FILM GUTTER REVIEW: ​OPPRESSION (2015)

Dir. James David Gore, 37 mins, UK

It’s strange in a way that we have a globetrotting series such as Film Gutter that so rarely gives a chance to actually look at a film from these shores. In four years and nearly 200 reviews I’m pretty confident I can count the British films that we’ve reviewed on one hand – I can recall some good examples in the likes of The Lesson and Feed The Black, as well as our recent review of short film Stuck – so it’s nice to have the chance to spotlight something from these shores.

Oppression comes to us from Capture That films, and is solidly described as an ‘arthouse horror’ – I’m sure trying to pare down the actual meaning of that could be an article in and of itself, but it’s pretty apparent this is a short film trying to separate and distance itself from the more mainstream elements of horror. It’s obviously a labour of love too, with director Gore (a pretty suitable name for these parts!) also writing and starring in the movie. Not an uncommon thread for short films, and certainly not something that holds things back at all here.

Oppression is the story of an unnamed man wandering a forest – I’ve assumed it’s after some sort of apocalypse, but that might just be conjecture on my part. He’s clearly having some difficulty telling the real from the imagined, and the runtime here is partly a quest for survival and partly a quest to find something much deeper. There are plenty of implications as to what might lie in his past thought his daydreams and hallucinations, and while they are pretty clear individually it’s not always that apparent how they actually link together ultimately. There’s very little dialogue, with only a handful of whispered lines adding something to the theme and feel of the movie, and generally very little human interaction whatsoever throughout.

The result is a movie that feels pretty sparse – in all honesty the premise would struggle to stretch to more than this kind of runtime – but was interesting enough to keep my attention throughout. It tends to unravel slowly as a movie, and in fragments, and while certainly refusing to give you anything neat-wrapped I feel like there is enough information here to at least draw a conclusion – although of course it’s hard to know whether my conclusion would be the same as anyone else’s…

It’s hard to say too much more without getting into spoiler territory, but, as one might expect from a movie keen to mark itself as ‘arthouse horror’, Oppression is suitably nicely shot and laden with some lovely visuals, as well as some pretty dark but still stylish visuals. It’s got a nice look and feel to it, and although it certainly wouldn’t be the most extreme of the extreme we’ve watched here, it has a moment or two that might rattle a relative newcomer to our world. To me, though, after last week’s trauma watching Green Elephant, it was actually great to watch something that was generally appealing to look at and approached things in a rather more subtle fashion.

Some of the comments that I applied to Possum recently will stand here too – it’s not a film that is neat or tidy in the narrative sense, nor that offers and firm answers to the questions it poses. It put me in mind to some extent of its fellow short film Precut Girl, or even bits of Your Flesh, Your Curse – albeit a much softer version! There’s enough here to reward your time without it being a serious standout, and enough to have me keeping my eyes peeled for more work from this particular team going forward.

RATING: 7/10. Nebulousness seems to be the word of the week for me in the reviewing sense, and by keeping this one mysterious Oppression has built something interesting without a doubt. Those of you who like to chew over a movie and pull it apart like a puzzle might well enjoy this one, although if you prefer a straightforward narrative and character arc you might be better to look elsewhere. For me this was good without being classic, and being as Capture That Films have uploaded this to YouTube for free you’ve got plenty of chance to check it out!