In Fabric

The concept is interesting, but the film is really strange. It is not the regular horror film. It is artistic, and it is different.

Definitely worth a watch, but as pointed by others, not for everyone. It carries a masterful arthouse 70's direction, editing, color scheme and production altogether, dressed up with weird, repetitive vintage synth tracks and some peculiar cuts at times beyond comprehension. At one point I thought the movie was stuck. It wasn't. You've been warned.

I had the opportunity to watch the preview with Q&A with Peter Strickland, and the useless questions from the audience, eager to show they had some knowledge and references instead of genuine questions, did not allow me to ask the director: why didn't you stop after the first half ? I enjoyed this first part, stylish, quite funny, and it could have ended like that, we had got it. The second half of the film was in my opinion un-necessary, adding nothing else to the plot and even making the movie feel too long. A bit like too little jam on too long a bread slice, it lost its taste, and became repetitive, over the top and I must say quite boring in the end. Sometimes, a short story is better than a novel. The things which are really FANTASTIC about this film are the soundtrack and music. You might want to watch it just for that!

Maybe it's unfair on the makers of the film to criticise it for not being what I was expecting, but In Fabric does set some expectations with how it is marketed and how the film starts. What I was expecting was some sort of Giallo-style headtrip of a film with supernatural elements, but with a backdrop of quirky 80s suburban England. A sort of Dario Argento meets Mike Leigh.

That's what I thought I was getting for the first 30 to 40 minutes of the film but then it seemed to lose its way. The atmosphere, the sympathetic but troubled protagonist played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, the strange and perverted department store in an eccentric Thames Valley Town - I was loving it and couldn't wait to see what happened next. Then it just failed to pay off, carried on going, carried on failing to pay off, then half-heartedly tried to become a compendium story and meandered off into nowhere. There was a belated attempt to give it a kind of shocking climax but by then all atmosphere and interest had gone out of the film.

I find that when I try to describe the film, it sounds a lot better than it actually turned out on screen. The idea of this film is something I really wanted to see but it didn't deliver on its promise. A lot of interesting and unsettling ideas are just thrown together without tying it together into something that maintains the viewer's interest. It didn't have to make sense, it didn't have to explain, it didn't have to do what I was expecting. But it should have been better and it ended up being very disappointing.

Billed as a comedy horror on Now-TV, hmm, not your usual fare, it's quite grown up stuff. Read a review when it came out and was quite intrigued, was hard to catch due to it's limited release but glad I caught up with this. There are horror elements, I loved the 70's lo-fi visuals that layer the atmosphere. One particular scene was both funny (peculiar-but a lot of this film is) and gross out. There is a sense of dread and foreboding pervading a lot of the film. There are some laugh out loud moments, particularly toward the end. I really enjoyed this, the performances were great, didn't take itself too seriously and was engaged throughout though I felt it faltered at the beginning of the 3rd act before picking up to a satisfying finale. Certainly not for everyone, a bit arthouse psychedelic, certainly not mainstream but for me an interesting, fun and different watch. Just don't expect a lot of sense and immerse yourself in it's stylish and assured bonkersness (if there is such a word).