cafm

I really hated the first episode of this series and wrote the following review to reflect my initial impressions:

"Dialogue in this underwhelming series is trite and clumsy. As it falls from its less-than-capable actor's lips I couldn't help rolling my eyes. The acting especially lacks credibility and naturalism so that it really feels like amateur drama. 3 Stars"

I've come back to edit my initial review having now watched the rest of the series. Unbelievably, after that awful pilot episode with some of the most trite writing I've heard from a while I decided to watch episode two and started to get intrigued.

By the time it finished I found it pretty satisfying, which is a long way from assessment. It's not amazing, but neither is it the train wreck I thought it was going to be. Things get interesting when it takes on an element of GRIM, but I already feel like I'm saying too much. If you liked GRIM you'll probably like this.

Great for a rainy day.

Shane Atkinson's PENNY DREADFUL is a generally well crafted short comedy that somehow won the audience prize at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in France in 2013. The film combines tropes of the kidnapping gone wrong with the conventions of the monster child film, reminding me of the 2007 supernatural thriller WHISPER directed by Stewart Handler, about a soul-eating demon child kidnapped by a gang of outlaws desperate for his ransom. One might also notice that Atkinson's film contains overtones of HOME ALONE.

PENNY DREADFUL is competently shot. It's framing is generally pleasing even if it is a little by the numbers while the performances from most of the cast are adequate. The one understandable exception is child actor Oona Lawrence, who puts in an excellent performance mastering a variety of facial expressions from broodingly unhinged to sweet-as-pie but, as with many child actors, struggles to make her dialogue not sound like she is reciting lines from a screenplay.

It is in fact the screenplay that is the weakest link in this film. Where the story overall is strong, the dialogue is clunky and becomes overly repetitive (after the first two times David H. Stevens asks "What is wrong with you?" the line loses its intended humour). Stevens reminds me a little of Steve Zahn and carries the film on his slender shoulders, but has trouble selling his novice kidnapper mainly because the character is so insufferably stupid.

The film relies upon repetition of dialogue and situations for most its humour but even at 17 minutes, the repetition quickly becomes a bit too much.

Like all good ghost stories, Lake Mungo, lingers in the mind long after the closing credits, its tendrils creepily entwining themselves in the mind, haunting the viewer with its ideas of a person who is haunted by their own ghost. In this way, Lake Mungo combines a naturalistic non-actorly made-for-TV documentary style that is convincing in its quotidian banality, with a clever self-reflexive narrative device used in such films as Polanski's surreal nightmare, The Tenant, and Lynch's under-appreciated classic, Lost Highway. Like this other films, Lake Mungo folds in on itself in a way that can only be described as clever, uncanny and truly chilling.