Pin Cushion

This film is brilliant. It was the sort of film that stayed with me weeks after I first watched it. The contrasts between a uniquely eccentric mother and her daughter trying to make a new life for themselves while living amongst the unempathetic, cruel society we have built.

In some reason I saw it as an entrance for horror festival. It is not horror movie, although there are some similarities with Carrie, Requiem For a Dream or with 13 reason why. Story evolves around socially incapable mother whose only friend are her daughter, some birds and porcelain dolls. Mother and daughter have really close relationship, but as daughter is getting older she's trying to find some friends of her own. Similarity with Carrie? - Daughter is not well accepted by her schoolmates. There is no paranormality. Similarity with Requiem for A Dream? - Lapses of reality and sequences which are mere hallucinations. Similarity with 13 reasons why? - How can one mistake lead to the catastrophe.

Great movie, really great.

Pin Cushion. For a change I'd not read any reviews. Didn't even know it was British. All I knew was that it was about a relationship about a mother and daughter. I didn't know it would be an intensely bleak tragi-comedy / psychological thriller / dark social realist drama with fantastical overtures. A jaw droppingly intense study of the effects of loneliness and bullying. It was Carrie without the supernatural but with the girl with long red hair and strange mother. I was an emotional wreck at the end. 8.5 out of ten. Highly recommended.

A story told with poetry and colours, about the love between a mother, her daughter and their efforts to fit-in, at the expense of valuing their own unique identity. A story of mean bullyism and peer pressure which remains cruel and hypocritical at any stage of life. A script that resonates well with our contemporary, conforming society.

There is no denying the power of this film. In the current arena of homogenized movies written to formula this film is a welcome hard hitting and thought provoking exception. A dreamy fairy tale quality keeps is floating above it's very dark and disturbing topic. At the beginning there are places to smile in the quirkiness of the characters and their lives but it is not long before you are taken with them on their emotional journey until the finale surprising and shocking conclusion. It is a film that will stay with me and I eagerly await more by this screen play writer and director