FrightFest review – The Rows
Lucy (Brindisi Dupree), a little girl, wakes up in a cornfield with a head wound … and a dead, sack-masked man just a few feet away. She realises she’s being hunted by the dead man’s similarly-outfitted comrades and shows her resourcefulness in evasion and counter-attack – she even finds her missing Pooh Bear yellow wellington and uses the boots as a decoy. The first chapter – a full third of the running time – of writer-director Seth Daly’s impressive debut feature is wordless and intense, dropping the audience into the field with Lucy without explanation … is this some Children of the Corn spin, and the apparent little angel is a deadly killer? Or is she, as she seems, a fairytale innocent persecuted by grown-up baddies? And what about the Moon Man (Douglas Fries) – a shimmering scarecrow or alien presence – who seems to indicate that this isn’t simply a suspense-crime picture but something stranger.
The second chapter, set immediately before the first, establishes that Lucy can speak – and that the gang have invaded her family farm to collect from her absent father … and that she’s the most tenacious of her family, which extends to a Mom (Lara Pictet) and older sister (Mary Montoya). The Rows is a remarkable, invigorating picture, stripped-down and cinematic, with excellent work from the tiny Capri, who is somehow convincing as a child survivor in battle with grown-ups without turning the film into a Home Alone fantasy. The masked hoods, led by Leader (Marcus Woods), are a serious menace, telling the girl that she’ll never get out of the corn, though they are also overconfident enough to make basic mistakes and aren’t really prepared for whatever it is the Moon Man brings to the game.
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