FrightFest review – Imposters
Writer-director Caleb Phillips’ Imposters opens strong with a prologue featuring a mad father (Ian Lyons), a terrified son (Thomas Peabrook), a branding iron, something like Capgras Syndrome (the Body Snatchers delusion that loved ones have been replaced by identical duplicates) and a desperate mother (Taylor Karin) who leaves a letter in a red envelope. It takes a while to fill in enough information to establish exactly what has happened in this scene, but it’s striking on its own.
Phillips then introduces Paul (Charlie Barnett), a former cop who took a job in insurance after being shot and nearly crippled, in an intimate scene with a woman (Luisina Quarleri) who turns out not to be his wife. Paul heads out to his relatively new home in the country and his wife Marie (Jessica Rothe) and infant son Theo – he took his injury and her pregnancy as signs he should recommit to a faltering marriage but is obviously now wavering, and not exactly comfortable in the slightly creepy back of beyond … especially since Orson (Bates Wilder), a local weirdo, keeps loitering on the property and the police chief (Yul Vazquez) wants the incomers to understand the harmless nut, who used to live in the house, rather than see him clapped with a restraining order. When Marie throws a housewarming party for neighbours they don’t yet know, Paul nips outside to take a call from his girlfriend, leaving Theo in his cot. The baby disappears, either abducted or taken by an animal, and guilt bites deep as a search proves fruitless. Then Orson shows up with a map (and some red letters) that leads to a cave where he says the couple can find Theo – Paul is either claustrophobic or can’t bear the thought of coming across what he presumes will be a small corpse, but Marie crawls in and emerges with a bloody hand and a swaddled Theo. She is fiercely protective of the returned child, understandably mistrustful of Paul and insists the baby keep his socks on, covering a distinctive birthmark.
When Paul takes off the socks, the mark isn’t there … and we suspect this is a spin on the changeling stories which have turned up quite often in recent horror (The Hallow, The Hole in the Ground) though Imposters has something trickier up its sleeve, with repeated returns to the cave (which feeds into a labyrinth of wallpapered tunnels) and a chain reaction of primal events across universes (differing only by a coin-toss) which shows that Paul and Marie are not just at odds with each other but literally with themselves. Imposters builds slowly, with uncomfortably credible characterisations, then escalates to bring in cosmic-level terrors and ferocious parental urges. In the Happy Death Day films and Affection, Rothe demonstrated an astonishing range – and here she stretches again, delivering a nested set of performances which turn the recent horror regular ‘tiger mother’ character inside-out (she also goes through a painful bit of business from The Prestige). Barnett is good too – he’s an instantly likeable, engaging performer so it’s discombobulating when he’s cast as someone who’s coasted on giving the impression of being a nice guy while really being a selfish shit.
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