Father of Flies

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.

A father tries to hold his family together when their estranged mother comes knocking.

Stylish psychic horror, but hard to figure out its shape. There's an in/out dynamic, with the mother outside the house and the mistress inside, the mistress switching in and out of wearing a mask, the daughter only having a life when she goes outside, and the father always going out or coming in. But there's above/below as well, used in a couple of scenes with the boy's bed, and in the use of the basement.

I also had trouble figuring out whose story this is. In the end, it's all on the father, and the most effective sequence is his dream, which ends on the adrenalin buzz of a jump scare. But the story-arcs of the other characters go their own way, and the intriguing reveal doesn't really bring them together - at least, not to my satisfaction.

The cinematography is very good, using one impressive swivel-pan as the mistress sits up on the couch, and the shades of brown and grey are elegant. The score is subtle, and the couple of needle-drops are effective, particularly in a dance scene, when the uncanny quality of the masked mistress shifts the sense of unease into dread. There is some problem with dubbing - I thought it might be down to the sound of passing traffic, but it also occurs in one scene in the boy's bedroom.

The performances are very good too, the standout being the true delivery of the boy's expressions of fear. But for all that, I didn't quite get the role of the mistress, so am at a loss to understand what it meant for the father to lose his family. The role of the witchy neighbour is poorly integrated, and the significance of the TV clown unclear, so it seems the story couldn't make up its mind over the divide between the real and the other world. The director/writer has said the story is a working out of his own experience, but I'm not sure he's given enough for us to crack the code. Another thing is that the opening scene puts a lot of emphasis on communications technology, but that theme isn't played out.

As for the frights, the jump scare at 35 mins is the high-point, and otherwise the effect is of brooding menace building to hysteria.

Overall: Unique style to deliver an obscure message.

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.

Father of Flies (2021) is a movie that I recently watched on Prime. The storyline follows a couple going through a divorce and their children moving in with the dad and his new girlfriend while the mother manages a mental breakdown. As the children and father deal with the divorce and the mental rollercoaster that goes with it, dad's new girlfriend starts to go insane....

This movie is directed by Ben Charles Edwards (Set the Thames of Fire) and stars Camilla Rutherford (Gosford Park), Nicholas Tucci (You're Next), Page Ruth (Shameless), Sandra Andreis (The Girl with the Drahon Tattoo) and Davi Santos (Good Sam).

This movie had some potential based on the authentic storyline, solid acting and good set up of horror elements. The mask, dancing and music created a creepy feel over the villain and what her actions may be. Unfortunately, the potential for the villain never comes to fruition and the attack/kill scenes are poorly executed with nothing to get excited about - no worthwhile kills, gore or attacks that raise your blood pressure. The movie ends up being fairly straightforward and frustrating.

Overall, this is a below average addition to the horror genre that I would recommend skipping. I would score this a 3/10.