The Harrowing (2014) [Guest Review]

Acknowledging Genius

The Harrowing

I understand that it’s odd for someone to review a late episode of a series, let alone the finale and skipping the previous chapters. Well let me clear something up;

Inside No. 9 is what British television has needed for a long time coming. With the long strands of story-driven programmes often suffering in quality due to failing to keep the audiences interest with the same essential characters and story for weeks bordering on months, a low-key anthology was a welcome entry to BBC2. Especially when it turns out to be the newest lovechild in the ever-growing family of unsung British comedy heroes Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton.

When united with friends Mark Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson, Shearsmith and Pemberton collectively form the much known and loved League of Gentlemen, the comedy show that with elements of gothic, macabre and just plain unnerving horror. I know I’ve yet to get the episode BUT BARE WITH ME because I need to establish how much J’adore La Ligue des Gentlemen. They manage to utilize many established horror tropes from recognizable classics yet somehow still come across as something new and original. When the group moved on to separate works, Reece and Steve (we’re soul mates) often co-create new shows with vastly different structures of storytelling to prove themselves as more than one trick ponies. They first made Psychoville, a dream-like whodunit with an insane cast connected to a dark incident from their pasts. And most recently No. 9, a “Tales of the Unexpected” style anthology series mixed with their traditional dark humour. And the gimmick is that each episode takes place in an area numbered nine, be it a house, room, gym locker etc...

 While Big Blogger has already told you what to think of the previous five episodes, I will nonetheless quickly summarise my opinions of series 1’s run.

Sardines = A genius discomfort comedy with a terrific set and a perfect ensemble cast. Special praise goes to Tim Key’s award-deserving performance and a twist ending that left me shivering.

A Quiet Night In = An ambitious feat to modernise Laurel and Hardy pays off splendidly. Great set design, hilarious silent comedy form Reece and Steve and they, much like their previous work, show how low-brow, often tasteless humour can be done right.

Tom and Gerri = The previous episodes reassured me the two are still funny, but this episode made me realize how thoughtful and understanding they are under the hook-clown masks. A tragic commentary on human impulse and trauma led by two fascinating characters. Steve’s Migg fills me with bile and Reece’s Tom breaks my heart.

Last Gasp = The most tender of the entries. A compelling tale of greed and hypocrisy with an always welcome appearance from Tamsin Greig. Admittedly, this is the episode with the least “re-watchability” due to the lack of sensational drama but it’s definitely worth a watch.

The Understudy = The traditional “Macbeth production goes wrong oh how ironic” story has been done many times before. Thankfully, this episode is saved from being clichéd by three-dimensional performances from every actor involved and some top-notch lighting. Also, the sinister tremulous ambiguity helps the episode stand on its own terms from the others. And yes, “Fuck me, it’s a ghost!” is the best quote of 2014 T.V.

And now, my detailed review of the series one finale

The Harrowing =  …well. I previously mentioned how in their League days, their writing would stop the laughs and hit you with no-holds barred horror. Well the ending of this episode is the most frightening thing these two have made since the League of Gentlemen Christmas Special.

The tale tells the aforementioned tale of teenage girl Katie( Amiee-Ffion Edwards), who has been hired by two odd neighbours to take care of their invalid brother, Andrass. The two brother and sister pair Tabitha (Helen McCrory) and Hector (Reece) tell her to never visit Andrass upstairs but to simply maintain the temperature and deliver him milk and biscuits from a mobilised chair, like some sort of maid for the uncanny. Without notifying the two, she soon invites her Goth BFF Shell (Poppy Rush) and the two gradually learn more morbid facts about their unseen client.

The notable homages to horror directors such as John Carpenter, William Friedkin, Dario Argento and numerous others are amazing to find on Television these days. You can tell this episode was written with love and care from Reece and Steve by the cognitively dissonant atmosphere that what you’re seeing is horrible yet jolly good fun. The nine-numbered house itself is one of my favourite sets of the series. Much like its residents, it tightropes between Carry On-esque cheese and a classical horror style in the vein of James Whale’s The Old Dark House. As for the residents themselves, they prove to be the beating heart of the duo’s trademark horror-comedy. Reece is at his most delightfully perverse as the quivering spectre of Hector, delivering his ridiculous dialogue with barely restrained glee and McCrory is equally having a ball with her larger than life character whilst never losing the gravitas of her usual thespian training.

Not to say that the protagonist is inferior. Edwards’ proves to be a surprisingly professional and convincing actor for her age, managing to convey a naturally confused and frightened response to the situation whilst keeping in sync with the comedic set-up of said events. We quickly sympathise with Katie as we would with Laurie Strode, Ellen Ripley, Sally Hardesty and other horror female leads not because of the comparisons with this episode and the films of those protagonists, but because Edwards is likable in the role and well written by Reece and Steve.

Also, props to Fields for assuming a role that could have easily been reduced to that of the “obnoxious sensitive friend” archetype we see in MANY slasher films before Wes Craven felt the need to point it out for us, because she turned out far better than I feared. Her character is far more layered and complex and Fields herself has great comic timing, particularly when her dialogue emphasises the poor grammar of our youth. The shame.

