Nightsiren

After a shocking start, the script by Teresa Nvotová and Barbora Namerova slowly builds the story of a peasant community rooted in immovable agrarian values, according to basic concepts of duality (like a moon bath versus a sun bath, for example), which awakened my interest. The film also came labeled as "folk horror", a subgenre that is fashionable today, but that has existed since there has been cinema and has produced works about agrarian cults, human sacrifice and other aromas, with classics such as Murnau's «Tabu» to recent notable works such as the Estonian «November», the Portuguese «Alma viva», and the Chilean «Brujería», without forgetting cult films such as the Italian «Il demonio» and the British «The Wicker Man», nor the goats and inverted pentagons from Ari Aster's cinema.

However, this Slovak film is a mystery drama that places heavy emphasis on collective harassment, ignorance, sex and violence, telling us the story of a young woman who returns to her hometown, when she is called by the mayor to claim her inheritance. She ends up entangled in a patriarchal environment, full of family secrets. When the story takes the path of psychedelia, by "reconstructing" a summer holiday, I could not help but completely distance myself from the drama of the protagonist (which almost turns out to be a circus freak) to the point that the family tale lost its fascination and became a tearful melodrama. Awarded in Locarno and Sitges and renamed "Nightsiren" in the USA, proceed at your discretion.

Okay, here we go. This was unfortunately not a very good movie. The acting was pretty bad all over the board (one scene in particular, including a drunk woman, was especially jarring), but my biggest issue with it was by far the screenplay. The overarching story didn't work at all for me.

The basic premise of the movie is that a woman returns to her native mountain village where she grew up because of unclear reasons. From there the plot development is pretty much nonexistent, the main character mostly walks around in the village and surrounding forest with her newly found friend. Things happen a bit randomly. There are hints of sorcery and witchcraft going on that is tied into the narrative, but isn't explored in any meaningful way throughout the film.

The villagers, that initially are suspicious of the newly arrived woman, are laughably one-note. They are depicted as extremely horrible people with no other traits (or even a personality). There are several disturbing scenes in the movie, including nudity, sex and rape, that makes no sense whatsoever plot-wise. I'm not sure why those were included at all, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. The ending is equally disconnected from the rest of the film. What was even the point of all this?

The only strength this movie has is that it actually looks pretty good. The foggy moonlit forest creates an unnerving atmosphere, and the Slovak mountain ranges are a great backdrop for the story. It is a shame then that the rest of the movie is such a mess.

(Seen at the 2022 Stockholm International Film Festival)

The movie starts alright, with a nice premise. But then when the story begins to play out, it's just a weird messy chain of events that not always seem connected, things happen where you'd expect more of an explanation to you - the audience - or more of at least a conversation between the characters, but no, it goes from scene to scene without really connecting or making sense. Many times I found myself thinking "wait, what?" or "But why?" The transitions from a moment to another feel wrong, it's like it lacks pieces of the movie where they actually show how things play out, or the characters having actually normal human behavior.

One example from the top of my head is, both main and co-main characters are inside a cave at night, even though they could be sleeping in a house like they were before. One of them starts freaking out because of *reasons*. She's just uneasy inside the cave and that's that. Runs out of the cave into the woods. Suddenly there's a wolf just a few meters from the cave and the character runs back to the cave, apparently scared of the wolf, meets the other person who stayed behind, hugs her crying, never mentions the threat of the wolf, and then they do breathing exercises together and go to sleep. Aaaaaand scene! Like WTF?

The characters are frustratingly one dimensional, flat, cliché and derivative. Apart from the main and co-main, the rest just seem like NPC from a video game. They just come in for a scene, have some time on camera (mostly doing something "mean") and then just disappear for sometime, before they show up once again to be a**holes one more time.

Then there's the overly used super dragged out scenes in the forest, where a character is just walking around, surrounded in mist, looking at things (mostly treetops or the sky) mesmerized, drone New Age music in the background, nothing happens and then just cut to something different once again. And you don't really know how it went from one thing to the other.

Hints of witchcraft and sorcery are also thrown here and there, but again that's never explored, it's superficial and light.

The movie, overall, lacks depth, lacks better developed characters, the storytelling here is just so bad, so disconnected, so random, that it really ruins a good premise and what could've been a good story. Also, weird choice of dividing the film in "chapters" that do nothing to give structure to this failure of a storytelling attempt.

Returning to her childhood home village, a woman visiting a friend still living there finds the area overrunning with paranoia and superstition about her connection to a possible witch that's terrorized the area for years and eventually sees the situation become deadly through their beliefs.

This was a pretty solid and enjoyable genre effort. One of the better features here is the way this one plays with rural folklore and supernatural incidents running people's livelihoods. Shown to be a village that's still heavily reliant on the old ways of doing things with their mindset and values adapted from that kind of mentality due to the way they treat her returning, it creates a perfect storm of connection with the rural folk-horror stylings its' clearly aiming for. That it manages to feature such action as it depicts here that flat-out touch on the misogynistic with the way the men behave with women around here is soon introduced to the main two here which creates such a hostile environment that the belief in witchcraft feels appropriate instead of antiquated and creates a fantastic atmosphere for the later proceedings. That is what perfectly sets up the second half here as things become far more mystical and supernatural. As the incidents that take place between her and her friend around the village begin to sway them over to the belief that something isn't right with either of them and that they're indeed practicing witchcraft, the proper motivation and background are in place for the ensuing scenarios to unfold. Taking place in the middle of the forest dripping with fog and neon-lit bodies writhing naked amidst a roaring fire, the scene as a whole is a great setup that generates the potential cause for what's going on in the finale where they get to confront the villagers which is a fantastic finale that has quite a lot of generally chilling action with some fantastic revelations at play. Overall, these are what hold this one up. There are some factors with this one that does bring it down. One of the biggest problems here is the complete lack of connection to what's happening as this one unravels. Due to the fact that this one is mostly build-up rather than doing anything that constitutes action for a large part of the film, there's a real problem here getting into the finale where despite this being the main part that has action for once hardly any of it manages to generate a satisfactory conclusion with the way the film ends. This takes a rather bizarre turn and seems to just finish because it's reached an appropriate running time. That really ends this on a sour note where it's quite a weak note considering the build-up that was leading this to a decidedly different concept which would've been a far better way to go than how this ends, being pretty much the main issues against this one.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Full Nudity, and sex scenes.

As with many foreign films, Nightsiren hadn't garnered much in the way of publicity throughout the international market. It did however make a major splash at the 2022 Sitges and Locarno Film Festivals, which is where I first heard of the movie. Gladly it received a physical release here in Germany last month.

The story unravels through chapters and remains interesting and engaging throughout, in fact, the (almost) two-hour runtime surprisingly just flies by. Natalia Germani (Sarlota) does a magnificent job in the lead role and the shared scenes with Eva Mores (Mira) are captivating. The cinematography is impressive with a handful of standout scenes and striking images.

As the story progresses, there is an underlying, uneasy feeling that gradually builds. Superstition, patriarchy, and misogyny all play a central role in the narrative and the finale is tense and well constructed. Not to say that there aren't minor quibbles, however, the movie is strong enough for the positives to carry over.

Overall, very impressive and I can give this one a strong recommendation to genre fans.