As far as I can tell, writer-director Charlie Steeds may be a very lovely guy. A lot of film festival patrons support his career, and he has been making a number of low-budget British horrors for quite a few years now. The big problem he has is that he isn’t actually very good, although An English Haunting is a bit better than some of his other titles.
It is the 1960s in England and a young man named Blake (David Lenik) ends up living in a large country estate with his problematic mother (Tessa Woode) while they care for his dying grandfather (Barrington De La Roche). Blake starts to see things that make him think something is amiss, and that sums up the movie for the majority of the runtime.
It’s all competently made, in general, and well done to Steeds for getting things to a polished and slick level that many other low-budget film-makers never achieve, and sometimes never try to achieve. Unfortunately, the script isn’t very good, and the cast aren’t good enough to turn that chopped liver into a more appealing main dish. Steeds has a decent location to shoot in one unoriginal idea to aim for, but nothing else. There’s no meat on the bones here, and the end result feels disappointingly close to a family play put on by some rich people who decided to throw something together for their friends to endure.
Lenik is decent in his main role, as lacking in confidence as he is filled with mother issues, but he’s almost alone, with the exception of a decent supporting turn from Emma Spurgin Hussey (who isn’t in nearly enough of the film). Woode is far too overwrought and painfully old-fashioned at all times, and De La Roche just spends most of his screentime lying in a bed and looking close to death (which he does well enough, to be fair).
I don’t think it is fair to label An English Haunting a bad film. I have seen many bad films. This isn’t one. It’s not good though. There are no effective scares, there’s a lack of atmosphere, the plot feels like it could barely fill out a short film, and it’s so serious in tone that viewed cannot even hope for random moments of fun or whackiness to punctuate the proceedings. Steeds will make more movies, I may or may not watch them, and he and his fans will be happy enough without caring about my opinion. I would, however, advise others to leave this very low on the list if you have many, or any, other horror viewing options.
4/10
If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do
consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A
subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share
No comments:
Post a Comment