Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Romola Garai
Starring: Alec Secareanu, Carla Juri, Imelda Staunton, Angeliki Papoulia, Anah Ruddin
Romola Garai’s debut Amulet is an intriguing entry
into the ‘terraced gothic’ subgenre, a small, oppressive type of horror
film characterised by last year’s lauded
His House
(and which I, Benjamin Poole, have just coined the name of). In this
particularly British mode of horror, an outsider does their best to get on
in a hostile working-class Britain, with the action primarily taking place
in dilapidated homes which host supernatural threats potentially more
harmful than anything lurking in the cold, wet streets outside. The visual
set of damp walls, stained lino and peeling wallpaper was established in
early entries like 1998’s Urban Ghost Story and perfected by
the art design of certain Inside No.9 episodes: domestic
environments which act as derelict extensions of the protagonist’s damaged
psyche, and which commit that sweet sense of hauntology, too (I suppose
there are elements of the subgenre’s iconography in
Last Night in Soho, too).
In Amulet we follow Tomas (Alec Secareanu), an
ex-solider from some European territory, who is given room and board by
Imelda Staunton’s Sister Claire, an ostensibly kind-hearted nun who
runs a town house which provides sanctuary for women. The abstract
presentation of Tomas’ past is deliberate, and feeds into the moody,
hypnagogic ambiance of Garai’s film. More concrete though is how Garai
constructs Tomas, who is defined by his traditional masculinity: Sister
Claire hires this ex-combatant specifically to fix and maintain the house
- "it’s falling apart around their ears." Playing his part, Tomas reacts
to the placement by immediately falling in love with one of the occupants
(the demure Magda, Carla Juri).
Giving us space from the eerie claustrophobia of the town house, the
forbidding angles and oppressive atmosphere of which Garai’s camera deftly
makes the most of, we flashback to Tomas’ military past. In a dense forest
he mans some sort of checkpoint, where one morning he meets Miriam, a
mysterious woman played by Angeliki Papoulia, who rocks up at
Tomas’ in distress and on the run, looking for her daughter in a village
"two days away." Awkward and initially courteous, Tomas’ physicality
around Miriam, and the lingering looks which the camera slyly reveals,
give clues to his underlying impulses. In the fertile soil of the woods,
Tomas uncovers the titular amulet, a feminine fetish with a shell-like
halo, giving it to Miriam as a protective talisman.
In the present, things get weird. Brittle sound design amplifies everyday
noise, and close ups make even the act of eating a nice cake seem
foreboding: this is genre atmosphere to chew on. With a grim
inevitability, features of the amulet manifest within the house, and the
memories the emblems evoke seem to repulse Tomas. Along with the strange
wails from the attic, creeping rot on the walls and the push/pull of his
relationship with Magda, the most immutable clue that something is up with
the house occurs when Tomas unblocks the toilet and inadvertently releases
an absolutely fucking terrifying hairless bat thing from the u-bend. The
imagery of squealing, smooth wet deformity is unpleasantly reminiscent of
birth gone wrong: an effectively abject demonstration of Garai’s gendered
imagery.
The creature disrupts the impeccable dread of the first act, catalysing
the narrative as we descend deeper into fairy tale motifs (the urtexts of
gender implications) and the twin mysteries of what exactly does dwell in
the attic (‘terraced gothic’- it’s happening!) along with what ugliness
Tomas is running from. The film leaves it to you to decide which is the
worse of two resolutions...
Ultimately, there is perhaps a little more going on in
Amulet than the film can satisfyingly cope with, and the
heady, adumbrate tempo overwhelms its pointed plot specifics, but within
the horror landscape it's cheering to see a film with such ominous
imagination, along with a keen, original eye to express it. A
recommendation for watching - I serendipitously fell asleep in front of
the film first go (a result of my never stop never stopping lifestyle, not
a comment on the film). Waking up to the onscreen screams of a chiropteran
foetus terror, I shook the nap off, went for a walk around the garden and
restarted the film from scratch. Still in that half waking state in the
small hours, Amulet bled into my imagination, feeling its
way into my slumberous flesh. Watch it before bed: a waking nightmare.
Amulet is on UK/ROI VOD now.
