Mubi Monday: My Father's Shadow (2025)

As much as we like to think otherwise, there's often a vast gulf between who we think our parents are and who they ACTUALLY are. That's just natural, and it isn't always a bad thing. Parents can spend time hiding things to protect their children. They can spend time still making mistakes and burning bridges that children aren't even aware of. Meanwhile, the world keeps turning around, delivering more upheaval and uncertainty with incidents often outwith the control of most of us, whether we're looking on as an adult or a child.

My Father's Shadow is an accomplished exploration of this, making use of a specific time and place (Nigeria in the early 1990s) to present a personal and intimate tale that contains elements many will identify with, no matter where they come from, or what they think of their own relationship with their parents. 

Akin (Godwin Chiemerie Egbo) and Remi (Chibuike Marvellous Egbo) are two young brothers who are playing around when they encounter their father, Folarin (Sope Dirisu). Asking to spend a day with him, the brothers soon start to get a very small insight into his life, whether he's waiting to pick up a wage that is months overdue or he's interacting with soldiers who are claiming to have quashed the results of the unfolding election.

Directed by Akinola Davies Jr., who also wrote the screenplay with his own brother, Wale Davies, My Father's Shadow is a powerful and surprisingly moving debut feature. While it doesn't feel as if it's setting out to manipulate viewers, nor does it have any obvious "set-piece" sequences, the structure of the whole thing, and the way things are often being shown to us filtered through the eyes of the young boys, makes it a hugely satisfying journey that delivers an unexpected mix of real highs and lows. Things that seem minor, being allowed to accompany a parent for a day or just being allowed to order a cold fizzy juice, really aren't. This all becomes much clearer when juxtaposed alongside the inevitability of the changes and obstacles constantly pushing at the edges of this potentially wonderful family day out.

The two Egbo boys are very good in their roles, as natural and delightful as you could hope. Dirisu has the harder role, not having the cuteness of childhood to soften the edges of his character, but he's equally good, and presents himself as a struggling individual who isn't necessarily to be condemned because of his flaws. There are a number of solid performances from those in the supporting cast too, but I won't pretend to be able to name them, aside from Uzoamaka Power, who appears near the end of the movie to provide one more specific insight for a son observing his father.

I'm not sure if this will stick around for long in the memories of those who seek it out, but I do know that many will find it a rewarding experience. I am certainly keen to make time for whatever Akinola Davies Jr. does next, and I wouldn't even mind if he decided to revisit the sentiments explored here. 

8/10

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The Gorge (2025)

I am not sure how often I use the word derivative to describe movies, but it may be quite often. It certainly seems that way lately. I should emphasise that I'm not always using the word as a criticism though. It's just a description. So when I start this review of The Gorge by mentioning how derivative it is I don't want you to think that I'm about to give it a kicking. I had more fun with The Gorge than many other star vehicles I have seen in the last few months. And, whatever you think of Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy, this IS a star vehicle for them, even if you only realise that as the end credits roll and you find yourself wanting to spend more time with the main characters.

Teller and Joy are Levi and Drasa, two very talented sharp-shooters. They don't know each other, but they end up inhabiting a tower on either side of the titular gorge. In the kind of summary that makes for a great trailer line, they soon find out that their job is not to stop anything from entering the gorge . . . but to stop anything from coming out. While they're not supposed to have contact with one another, Levi and Drasa soon start communicating via dialogue written on whiteboards. And they soon start to like one another. There's a huge gorge between them though, and something in it that seems to be eager for them to make just one small mistake.

I'm not going to pretend that writer Zach Dean is someone I am a fan of, you can check his fairly limited filmography to see a few films that nobody would ever rush to view, and the filmography of director Scott Derrickson is certainly a mixed bag, but this has the two men working together on something that ends up being a pleasant surprise, despite the obvious influences throughout. Anyone who has played The Last Of Us, Resident Evil, or Silent Hill will find some of the visuals and production design here very familiar, and there are sections that certainly feel like videogame levels, but the fact that it feels constructed with care, and takes a decent amount of time to flesh out the main characters before putting them into serious danger.

