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The Lonely Man With The Ghost Machine
Written, produced, edited and directed by Graham Skipper – who also stars and makes up a song about an oak tree – this is a one-man after-the-apocalypse picture in which Wozzek (Skipper) holes up in a cabin which used to be the visitor centre of a national park, trying the rematerialise his dead wife Nellie (Christina Bennett Lind) with a big lightbulb contraption and slobbing through the motions of life in a world depopulated by toothy critters which fell from the sky some years earlier.
The situation is so bleak, even for the invaders, that the last of the Deleterians (voiced by Paul Guyet), the dinogator void-eyed muppets responsible for the fall of civilisation, is lonely enough – having eaten all humanity, animal life and even its own kind – to strike up a reasonably friendly conversational relationship with the tasty treat it has put off consuming because it know the hunger will not be assuaged that way. Wozzek is still traumatised by Nellie’s death and needs her back in the worst way, which of course is quite likely to be how she arrives – a physical ghost who also remembers the past better than the living man does, and has serious questions to ask of this representative male schlub which take the film into unexpected areas.
Skipper – director of Sequence Break, actor in Bliss, The Leech, VFW, Dementia Part II, Psychopaths, Beyond the Gates and others – obviously puts everything into this, with the most unflinching depiction of breakdown through isolation since Dan O’Herlihy played Robinson Crusoe for Luis Bunuel. The set-up evokes recent expensive apocalypses like the last Hollywood mangling of I Am Legend and the Quiet Place franchise, but Skipper sticks mostly to the inside of a shed, howling in agony over a bowel movement after an unwise foraged mushroom soup, conversing with taped pre-recorded or imagined responses, jerking off to his wife’s picture, letting his environment get seedy and not looking after himself (when Nellie’s ghost can speak, practically the first thing she says is that he’s got ‘fat … fat-ter’). The weird puppet monster is surprisingly successful, and after so many snarling invaders it’s refreshing to have one who is articulate and even self-reflexive – though that may just be Wozzek talking to himself.
Oh, and it’s a Christmas movie …
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