IN FABRIC (September 2018)

   

IN FABRIC

(September 2018)

“A purchase on a horizon, a panoply of temptation. Can a curious soul desist?”

“I’m just looking, thank you.”

“The hesitation in your voice soon to be an echo in the recesses of the spheres of retail.”

I don’t know about you, but if a salesperson walked up to me with that spiel, I would not hang about to hear more…

Particularly if I’ve already seen the creepiest TV advert ever* for the shop’s latest sale…

“You who wear me will know me.”

Peter Strickland’s In Fabric kicks off with Sheila Woolchapel (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a lonely mother just trying to find love and intimacy who happens to visit Dentley & Soper’s, leaving the premises with the singular “Ambassadorial Function Dress”--a chiffon and silk and satin number in, get this, artery red--in stock.

A dress that happens to be, gulp, haunted.

“The very purpose of this seasonal retail occasion is to expunge. Returning what has already left the Ladies’ Fashion Boutique of Dentley & Soper’s Trusted Department Store goes against the nature of things.”

A haunted (or in some cases, cursed) fashion item featuring in a horror film is nothing new, of course.

Some that come quickly to mind: Kim Yong-gyun’s Bunhongshin (The Red Shoes), Won Shin-yeon’s Gabal (The Wig, AKA Scary Hair), the more recent Bad Hair (from Justin Simien, which features a “possessed weave”), and Elza Kephart’s Slaxx (killer jeans, natch).**

And while some of those titles lean more into the comedic side of their horror-comedy combo, there’s still something undeniably unnerving about having something that you’re wearing--that, by its very nature, is something that rests snugly against your body--have a malevolent mind of its own, even if there are some laughs mixed in with all of the chills.

Trust Peter Strickland to toss his hat into this particular horror movie ring…

“But your dismissal of such a prestigious consumerist festivity leaves me bereft.”

If you’ve seen Berberian Sound Studio (and if you haven’t, please, please, please do yourself a favor and seek it out), you’ll know what I mean when I say that Strickland is the kind of director whose work is definitely experiential. Like David Lynch, the way he combines visuals with sound and music is alchemical in nature, disturbingly bewitching.

Just like that artery red dress.

And while there is a ribbon of drily absurd humor that flows through its runtime, In Fabric also drapes us with an unsettling, inescapable tone, almost like that artery red dress settling down all around us, brushing up relentlessly against our bare, viewer’s skin…

The inner, hidden workings of the retail world have never been quite this surreal and creepy on film***…

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of a dress.”

* Courtesy of Julian House, who also worked on Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio.

** For the record, I’ve seen all of these, except for Slaxx.

*** The closest I think we’ve come to something like this is Kim Sung-ho’s Geoul Sokeuro (Into the Mirror), in which bizarre goings-on mar the intended re-opening of the shopping mall, Dreampia. Though to be frank, that film doesn’t even come close to the unsettling strangeness of Strickland’s vision of Dentley & Soper’s…

Comics, though, are another matter entirely…

Eerie retail hijinx may be found in Christopher Cantwell and I.N.J. Culbard’s Everything, from Dark Horse comics, edited by the one and only Mother of Vertigo, Karen Berger…

Parting Shot: If you find yourself enamored with Strickland’s aesthetic, then I implore you to also check out his definitely not horror piece, The Duke of Burgundy, as well as his contribution to The Field Guide to Evil, “Cobblers’ Lot,” loosely based on the Hungarian folktale, “The Princess’s Curse”.

(In Fabric quad and OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

reVIEW (4)
DARK WATER
[2 of 2]

Walter Salles' English-language remake of Hideo Nakata's Honogurai mizu no soko kara, Dark Water, is finally upon us, and it turns out to be the most subtle horror film made since Fruit Chan's Dumplings.

From a script by Rafael Yglesias (based on the Nakata/Takashige Ichise script, which was, in turn, based on the Koji Suzuki short story, “Floating Water”), Dark Water is the tale of Dahlia Williams (Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly), a woman in the middle of a messy custody battle with her husband Kyle (Dougray Scott of Ever After and Mission: Impossible II) over their six-year-old, Cecilia (Ariel Gade).
Forced by economics to move into a rundown apartment block in Roosevelt Island just outside of New York City, Dahlia's life quickly becomes harried and strained as the weight from her troubled childhood collides with the unsettling events that begin to take place in her new home.
Connelly (who is amazing here, just as she was in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem For A Dream) submits an astoundingly naturalistic performance, and is merely the tip of an intimidating and effective thespic iceberg, which includes John C. Reilly, Tim Roth, Pete Postlethwaite, and The Practice's Camryn Manheim. Even young Gade as Ceci is impressive.
And the kudos aren't just for the performers. There is the man behind the camera who must be commended as well.

What Salles has managed to do here is take his talent for presenting the audience with real, textured, and nuanced characters—as those in his Oscar-recognized Central do Brasil (Central Station)—and apply that strength to the ghost story template, producing a masterful work with potent emotional impact.
Taking the themes of Nakata's original—love and abandonment, and how both are not necessarily mutually exclusive—Salles gives us a horror film that manages to transcend the idea of horror as genre/marketing category, and enter the realm of horror as emotion. Salles' Dark Water isn't about the long-haired ghost and the sudden cheap scare to get the audience to jump in their seats. It's about the slow realization that horror (or at least the seed of it, its potential) is, in a sense, all around us, and that horror can wrench the soul just as much as grief can. Salles isn't interested in goose bumps and the shrill shriek followed by nervous laughter; he explores dread and anxiety, the fears we all face on any given day: will there always be someone who will love us, or will we be ultimately left, alone and alienated?

Now, if you're beginning to think this may not be your idea of a horror film, maybe you should listen to your instincts.
Since my exposure to horror at an early age (one of the pivotal moments, watching Richard Donner's The Omen in the long-gone and sorely missed Rizal Theater at age 8), I have had the distinct privilege of exploring its breadth and depth, in both film and literature, appreciating the shock metal grue of splatterpunk and the delicate atmospherics of quiet horror, and everything else in between; all the ghosts and psychopaths, werewolves and vampires, zombies and cannibals, and other assorted things that go bump in the night, which caper and twitter and twirl madly in the vast spectrum of the realm of horror.
Karen Berger, editor-in-chief and mother of DC's Vertigo line of comic books once said, "Horror is a great backdrop or platform to explore a lot of relevant modern-day issues. Neil [Gaiman] and a lot of the Vertigo writers used horror as a genre device to explore deeper things." She also went on to talk about using horror as a backdrop "... to explore the world in which we live, and the real disturbing aspects about society and humanity, and everyday life."
Horror is meant to be unsettling; it is there to jolt and jostle us out of our complacency, to counter-act the anaesthesized delusion of the Hollywood feel-good movie, where everything is solved by a song-and-dance routine to some golden oldie, and everyone is smiling and happy before the end credits roll. Horror opens our eyes. It imparts truths to us, however harsh or bitter those truths may be, in the hopes that we may have epiphanies, so we may better our selves and our lives.

Hideo Nakata, one of the premier talespinners of horror today, clearly understands this. Apparently, Walter Salles does too.
So, if you've an open mind as to what the word "horror" could mean to you, then get out there and take Dark Water in.
And if not, well, there's always the next horror film, complete perhaps, with long-haired ghost, ready to glide into the multiplex sooner than you think.

(The above review began life under the title “Seepage (Taking in Dark Water).”)

(Dark Water OS courtesy of impawards.com; Dark Water DVD cover art courtesy of trailerdownload.net.)