bit frustrating that they
remain underbaked. Some of this may be due to budgetary constraints –
as 2007's Cthulhu likewise
learned the hard way, it is difficult to deliver Lovecraftian horrors
with very little money – but largely it seems due to the fact that
the script is more interested in inward strife than outward
mythology. The end result would, however, have been stronger if it
could have done both. The last act in particular is harmed by the
underdeveloped nature of the story's mythology, as we really should
know more than we do about what is actually going on for the film's
climax to have more impact. As it is, the film's final act is less
satisfying than it should be as a result.
Ultimately
They Remain is
compelling and worth checking out when it gets a wider release this
fall, because of how well it handles its slippery paranoia and
isolated character tension. The actors handle the two-person-show
challenge of the material quite well, and the strong visual style
makes the slow-burn approach work pretty effectively. It is
unfortunate that the script shortchanges its Lovecraftian mystery as
much as it does, as this aspect of the story is really interesting,
and we do not get nearly enough of it. The result is an uneven film
which in the end doesn't quite fulfill its potential. It is
nonetheless worth a look, and makes a case for Gelatt being a strong
filmmaker who could do something very impressive with a bit more
resources. Perhaps next time he can explore the Lovecraftian themes
which have recurred in his work so far with a bit more depth.
Score:
-
Christopher S. Jordan
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