This viscerally atmospheric directorial feature debut from the Franco-British artist and film-maker Charlotte Colbert arrives with a stamp of approval from a maestro of Italian horror (“Dario Argento presents”) and a glowing endorsement from Mexican Oscar-winner Alfonso Cuarón, who says it “sits in the tradition of great psychological horror films”. A chilling tale of buried secrets and dreamy vengeance with a subversive feminist edge, this latterday fable marries the spiralling, self-reflexive narrative of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House with echoes of the off-kilter visual sensibility of the 1962 cult oddity Carnival of Souls. A thrillingly intense central performance by Alice Krige (who earned her genre spurs in the underrated 1981 screen adaptation of Peter Straub’s Ghost Story) is the lightning rod at the core of the film, grounding its hallucinogenic visuals in the terra firma of past tragedies and modern traumas, provoking “dark thoughts; really dark thoughts”.
An arresting opening that intercuts surgical flashes of a mastectomy with the ritual application of makeup (“Every mask has a function… this mask is about preservation”) introduces us to Veronica Ghent, a fading screen icon to whom Krige lends a hint of Norma Desmond’s arch regality. Veronica is on a night train to Scotland, heading to a remote retreat where she can recuperate in private. “Any pain?” asks her nurse/assistant Desi (Kota Eberhardt), to which Veronica (whose face seems to be permanently repressing a scream) mirthlessly replies: “Every pain.”
