FrightFest review – Mother and Me
This is an impressive feature debut by writer-director Carson McKinnon, is busiest as a cinematographer; he shot this too – making especially good use of facial close-ups, which is handy since 75% of the film is two women in a gloomy house.
Teenage Casey Spencer (Caylee Cowan) has been homeschooled by her mother Janelle (Tara Janae Smith), though there’s precious little evidence of Mother doing any teaching. She has put a chain on the fridge and severely limits Casey’s food intake, all the while forcing the girl to work on a novel, turning out pages on a manual typewriter. Casey is isolated from the world – she’s never heard of 9/11 or The Beatles – but is required to write a book in the style of her late father, a successful horror/suspense novelist. Janelle has the notion that if Casey takes over the family business she’ll be able to bring in a fortune, and has a line to an agent (Paul Cartwright) who affects to be enthusiastic about a new Spencer but isn’t keen on the ‘more of a romance’ book Casey is writing and demands horror/suspense. Despite being an imprisoned princess and subjected to psychological and physical abuse, Casey doesn’t have it in her to write horror … and she’d rather be a visual artist anyway. Steven (Brady Noon), the neighbourhood boy Casey strikes up a secret friendship with, is into ‘dark’ stuff (like Tim Burton) and gives her an art book which winds up influencing her to conceive of something shocking enough to please her monster mom … who is nevertheless, by that point, no longer in a position to appreciate it and in any case seems only interested in creativity if it brings in an income.
Elements here suggest Misery turned inside-out and like so many fine films about writing – Morvern Caller comes to mind – it has odd ideas about how the business of being a novelist works. If Spencer senior is a huge enough deal for his nepo baby to breeze into a big bucks career, then his backlist – which Steven is a fan of – ought to be bringing in some royalties, movie deals, etc. But the oppression inside the Spencer house is powerful enough to set those considerations aside and focus on the central struggle – a fairy tale in which the princess has a wicked (indeed terrifying) mother rather than stepmother. Caylee Cowan, who was in Willy’s Wonderland and reboots of Prom Night and Fade to Black I hadn’t heard about till I looked up her credits, gets a gift of a role as the naïve yet shrewd teenager, shackled to a machine no one else her age would use, knowing enough to understand something is deeply wrong yet still wanting to ‘make art’ to carry on a family tradition. Tara Janae Smith – incredibly in her first major film role – is an astonishing screen monster, delivering some exceptionally forceful material direct to camera, with a basilisk stare and coiled spring tension. The finale perhaps leans a little too much into ‘art’ – the ballerina inserts undercut the effectiveness of a big reveal – and adds in a few elements which are debatable as drama in order to arrive at an ‘only in America’ ending.
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