When I first heard that the two main leads of The Harrowing would be two teenagers I was slightly concerned. Two middle aged men attempting to capture the essence of young people not from their generation has often led to mixed to embarrassing results (see certain episodes of Doctor Who written by Steven Moffatt ). Thankfully, whether it be by thorough research into the demographic or the sheer magic dust that emanates from the two writers’ fingers, Katie and Shell are funny, engaging and realistic as both roles and as representations of homo sapiens youngsters.

The only mild complaint I have for The Harrowing is how when something particularly nasty happens, the madcap humour can be a little disingenuous, but that’s often par for the course for the stylings of the League, whether they be full, halved, quartered or just a standard Mark Gatiss episode of Who or Sherlock. On a petty note, it does feel odd with Steve’s absence from this episode but Reece wasn’t in Last Gasp so it all evens out.

I couldn’t have felt more satisfied or terrified as I did when the hilariously inappropriate end credits of The Harrowing played out. I would recommend that should you watch this show in no particular order, always finish series one with this, as the impact would be grossly diminished otherwise. The new series airs on March 26th, BBC2 at 10:00pm. Please watch it. I don’t care if you hate it; just show these two geniuses that their talents don’t go unacknowledged. 

By Harri Davies

A Zoom Film Review         

Another Guest Review

Harri Davies, a good friend of mine, has decided to upload his first guest review to the blog. He is a massive fan of Inside Number 9, he was the guy that introduced me to the show. and has decided to articulate his thoughts on the show's season finale. The Harrowing.

By Jack D. Phillips

Once Were Warriors (1994) [Guest Review]

Domestic Abuse Isn't Funny

Once Were Warriors

I can’t remember when exactly I watched Once Were Warriors, but it was at some point during the past month. Usually the greater the distance that grows between viewing a film and reviewing it, the more problematic it becomes, as although you can maybe recall how you responded to the experience, many of the details of the film that actually aid your analysis become obscured. This applies to me at least, but my mind keeps returning to this film repeatedly, and I’m going to scratch that itch and write about it, because this film really is an interesting case –study in how a script and its actors get progressively worse as the material becomes more demanding and consequently destroy your emotional involvement and interest in anything that is happening. Watching this was like building a sandcastle with a friend - not an elaborate construction but a passable one - and then seeing the person you’d just spent an hour with working to achieve something crush it beneath their foot with a single unceremonious bootheel.

I had watched Whale Rider (2002) not long before this, so it was an interesting progression to see the Māori culture from a female child’s perspective, in what was a relatively harmless narrative but did introduce into what seemed to be an inherent misogyny in their environment, and then move onto this film shares the suffering female element, but puts it in inner-city domesticity in a narrative which is definitely not appropriate for children. In fact, just as OWW seems to be, ostensibly, a mature development of the events of Whale Rider, it also seems share a few of the same flaws, but amplifies them significantly. That means confused character relationships, sub-plots that are dismissed almost as soon as they are raised and a lack of clarity and depth in the exploration of the culture itself. I suppose in Rider it was forgivable as it took the ridiculously imbalanced male/female dynamic of the Māori culture and told a story of female empowerment that only went as far a family film needed to in furthering that old familiar story of the hero/saviour/VIP whose talents and importance is unrecognized until they do something perception-shattering and are finally appreciated for who/what they are. Here, you have a film that purports to show something culturally significant but instead gives us a story of domestic struggle that could have happened in many other parts of the world, and nothing vital would have been lost. The IMDb synopsis claims that these characters struggle with the “societal problems of being treated like outcasts”, which is entirely fictional, occurring nowhere in this film. Had it been present, it might have given greater weight to their situation, and lend some sympathy to some of the Māori, as they all seem to live in dilapidated housing, frequent dilapidated pubs, and particularly in the case of the men, do little more than drink and fuck. Also, in further evidence as to the complete inaccuracy of that synopsis, the court system, which we see in effect, actually tries to help this family on a regular basis. Surely that can’t be entirely run by Māori people. But, oh wait, there is a moment where to white police officers escort one of the sons home and not-so-subtly imply to the Mother that her son is involved with crime because he’s from a poor Māori household. Does that meet your criteria?

The film opens with what is probably its best shot, and creates that classic illusion where we witness a beautiful landscape, but as the camera pulls back we learn it’s actually just some picture, and in this case it’s a billboard. This billboard depicts New Zealand country, and hovers of this destitute Māori community, some of its people even salvaging through trash,  a quite tragic reminder of their fading heritage, their cultural origins becoming more of a distant fantasy and the lands on which they once thrived now just a corporate tool. They ‘Once Were Warriors’ you see, and I’m reminded that the title is actually the most interesting part of the film.

