When a troubled young woman claims to be manipulated by a cult, her
brother reluctantly agrees to help investigate her story.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Powell Robinson, Patrick R Young
Starring: Joey Millin, Madison West, Daniel Abraham Stevens
Traditional "How-to" guides to low budget filmmaking will advise you to
confine your story to a single location. In the last decade, such an
idea has become old hat, thanks to the ability to shoot a decent looking
movie with your phone. Add in locations that can be easily snared for a
couple of days through services like AirBnB, and today's guerilla
filmmakers can easily broaden their horizons and add scope to movies
bound by the most limited of budgets.
Powell Robinson and Patrick R Young's
Threshold is a perfect example of what can now be achieved
with a budget that wouldn't cover a day's lunch menu on a Hollywood
production. Shot on a pair of iPhones with a crew of just three,
Threshold takes advantage of a filmmaker's greatest
weapon, a pair of talented performers, to spin a horror tale that
doubles as an affecting look at the bonds between siblings.
Leo (Joey Millin) hasn't seen or spoken to his sister Virginia (Madison West, who could be mistaken for a sister of Greta Gerwig in both her looks
and demeanour) for over three years when he receives a phone call from
their mother, who has discovered her estranged daughter's current
location. Dealing with a messy divorce and reluctant to add more trouble
to his life, Leo is guilt-tripped by his Mom into retrieving
Virginia.
He finds his sis seemingly in the middle of a seizure, which he
presumes is a reaction to a withdrawal from whatever drugs she's
currently using. Virginia claims she's been clean for the past eight
months and tells him a crazy story about how she hooked up with a cult
who got her off drugs. The downside is that the cult wanted to ensure
she could never leave their grasp, and so they performed a ritual that
resulted in her being "bonded" with a male from their group. This means
that Virginia and the mysterious man share each other's experiences. If
Virginia feels pain, so does he. If he masturbates, she orgasms. If he
shoots up, Virginia gets high.
Virginia insists that her only hope is to track down this man. To send
him a message, she scrawls the words "Where are you?" in blood on her
arm, and he replies with a set of coordinates. Figuring it might be best
to humour Virginia and keep her straight for a few days, Leo agrees to
take her to the mystery location, several days' drive away.
For much of its running time, it's easy to forget
Threshold's supernatural setup as it becomes a well fashioned two person
character study. We spend most of the movie simply hanging out with Leo
and Virginia, getting to know them as they similarly reacquaint
themselves. They shoot the shit on long drives, reminisce about simpler
times, and ponder where they might have gone wrong in their life
choices. When they ease back into their relationship they regress to
their youthful bonds, carving pumpkins, singing karaoke, shoplifting and
messing around with a Ouija board. Millin and West have a charming
chemistry, and the absence of any romantic "Will they, won't they?"
questions allow us to settle into enjoying two people reaffirming
familial bonds that have been heavily tested in recent times.
Instead, the question we find ourselves asking here is whether or not
the cult really exists. Perhaps Virginia is making this all up, faking
the convulsions she claims are caused by her psychic partner's drug use
rather than her own substance abuse. When Leo arrived at her apartment
he saw a figure in a red cloak rush past him, but it is Halloween after
all, so maybe it was just someone in fancy dress. Leo begins to claim to
believe his sister's story, but maybe he's kidding himself too. Maybe he
just needs some time away from his life, which hasn't gone the way he
had imagined. Maybe a few days chasing some imaginary evil is better
than confronting reality.
Threshold keeps us guessing right up to its conclusion,
by which point we've grown so fond of Leo and Virginia that we'd be
willing to accept any explanation for the latter's behaviour. Using
limited means, Robinson and Young have crafted an engaging horror story
that focusses on the one element so often overlooked by low budget
practitioners of the genre – the people at its centre. Just as the best
westerns aren't about the shootout at the end, but rather the horseback
ride to get there, Threshold may be heading to a horrific
conclusion, but it's the two people we get to know along the way that
make it work.
