AMNESIAC (2013)

Studio:       Midnight Releasing
Director:    Martin Rutley
Writer:       Andrew Rutley
Producer:  Kate Wimbury
Stars:     Jon Stoley, Katya Greer, Edwina Lea, Gemma Deerfield, Leon Florentine

Review Score: 

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Summary:

A grieving mother and a murderous father link the past and the present during a shared encounter with a Ouija board. 

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

In an ethereal realm of the afterlife, Alex Clifford waxes poetic while reflecting on his life from 1979, when he was still a husband to Jill and a father to Charlie. In the real world, Kate Faulkner has turned to the occult since losing her infant son Sean. With her sister Bec and Bec’s boyfriend Thom Emons, Kate attempts to contact the other side by using a Ouija board. The three of them are locked together in a small room with walls covered in newspaper clippings and occult symbols. Meanwhile, Alex buries body parts and recalls a confrontation with Jill.

The planchette flies across the board and cuts Bec’s finger. Bec blames her sister. They discuss their family relationships while Thom prepares tea in another room. After returning to their use of the board, the trio contacts a spirit named Wyke Wreake and the table begins shaking. Thom searches the name on his laptop and discovers that pagan worship was common in the area of Northwest England known as Rheged. Child sacrifices took place in the Valley of the Witches, a name derived from the Anglo-Saxon Wyke Wreake. The remains of over 100 children were discovered when that area was excavated in the 1930’s.

Kate, Bec, and Thom make contact with Alex and learn that he also lost his child. They have a vision of Alex imprisoned in that room as part of an insane asylum treatment. Blood drips from the walls. When the vision ends, the trio discovers that they are trapped in the room. Kate assumes that they will be unable to leave until they resolve whatever Alex wants.

Alex possesses Thom. A bloody doll mysteriously drops from the ceiling, predicting Bec’s death. In the other world, Thom plays the role of the lover that Jill Clifford cheated with and that Alex killed. In reality, Thom ends up with a knife mysteriously stabbed into his chest and he dies. Kate is forced to cut his throat when he reanimates and begins to strangle Bec while possessed by Alex again. The sisters put his body in a closet. As Alex relives his murder of Jill’s lover, Bec collapses.

Alex relives a confrontation with his wife where he angrily pleads for visitation with their son Charlie. Alex shows Jill a macabre children’s television program that he claims gives him messages. He tells her of visions he has had involving Kate, Bec, and Thom that seem like looks into the future. When their confrontation concludes, Alex recalls that he strangled Jill after being influenced by Kate and her dead baby. Through the television, Bec appears and tells Alex that Kate went insane and murdered her family. Now she is coming after Alex.

Kate appears and tells Alex that the Wreake wants his son. Alex recalls the night that he suffocated Charlie to death. Through the television, Alex watches himself fight with a bloodied man in a gas mask. After drowning the strange man, Alex unmasks him and reveals a doppelganger. Alex then slits his own wrists.

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Review:

After the devastating loss of her infant son, Kate Faulkner reacts how any grieving mother would in her situation.  She cuts out pictures of Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Rader and includes them in a macabre collage of newspaper clippings and occult symbols adorning the walls of her child’s nursery.  Kate’s plan is to enlist her sister Bec and Bec’s new beau Thom and to contact the other side with a Ouija board.  How random mugshots of serial killers help to facilitate that effort is never clear, but the set dressing at least makes for eerie imagery.  It also illustrates the imbalance at the heart of “Amnesiac.”  The story is never as captivating as the film’s visual atmosphere.

Running parallel to Kate’s present day séance is the 1979 tale of Alex Clifford.  Alex seems to exist in an ethereal realm of the afterlife where he relives moments of murder, insane asylums, and general horror for some reason that relates to his ex-wife and his lost son.  The Ouija board more than bridges the two timelines as each reality intersects with the other and the film introduces the question of whether Alex is haunting Kate or if it is the other way around.  That mystery is intriguing, but the confined execution of “Amnesiac” makes it a chore to remain invested in the outcome.

Not only does the bulk of the movie take place in one small room, but the majority of the action consists of the present day trio sitting at a table and talking.  When Kate and her sister and not reading aloud the letters spelled by the Ouija board’s planchette, they are discussing their family, their relationship, or the mystery at hand.  The production opens up some when the narrative shifts to Alex wandering about the English countryside, but monologues and duologues still eat up most of the runtime.

American audiences, be warned.  Even though the film is in English, the British accents are occasionally thick enough to warrant a tap of the remote control’s closed captions button just to understand what is being said.  This is rarely a problem during normal conversation, as it has less to do with the actors and more to do with inaudible sound design when the tight walls of the one room set bounce voices into a jumble or funnel sound through an echo effect.  When characters become possessed and speak in demonic tones, dialogue may as well be in another language.  Staying enveloped in the psychological tumult is a challenge with Saturday Night Live’s “Don’ You Go Rounin’ Roun to Re Ro” sketch laughingly running through the brain.

Director Martin Rutley keeps the film as engaging as possible through music, editing, and cinematography that washes the visual palette in grimy hues of jaundiced whites and blackened blood.  A black and white children’s television program that features a stop motion short is effectively unsettling, as well.  Not only does Rutley have a committed style to setting mood, he also has a clear vision in mind of how to deliver the story.  Working against him is the issue that his brother’s screenplay works better as a stage play than it does as a horror film.

Alex is rigidly stiff as a lead character.  Part of the blame lies with pretentiously poetic dialogue that makes actor Jon Stoley’s matter of fact line readings sound like a theater performance instead of a flesh and blood person.  Another part is that Stoley’s embodiment of the persona is not as convincing as those in the other timeline.

“Amnesiac” is a deliberately slow building psychological drama with a fine enough tempo considering the material.  The reason it comes off as ineffective is because the momentum is lost in a muddied twist that abruptly ends one storyline and forces all focus on a character that is unredeemable in the audience’s eyes.  “Amnesiac” looks sharp and is capable of showing disturbing intentions with its cinematic sense.  What it cannot do is inspire an audience to invest in stakes confined to one room and five people in a story that builds intrigue with all the intensity of a slowly dripping leaky faucet.

NOTE: "Amnesiac" is also known by the title “Wyke Wreake.”

Review Score:  50

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