Beth (Rena Owen) is a fairly self-possessed woman, proud of her children and her heritage, but is unfortunately married to Jake (Temuera Morrison, whom you might recognise as Jango Fett) a beer guzzling, muscle-bound, self-entitled beater of women who don’t heed his call, and any other person who presents a challenge to his masculinity. I suppose he represents the worst in the Māori culture, as he is all the pent-up inarticulate rage that can only process his situation through some degree of violence. In fact, the film isn’t clear as to whether he is Māori or not. He supposedly originates from tribe of slaves, which I guess the film is telling us created an inferiority complex that he deals with through violence, (although this is only explored in literally a passing comment) and in marrying Beth he married above his status? Beth suffers all manner of indignities, and Rena Owen conveys them adequately, if not a little stiffly. In fact, besides Morrison, the acting is so self-conscious it’s as if you can see them waiting to deliver their lines. This is most horribly manifested in a friend of the eldest daughter, who is some little Dickensian orphan, accumulator of filth, who lives in a wrecked car and doesn’t understand that line-reading doesn’t mean delivering your dialogue as if you are eye-lids are stapled shut and you’re struggling to read the script in a painful darkness.  There is also the problem of the older son, Nig, who joins a Māori gang of brutal macho warfare and even as part of his initiation has an entire side of his face tattooed, but is never explored beyond that. It’s a matter of the film box-ticking it’s cultural obligations and never showing the consequences of them. Much of this is soap-opera level of drama, in that it goes into auto-pilot and just wants to elicit some sort of emotional response. This becomes horribly problematic in the second half, when the material enters a heavier territory that nobody is capable of handling. At best, I could acknowledge the actors were really trying to convey these personal tragedies, at worst it felt like the film was almost trivialising these issues, however unintentionally. This film treads thematic ground such as rape, domestic abuse, suicide, poverty, alcoholism, and the conflict between familial and cultural obligations and societal vices that one has fallen into. If I have to laugh when these things occur, I’d hope it was at the way the film was handling them not the thing itself, but the film almost made me feel guilty in that regard.

But the first 40 minutes of the film actually earned my emotional involvement, and despite some of the aforementioned problems, I cared about these characters. In fact, Jake, who at times is one of the most emotionally inert males I’ve seen, is probably the best acted, and when the camera turns on him he can be a terrifying presence, all untamed animal instinct, and Morrison can really channel this rage through his eyes. They’re a beast’s eyes. And then his character is reduced to some ridiculous anthropomorphic rock, where all the untapped complexities of the character are erased. He eventually just starts roaring and hitting at anything in sight because I guess the film thinks that it’s gut-wrenching, or difficult to watch this man self-destruct. Is he self-destructing? The problem is that although we see the very real and very dangerous effects of alcoholism through this character, how it makes one’s personality shift drastically on a dime, and that this man is a product of his masculine environment, that rewards macho behaviour, the film never gives us a reason to care about him. It’s fine when we’re introduced to him, and we see what he’s capable of, how that affects the family, how he’s a classic spousal abuser in that he can utterly denigrate his wife and yet still charm her all over again, but what then? I know it’s too easy for a person on the outside to tell a woman that she should leave her husband, but in these circumstances there is nothing here worth holding onto and there’s little to no intimacy or real evidence of an actual functional relationship between them. There’s a problematic moment where Beth convinces Jake to give her some money, and he does, and then in his vicious macho self-entitlement he expects a sexual reward. My friend read this moment, in which he gives her the money, as evidence of him actually caring about her, and that’s understandable considering how obscured the film become in its own foggy writing. Beth also puts the money in her bra, which has obvious connotations in our culture, and I’m not sure if this is my own sexist reading of the film, if just convenience on part of the character, or if it was supposed to demonstrate how she’s maintain a sexually playful charade just to please him. Either way, she is being objectified, and Beth and Jake’s relationship, her as object and him as man who uses object as leisure, is never explored beyond this.

The tragic cycle of life, in that the males are expected to fulfil their roles, the females theirs, is actually quite affecting, and we see Grace, who is a budding young writer who has no interest in meeting these gender constructs which are slowly being increasingly imposed on her.

Unfortunately the turning point of the film is a character’s rape, and from there it becomes increasingly ridiculous, as all the things that transpire, are painful because none of it is at all convincing, and the sympathetic bond between film and viewer is just mocked. A character’s arc is crushed and condensed into about 10 minutes, and so what plays out is like Requiem for a Dream if it was a soap opera. And 10 minutes long. It becomes so rushed and hackneyed in its attempt at tragedy that we even get a shot of the character walking alone through the dark city streets, signs and buildings looming over, limbs reaching out and groping from the dark…..it’s such a cheap way of showing a character’s pain and isolation it’s almost a parody. Actually the Simpsons have parodied this cheap sentimentality in ‘El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer’ when Homer walks alone at night, ‘At Seventeen’ accompanying his pain and confusion…

And that’s where this film fails. It’s the cognitive dissonance between characters that we were actually emotionally invested in be betrayed by the film they’re in, so as the material requires the drama to escalate, the authenticity and conviction plummets, so what you have is something that you know you should care about stir you not one bit. And I can’t forgive the film for that.

By Sean Hancock

A Zoom Film Review

A Guest Review

Today this blog will be hosting a review of Once Were Warriors, written by a close friend of mine Sean Hancock. The review is outstanding, long and deep, covering a very turbulent and hard to quantify film stunningly well. 

I hope you enjoy.