FrightFest review – Recluse

FrightFest review – Recluse

Joan Wyatt (Sasha Frolova), a movie sound recordist, is summoned back to her family mansion because her father, cult artist Lawrence (Xander Berkeley) – the sort of dark genius who inspires a bunch of people to tell Joan that their mother loves his work – is in his last days, bedridden since mysteriously catching fire, and concealing his burned face behind a scarcely less disturbing papier mache mask.  There are rumblings about a Wyatt curse – Joan’s little brother drowned during a game of ‘hide and go seek’ on the estate and her concert pianist Mom disappeared without trace.  Lawrence is attended by crossbow-wielding housekeeper Lydia (Toby Poser), who has brought in her slightly slackerish son Todd (Kimball Farley) as gardener, and the latest (last) in a line of nurses who haven’t stayed long in post, Emily (Mia Vallet).

From the outset, Joan tries to cope with the gothic intricacies of the house and her family history by recording sounds – attaching mikes to the walls as if suspecting ghosts or a human hider lurk there – though she also makes use of a handy Polaroid camera and everyone else contributes some form of artistic mediation of reality, from Lawrence’s paintings through random sculptures to Joan’s collection of tapes, all of which piece together into a plot mosaic which eventually fits in place.  It’s one of a clutch of FF films this year to equate an impulse to art with psychological disorder – or even narcissist evil … in an offhand comment, Todd says he read somewhere that Nabokov wouldn’t lick his own stamps, and Joan, Todd and Emily have all grown up in the shadow of Lawrence, which has obliterated or sidelined their own mothers.  Berkeley, who created some of Lawrence’s paintings himself, may only have been in for a cameo – and there’s a lingering doubt as to whether it’s really Lawrence under the mask, especially when he seems to get up off his deathbed and creep about.

Written and directed by Henry Chaisson, who wrote Antlers, Recluse is a highly-wrought film, though it perhaps promises more cosmic horror than it delivers when its plot is eventually tied up.  Frolova, who was in The Empty Man, makes a woman of few words protagonist, told early on by Lydia that she’s always been a liar … but apparently as much in the dark as anyone else about all the goings-on in this house.  It of course offers a rich soundscape to go with its intricate visuals.