We Are Still Here
Director: Ted
Geoghegan
Writers: Ted
Geoghegan, Richard Griffin
Starring: Barbara
Crampton, Andrew Sensenig, Lisa Marie, Larry Fessenden
Rating: Three stars
out of five.
Available now on
demand and in select theaters.
A key component of
fear is the sensation of being off balance, not understanding one's
surroundings or feeling any control over a particular place and time.
It is about unknowns and lack of agency. Choice is replaced by chaos.
The masters of horror filmmaking use the medium's inherent
subjectivity to manipulate an audience into not knowing the next
step, always throwing surprises at them to remove all sense of
comfort and ease.
Unlike those works,
We Are Still Here is a horror film that is controlled and
presentational while trying to utilize the cinematic bag of tricks
described in the previous paragraph. That it succeeds in any degree
is a miracle and should be praised. But it is a lukewarm success, one
that lies in a miscalculation of style.
Writer-director
Ted Geoghegan, in his feature directing debut, builds an atmosphere
of loneliness and tension in the first half hour of the movie that
works precisely because it lets the viewer know exactly what is
happening to these characters, Anne (Barbara Crampton) and Paul
Sacchetti (Andrew Sensenig) as they move to a big mysterious house in
the country to get away from the grief of their son's death in a car
accident. Geoghegan puts them in medium-wide shots, almost always
dead center of the frame, using the empty space around them to create
a mood of isolation. The cameras are mostly tripod-bound, instituting
a steadiness and assuredness to the storytelling, only going handheld
or Steadicam seemingly when the set's limitations call for it – not
enough removable walls here – rather than a stylistic or thematic
choice.
Where
the movie goes wrong is in continuing that steadiness as the haunted
house aspects of the story start to manifest themselves literally.
The nearly radical adherence to the center framing, while
aesthetically pleasing and recognizable to anyone who has seen a
Stanley Kubrick or Wes Anderson film, begins to act as a giveaway.
The ghostly figures start in shadows behind Crampton, but instead of
a slow reveal of their full, ghastly images, Geoghegan quickly gives
away the game during their first attack. In short, they resemble the
White Walkers from HBO's Game of Thrones
if they rolled around in soot for a while, 101
Dalmatians-style.
It removes the sense of momentum the movie would gain if it only gave
away one aspect of the ghosts per kill scene. Instead, each time they
reappear for the rest of the movie, they have a same-y quality, a
repetition more like a mediocre song's chorus than the crescendo they
could be. It keeps the jump scare moments from being particularly
scary, not only because the camera is so sure of itself – a major
plus in nearly every other cinematic moment but this
one – but because the viewer knows what's there. The editing of
these moments is a hair off, as well, holding a tick too long before
an attack takes place. Optical preparation meets sequential
flat-footedness. The plot twist mystery may remain, but the one that
matters, the instinctual reaction to surprise, is gone.
That
mistake compounds on itself by requiring We Are Still Here
to rely on its actors to carry
the day, something they are unable to fully do. Crampton is the
bright spot as a grieving mother, at times nearly catatonic in her
mournful thoughts, hoping against all evidence to be with her lost
son again, enlisting the help of her spiritual yahoo friends, which
makes all hell break loose for them. But as her WASP-y husband,
Sensenig plays like a stiffer Albert Brooks – WASP and Brooks are
not things one would normally put together, but it's true – and
Marie and Fessenden get a little out of their element when asked to
go big. This is probably not due to lack of talent, but more likely
connected to scheduling. Their line readings have an over-rehearsed
aspect to them in the hurried way soap opera actors have, that “we
need to get this on the first take” desperation that kills any way
of creating a lived-in believability. Because of that eagerness to
get through the scenes, none of the actors are quite able to pull off
shock and confusion, only getting about halfway to the genuine fear
they might be able to express with more attempts. When the camera is
trained on them, occupying the center of every shot with that
not-quite-ripe expression, the moment is dashed for the viewer. An
intellectual, “I understand where you're going with this,”
connection is possible during this phenomenon, but not a visceral
one.
So it
is with We Are Still Here.
It creates striking, contemplative moments, but when tasked with
generating fear, it sticks with a style unsuited for the necessary
immersion in the unknown.
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