Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Joanne Mitchell
Starring: Rebecca Calder, James Fleet, Jay Taylor, Sacharissa Claxton
Whenever I hear the phrase "elevated horror," I reach for my popcorn.
I'm not tired of the content that the phrase implies, which is a
particularly defined trend-cum-subgenre of the horror mode, but instead
the eyeroll inducing inverse snobbery which apparent
horror fans
have
towards
the term. Jesus, fans are tedious. Subgenre, which the actual Cambridge
dictionary defines as a "part of a larger genre involving a particular
set of characteristics" is a tool of categorisation, what outlines
splatter from slasher, giallo from the gothic. Elevated horror refers to
a group of films which are perhaps low on visceral thrills but rich in
meditations upon the lasting trauma of death and the airless process of
grief. Almost all horror films feature death, but this is the subgenre
which purposefully explores the lasting ramifications of life ending
(unlike us, I'm not sure that everyone else even fully understands the
term. E.g., searching "examples of elevated horror" on Google,
from "sources across the web" no less, will aggregate stuff like
It Follows, which, as any fule kno, is a post-modern-slasher located within the
mid-2010s-retro-aesthetic). Horror will forever be the go-to, and having
experienced the death of someone very close this year it was the
elevated type which I sought out in an attempt at catharsis and to
process my own ongoing heartache; the Ari Aster ones mainly, because of
the bizarre coping mechanisms represented in
Hereditary, the recognisable ways in which people get a bit fed up of Dani in
Midsommar. The last one particularly because in general people don't like death,
and don't want to recognise its reality: this is where the subgenre
comes in (I also like elevated horror because as the operative adjective
implies they are simply of a better quality than the entire rest of
horror: joke).
Don't take my word for it, Steve Neale, an actual expert on genre,
advises that modes change as they "borrow from and overlap with one
another": Broken Bird, the impressive feature length directorial debut of
Joanne Mitchell (script co-written with Dominic Brunt,
from a story by Tracey Sheals). is such a product; a post-Babadook
(the elevated urtext) example of the subgenre, a film which builds on
the established tropes and becomes almost an exegesis of the mode
itself. Within we follow Rebecca Calder as Sybil, the damaged
figure alluded to in the title (an abiding feature of the genre: an
alienated central female character). In the tradition of such grim girls
as May or Jenna Malone in
The Neon Demon
(iykyk, and, yes, the comparison is apt), Sybil fetishes death via this
narrative's establishing scenes which show her taxidermize a chaffinch
and then scoop up the remains of a vixen who has come a cropper on the
road (tw - both real animals ☹), all before attending an amateur poetry
evening wherein she eulogises being "wrapped by nature's blankets."
Sybil's morbidity is paralleled with another type of deathly foreboding
in the character of Emma (Sacharissa Claxton), who is a detective
suffering from the loss of her little boy, the passing of whom she
blames herself for. As Sybil finds new employment in a local funeral
home, Emma struggles to come to terms with grief, and the links between
the two become apparent as the monomania of each woman increases.
Mitchell, along with art director Igor Veljkovic, has an eye for
sinister detail which is formed in the film's opening and evident
throughout. Cannily, to express the bruised psychology of each
protagonist, Mitchell creates a distinct mise-en-scene for each of her
characters: Emma's world is that of cluttered, procedural urgency, while
Sybil's is ominously elegant with sharp angles and polished surfaces,
all the better to be punctuated by the chaos of her deranged sexual and
violent fantasies. She imagines a mourner punching the face of a
recently deceased husband and will eventually fantasise a romance with a
corpse in her care; a vivid daydream infused with clichéd '50s
iconography (there is an ingeniously horrific moment involving shed
underwear which is one of the most intimately unpleasant things I've
seen all year). Concerning such subjectivity,
Broken Bird makes clear that while Sybil's behaviour is
rooted in childhood trauma, social isolation and unhealthy abstraction
from society are also pressing factors (the film is too thoughtful to
propose that formative events necessarily doom us: elevated, innit). A
veteran actor of British TV, including soap (the toughest gig in telly,
I reckon), Mitchell's direction is superb, and it works with Calder to
create a formidable, compulsive presence. Just look at her, with her
insane cheekbones and screw top bangs! In this plausibly terrifying
performance, she cuts through the narrative like a scalpel.
Mitchell and her co-writer are long term creative collaborators; I've
liked more of the films which they've worked on than those I haven't,
but what is always clear is the absolute respect for the genre which
both share. We see it in Broken Bird too, with frequent
genre allusions and the occasional interpolation of an iconic image
(there is one towards the end involving a cigarette lighter) which work
as references for the initiated. Sometimes with this sort of thing there
is a propensity for indulgence: as if presenting a passion for the genre
is in itself enough. This isn't the case with Broken Bird, where the genre trappings intricately link to the film's thematic
focus: how far are we from the bleak malaise of Sybil as we consume her
gross compulsions for entertainment? What, uh, "elevates" Mitchell's
film from, say, the glib allegations of Haneke's
Funny Games (no, watching a fictional murder in a work of
fiction doesn't make an audience complicit in the fictional drama, no
more than watching Jaws makes us a shark) is how smitten
the film and its creators are with the genre and all its potentially
problematic implications. A fascinatingly conflicted comment on elevated
horror, itself... Overall, the film can't quite ultimately maintain the
balance between respectful consideration of death (there is a moment
when Emma talks about dreaming that her son is just hiding under the
bed, and will soon reveal himself, which had me) and a British
compulsion to laugh at the absurd imperiousness of expiration (which, to
be fair, is how I've found real grief is to be best negotiated). By its
end the film is furthermore overwhelmed by the sheer amount of ideas it
carries, and, like pallbearers unable to carry such a loaded coffin, it
inadvertently stumbles, all but spilling its contents in front of the
gawping mourners. An entertainingly dark image which I wouldn't have put
past this excitingly inventive, emotive and unpredictable film.
Broken Bird is on UK/ROI VOD now.
