Father of Flies

Dont even waste your time it has terrible acting and storyline its just alot of dribble which is to hard to follow the film is like looking back at a bad 80s film.

Fairly well made movie. As far as indies go it was above average in technical stuff and acting. Couldn't understand anything about characters or story.

After finding For Roger (2021-also reviewed) to be a disappointing opening title at the online GRIMM Film Festival,I decided to get ready to catch the second movie in the line-up,by following the flies.

View on the film:

Standing outside the family home with the forced out mother, co-writer (with Nadia Doherty) / director Ben Charles Edwards & cinematographer John Bretherton unveil the troubled roots of the family tree with a surrealist mood piece atmosphere, which fleetingly shines in all too brief glimpses, as a masked woman dressed in ghostly white dances in the family home to The Cure song Lullaby.

Placing all the importance on weaving a mood to wash over the viewer as the screenplay remains in a hazy, dreamy state, Edwards takes the fleeting moments of getting into a surrealist Horror groove, and drives them all into the ground, via grinding,repetitive panning shots and zoom-ins which run over each sequence again and again until all mystique has faded with the father.

I have to admit that like others viewers I was wondering what I was getting into here because this is a movie in which not much happens for a very long time. It seemed like a lot of atmosphere, some nice cinematography but very little in the way of horror, suspense or great dialogue. Too many movies nowadays , advertised as horror, are nothing but atmosphere. The thing is, this movie , which isn't very long to begin with, redeems itself nicely in the last 15 minutes. It's a shame that the lead up to those 15 minutes was not all that interesting, but what it really needed was a better script. It's worth watching once if you like your horror dark and moody.

I'm a bit confused by the overall low rating.

"Father of Flies" is creepy and unusual. Let's call it horror-noir with its monochrome tones and Hitchcockian camera angles. It also keeps you off balance because it seems to take place in an indeterminate 20th-century decade ... until you notice the smart phones. So that's discomfiting.

It has a sort of Jim Jarmusch meets M. Night Shyamalan vibe.

It's thick with menace and the acting is more than competent. (Kudos to young actor, Keaton Tetlo).

I liked it (translation: was creeped out) enough to give it eight stars.

Don't expect the usual jump scares and gore and you won't be disappointed. It's more about the vibe.

You'll feel dread.