 Dir. Romain Basset, France, 89 mins Dreams can be weird things, right? You go to bed feeling perfectly fine and while you sleep your mind conjures up the weird and the wonderful, the strange and the surreal, the fearful and the frightening. We've all had nightmares and tried to pull apart the symbolism and dissect what it all really means. Don't worry, I'm going somewhere with this. Because Horsehead is a movie heavily preoccupied with dreams, and in fact does a fantastic job of capturing the look and feel they so often have. By blending reality and these slumbering fantasies, this is a film that cooks up something surprising and effective. Horsehead itself follows the story of Jessica, a young student pursuing a better understanding of the meaning and context of dreams. She returns home to a less-than-supportive mother and a rather more caring stepfather in order to attend her grandmother's funeral. The house itself is pretty unusual, with its own dreamlike quality, and Jessica's curiosity about her grandmother's life drives her to ask more and more questions at home – and suffice to say that doesn't go down well. So, as a deep and lucid dreamer, Jessica seeks her own solution – to find the answer in the sleeping world rather than the waking... I'm happy to concede that this central conceit might be a bit hokey, and that controlling your dreams by constantly drugging yourself probably wouldn't work in real life, but if you're willing to let that element slide – or just suspend disbelief for long enough – then what lies ahead is a really rewarding experience, with Jessica's time split between short spells awake and significant amounts of time caught in nightmarish visions that begin to give her clue about the buried secrets within her family. For me personally, the pacing and the way the main reveals occurred was very good, and the visual style was excellent – it had all the disjointed fashion of a dream, and in that respect reminded me in parts of movies like The Cell or Subconscious Cruelty. There are plenty of moments where it's hard to distinguish the real and the unreal, which further adds to the quality of the piece. The lead performance from Lily-Fleur Pointeaux is very solid, and the finale had a great impact also – this one just caught my attention from the get-go and held it throughout. Honestly I could get that some people wouldn't like this one – it's arty and abstract, and doesn't spoonfeed much at all to the viewer. The narrative is not terribly linear either, but all of those are things that on a personal level add to its appeal – I've been turning it over a lot in the days since I watched it, and finding myself digging deeper to find fresh nuances and new interpretations of certain scenes and lines of dialogue. My only frustration really is that it's five years on and there's no indication of anything further coming from this director – I'd merrily watch more from Romain Basset, but barring a few shorts before this there's nothing else to get stuck in to. There's a feel from Horsehead this is a man with real directorial talent and vision, but for whatever reason this appears to be it for the time being. RATING: 9.5/10. Sure, it's not the most extreme film we've ever reviewed, but it is gloriously unusual and has many of the qualities that I love in a horror movie. It's dark, it's atmospheric, it's complex and multilayered, it tackles some uncomfortable ground and it unfurls its story slowly yet fascinatingly. Likely my favourite film watched in 2019 so far, and one that I feel might even grow in stature given how much it has continued to preoccupy my mind in the time since I watched it.    |
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