Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Stephen Cognetti
Starring: Elizabeth Vermilyea, Joe Falcone, Kathryn Miller, Lorenzo Beronilla,
Darin F. Earl II, Leyah Rose
With his Hell House LLC franchise, Stephen Cognetti breathed new life
into the found footage format. He did so not by reinventing the wheel,
but by sticking to the basics of what makes a horror movie successful,
preying on our primal fears of what lurks in shadowy corners, and of
inanimate objects seeming to move of their own accord (those pesky clown
figures).
With 825 Forest Road, Cognetti moves away from found footage into more traditional horror
filmmaking. Once again he keeps things simple, displaying a natural
understanding of what creeps us out. And once again there's an inanimate
object, in this case a terrifying dress mannequin named Martha, to keep
us on our toes as we wait for the inevitable moment when it starts to
move...
Martha belongs to dressmaker Maria (Elizabeth Vermilyea), who
reluctantly leaves the city for the small town of Ashford Falls, where
her hubby Chuck (Joe Falcone) is set to teach music at the local
college. Maria and Chuck are joined by the latter's younger sister
Isabelle (Kathryn Miller), who is attending said college. Having
been at the wheel when her Mother was killed in a car accident, Isabelle
is in a dark place, and Chuck, who was absent from her life for the past
few years, is determined to keep an eye on his sister.
Unfortunately, Chuck couldn't have picked a worse place than Ashford
Falls, which it turns out has a notorious history of suicides. He
quickly discovers that he got his new home for such a good price because
its previous owner took his own life. After encountering a weeping girl
in the local library, Chuck is shocked to learn that she too committed
suicide later the same day. When the aforementioned mannequin is
discovered on their new lawn one morning, Chuck scolds Isabelle for
playing a cruel joke on Maria, who has her own mental health issues, but
Isabelle insists she wasn't responsible.
When Chuck is clued in on the local lore of Helen Foster, a woman whose
spirit is said to haunt the town in revenge for her daughter being
bullied into taking her own life decades ago, he's dismissive at first.
But as strange occurrences begin to pile up and he realises Maria and
Isabelle are in danger, he becomes determined to find the elusive 825
Forest Road, said to once have been the home of Helen, but which has now
vanished thanks to the town renaming its streets in the 1950s. Chuck
believes that if he destroys the house he can put an end to Helen's
reign of terror.
In Helen Foster, Cognetti has created an instant indie horror icon
without actually giving her an explicit physical persona. We mostly
glimpse her as a moving blur in the background of shots, but it's when
she uses Martha the mannequin as a physical conduit that the terror
really ramps up. There's a fantastic sequence that sees Maria terrorised
by a suddenly mobile Martha while she teaches a sewing class over a
live-streaming video. Presenting the POV of Maria's audience on the
other side of the video call, Cognetti mines skin-crawling suspense by
placing the viewer in the position of being able to see what's behind
the oblivious Maria, causing us to silently scream "Look behind you."
It's not rocket science on the part of Cognetti, but it makes you wonder
why so few horror filmmakers are able to generate terror from such
simple setups. You might argue that with Martha, Cognetti is simply
repeating his clown shtick from the Hell House LLC series, but when it's this much fun, who cares?
825 Forest Road has a largely conventional narrative, but there are distinctive
ways in which Cognetti's film feels fresh. Rather than obscuring his
horrors in shadows and moonlight, Cognetti's film plays out almost
exclusively in daylight. He's so confident in his ability to scare you
with his bag of tricks that he doesn't need to add our fear of the night
into the mix, and the fact that the scariest moments happen while
sunshine is blasting through the windows of an unremarkable suburban
home ensures we remain on alert throughout. Horror can pop up at any
moment here, and boy does it.
Cognetti splits his film into three chapters, each one focussing on
Chuck, Isabelle and Maria, doubling back Rashomon style to present a new perspective on something we've already
witnessed, while simultaneously moving the narrative forward. This
storytelling style can often seem like a gimmick, but Cognetti uses it
skilfully, displaying a novelist's knack for spinning a good yarn
through knowing when to clue the audience in and when to keep us
guessing. It also cleverly plays on our conceptions of who the real
protagonist is here. We see Chuck's perspective first, and it seems as
though he's set to be the hero, but when we see Chuck through the lens
of the women in his life we realise how deeply flawed he really
is.
Chuck is a unique take on the horror movie cliché of the husband who
refuses to believe his wife. Chuck can't deny the supernatural as he's
seen it with his own eyes, and yet he still gaslights Maria and Isabelle
by refusing to admit that he's shared their paranormal experiences. Like
Ashford Falls renaming its streets, Chuck avoids talking with Maria
about her bipolar disorder, hoping it will simply disappear if left
unspoken. In a key moment, Chuck walks out on Maria and Isabelle to
embark on his quest to find the eponymous address and in doing so leaves
them at the mercy of Helen. He's obsessed with being the saviour of
these women, but Maria and Isabelle just want Chuck to listen. If that
isn't an analogy for the men of our times, I don't know what is.
825 Forest Road is on Shudder
from April 4th.
