Mubi Monday: Omen (2023)

There's a chance that I am talking out of my backside here, there's always a chance of that though, but it feels as if the advances in technology that have allowed more and more people from more varied backgrounds to make movies has led to an increase in stories about individuals in the modern world dealing with the weight and repercussions of beliefs and traditions that stem from decades and centuries ago. I can sense some of you rolling your eyes and saying "thank you, Captain Obvious", but it's fascinating to see the number of creative talents who look to be striding towards a bright future making time to contemplate the path of history that has brought us all to where we are now.

Omen is, as I am sure you won't be surprised to learn after that ill-conceived opening paragraph, a film in which the main character, Koffi (Marc Zinga), returns to his birthplace, Kinshasa, where he struggles to maintain his sense of normality and self in the face of family members who give a lot of credence to beliefs that he has long tried to stay away from. A couple of coincidences don't help him, nor does the fact that he is now in a mixed-race relationship with a woman named Alice (Lucie Debay), who is also about to make him a father to twins. Will Koffi be able to convince people that he's not the devil some would think him, or should he just resign himself to the fact that some opinions can't be changed?

The feature directorial debut from Baloji Tshiana (billed as just Baloji), who had some help in the writing department from Thomas van Zuylen, this is an interesting and insightful character study, with one big problem. That problem is a surplus of characters worth studying, leading to most of the intertwining story strands feeling a bit unsatisfying, which is a real shame. Things work best in the many scenes that have Koffi and Alice at the heart of them, but there's an equally tantalising story to be told about Koffi's sister, Tshala (Elian Umuhire). We only get snippets though, as if we have eavesdropped on a conversation between people moving in and out of range. 

Zinga and Debay both do brilliant work, struggling to maintain a brave face and a united front as those around them grow more openly hostile towards them. Viewers can easily feel that they're deserving of the happiness they shouldn't have to ask permission for. The same goes for Umuhire, who is affected in a more direct way by teeth of expectation that feel as if they have bitten down harder on her for attempting to avoid fully conforming to the lifestyle shared by many around her. Yves-Marina Gnahoua is an intimidating figure as Mama Mujila, and also does well, as does Marcel Otete Kabeya, but he is the one to suffer most from being surplus to requirements, in terms of the structure and pacing of the film.

While very culturally specific, Omen works as well as it does thanks to that universal experience of trying to re-adjust whenever heading back to family. Despite any other major issues, it's always a disorientating experience to visit people who may have you locked in their memory in a certain way while you have lived your life and grown and moved far away from what you once were. It's a battle to try and present your latest incarnation without upsetting those who may have preferred the old you, but it's important to avoid being dragged far back into your past.

If you've seen the short that Baloji did before this, an excellent 15-minute piece titled Zombies, then you will already have some idea of his style and intelligence. I'll be doing my best to check out the few other shorts that he has made, but I'll be very keen to see his next feature, whenever that comes along.

7/10

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Shudder Saturday: Hunted (2020)

This is a very strange film to review. Mainly because I didn't like it. Then I did. Then I started to really like it. And then it just ended. I knew it would end at some point, of course (not every film has to be a Lav Diaz epic, thank goodness), but the ending felt a bit abrupt and disappointing. Which led to me remembering how I hadn't been won over by the beginning. So I had to work a bit harder to retain the positive thoughts I had about it, and to not let the weaker moments bookending everything affect my whole viewpoint.

The central part of the film, the best through line, concerns Éve (Lucie Debay), a young woman who is saved from a pushy guy at a bar by a man who seems to be normal and nice (Arieh Worthalter). Unfortunately, he's exactly the opposite of what he appears to be, and he wants to abuse Éve and kill her, helped in this by his accomplice (Ciarán O'Brien). Things are complicated by the tenacity of Éve, and also a woodland encounter with a woman credited as The Huntress (Simone Milsdochter) and her son, Jeremy (Ryan Brodie).

A heady brew of recalibrated fairytale elements and ugly misogyny, Hunted is most effective when boiling everything down to the basics. A bad man wants to hurt, and kill, a female victim. It remains effective in the scenes that have that bad man lashing out at the person supposed to be helping him. And any moments involving The Huntress and Jeremy work brilliantly. All of these scenes have an undercurrent of viciousness intertwined with a strangely surreal quality, and they feel like the movie that director Vincent Paronnaud most definitely wanted to make.

But then you have the rest. The opening is easy to forgive, when you see how the rest of the film plays out it feels like a nice bit of scene-setting, but the last 10-15 minutes are astonishingly bad, throwing in some other characters, including a bunch of paintballers and some people viewing a house. This may have been done to emphasise the idea of the pure hunt crashing through into something close to our actual reality, I guess, but it feels ridiculous and out of step with the atmosphere that was so nicely created throughout the rest of the film. Writers Stephen Shields and David H. Pickering may have come up with this idea, or perhaps it came from the draft tweaking from Paronnaud and Léa Pernollet.

Nobody stands out, performance-wise, but everyone does a good job. Worthalter is an incredibly effective psycho, and deserves some credit for his absolutely unhinged turn (especially in the second half), but everyone feels like they're being puppeteered by Parronaud, in a way that is almost literal. I wouldn't be surprised if there were storyboards for this that initially had the whole thing planned out for something that was to be fully animated (especially when you consider how well Parronaud has worked in that form previously).

Hunted may lose you. It may prove to be an ultimately disappointing viewing experience, especially if you don't appreciate the atmosphere and dark playfulness of it. But it may just be one that you end up appreciating a lot more when you think of the reasoning behind some of the decisions made. That's where I ended up anyway.

7/10

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