Father of Flies

The story is a little mixed up for the first part of the movie but all becomes clearer in a sudden unexpected way. I don't watch much horror so I found the whole movie very creepy. For a low budget indie it's better than many and I found myself revisiting the story and untangling some of the initial confusion in my mind after I watched it. I jumped a few times and the latter part had me feeling very uncomfortable for all the right reasons. For the most part it's well shot, the score haunting and on the whole the limitations of budget don't spoil the plot albeit it's thread is a little hard to follow at first. Worth a watch.

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'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.

I hope the person responsible for the lightning in this movie, never gets to work on movies ever again!

We have a large, new tv, which works perfectly. I sat down to watch (or hear, as it turned out) this movie with my two teenage daughters.

This movie looked like something we would enjoy. I love scares, dread, family being haunted and all that.

One scene is a child (based on the voice, because its impossible to see anything) who claimes there are something hiding under the bed. Since everything is pitch black, I can only assume this scene, and what happens next was scary. And I would loved to have seen it, instead of just listening to it.

I hate this movie! Mostly because of what could have been a great horror story.

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.