Blackwood
Starring: Ed Stoppard, Sophia Myles, Isaac Andrews, Paul Kaye
Director: Adam Wimpenny
Rating: 2.5/5
Adam Wimpenny is set to make his feature film directorial debut with Blackwood, a movie that is part of the Cult section of the BFI London Film Festival.
After suffering an emotional breakdown, Professor Ben Marshall has moved to the countryside with his wife and young son as they look to start afresh. However, not long after the move Ben starts to feel that there is something wrong with the house.
A secret surrounds the previous owner of the house, and when Ben starts having spectral visions he is determined to discover the truth about a missing woman and her young son.
As he becomes obsessed with finding the truth, it pushes him to the brink of his sanity, as well as puts his family in danger.
We have been treated to some fantastic haunted house movies in recent years, but Blackwood doesn’t quite live up to some of the films that have gone before. There are some great moments in this film and Wimpenny does build creepiness and tension in places: but he is unable to sustain it throughout.
However, there are not enough jumps or edge of your seat breathless moments to make this an effective horror/drama.
The central character of Ben is an interesting one as he, along with the audience, has to decide whether the visions he is seeing is his problems of the past returning, or if the house really does hold a dark and quite sinister secret.
Ed Stoppard plays Ben as a character who is pretty unlikeable, and you really do have little sympathy for him when things slowly start to unravel. I have always liked Sophia Myles as an actress, but she really is given far too little to do - this is such a waste.
Paul Kaye and Russell Tovy are thrown into the mix as a pair of untrustworthy locals who could hide the key to what Ben is searching for. They really do deliver the most interesting performances, as you never quite know whether to trust them or not: are they upstanding members of the community? Or do they mean to do Ben and his family harm?
What is great to see is that Wimpenny hasn’t resorted to cheap thrillers of lame gore when making this movie; he has tried to build up the tension with creepy goings on and bumps in the night.
I like horror movies that try to create fear and unease in this way - there’s a classic horror feel about it - but Wimpenny doesn’t quite manage to pull it off for the entire film.
On top of that, the characters are not rounded enough to make you emotionally invest in what happens to them: do you really care when the final twist is revealed?
You can see what Wimpenny has tried to do with this film, but Blackwood doesn’t quite have the impact that something like The Woman In Black had last year - not creepy and scary enough.
The BFI London Film Festival runs from 9th - 20th October.
Tagged in BFI