Teller and Joy, despite the distance between them for a lot of the movie, have great chemistry together, and it's more than enough to make up for their characters being a clumsy mix of clichés. The script develops their relationship nicely, using a nice sprinkling of humour to show them growing closer as they deal with the isolation and strange nature of their assignment. There are very small roles for Sope Dirisu and Sigourney Weaver, but the film basically rests on the shoulders of the two leads, which is perfectly fine when they're able to carry it so easily.

It's all silly nonsense, and there's even room for fun nods to both The Queen's Gambit and Whiplash, but it's pretty great silly nonsense. There's decent cinematography from Dan Laustsen, another worthwhile score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and some decent set-pieces that help to make the 127-minute runtime fairly fly by. I really enjoyed this, and I would quite happily watch it again any time. Which is more than I can say for the other films that Zach Dean has helped to write.

8/10

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Silent Night (2021)

If there's one thing we Brits can do it's exploit our civility and manners for entertainment purposes. And we have used that for many different movies, from classic murder mysteries to dark comedies, from the sci-fi horror of something like Prey (Norman J. Warren, 1977) to the unfolding dinner party with a big secret in Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948). This material has been mined by many other countries throughout the decades of cinema, but I like to think that they all stem from observations of British people in their home environment.

Silent Night, the first feature from writer-director Camille Griffin (who also casts all three of her sons in roles of varying importance), shows a group of seemingly well-to-do British people gathering at an isolated home for an evening of dining, drinking, conversation, and probably more drinking. It's a dinner party with a difference, that difference being the looming end of the world. 

While this is an interesting premise for a movie, and could have been a showpiece for any actor, Griffin stumbles due to a lack of tonal focus or consistency. She may have wanted to make something that weaves from comedy to drama to horror, but every one of the better moments just makes you wonder how many other ways the film could have played out in a much more satisfying way.

The main fault lies with Griffin’s script, especially when she doesn’t give anyone the kind of razor-sharp dialogue that the film craves. None of the main characters have the steel required to lift it up to a level of greatness. If this had been made fifty years ago with a main role for Bette Davis, THEN you have something closer to greatness.

Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode are the host couple, both doing well with what they are given (mainly being polite and attempting to put a brave face on things), and their three children (the characters played by Griffin’s children) include another star turn from Roman Griffin Davis, playing the most important person in the film. Lucy Punch, Annabelle Wallis, Kirby Howell-Baptiste and Lily-Rose Depp play the women, all with various approaches to their impending fates, and Sope Dirisu and Rufus Jones are the two male guests, supporting their partners as they deal with some unfinished business.

Things step up a notch in the third act, and the very end features a great little “punchline”, but the end result is more of an interesting, incomplete, almost-ran than an outright winner.

6/10

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Netflix And Chill: His House (2020)

If you're the kind of person who believes that the UK is being swarmed by "illegal immigrants", all aiming to come here because the system is so easy to play, and immediately being handed a 7-bedroom house and £500 a week, then His House is definitely not the film for you. This depicts the lead characters, a pair of asylum seekers, as real people with very real horror in their lives. It then adds some more horror, a bit of cinematic horror, and starts to intertwine things together in a way that endangers both of their lives.

Sope Dirisu is Bol Majur and Wunmi Mosaku is Rial Majur. They have travelled together from a country where ongoing war has cost the lives of too many already. It wasn't always just the two of them either. A child was lost along the way. Having waited to have their case processed, Bol and Rial are given a small house to live in, with numerous conditions to their stay (as their case goes through the next stage) and a weekly sum of £74/week to live on. It seems like a great new start for them. But there's something else in their new home, a supernatural force that knows exactly how to frighten and torture them. If they cannot defeat it, they will lose everything.

Based on a story by Felicity Evans and Toby Venables, His House is a feature debut from writer-director Remi Weekes, who has a number of shorts to his credit from just over the past decade. It's not only a superb feature debut, it's a superb horror movie. It mixes together the horror and the journey to seek asylum so well that it's a reminder of just how effectively the genre can be used against a backdrop of thought-provoking social commentary. There is nothing wrong with a horror movie that has a maniac going all stabby on horny teens, but there is equally nothing wrong with a horror movie that has a bit more to say alongside some solid scares.

Visually intriguing throughout, Weekes keeps things varied as we are shown scenes of the dangerous journey to the UK, scenes of Bol and Rial trying to integrate into a local community that doesn't seem to want them there, and scenes of the house becoming more creepy, lively, and damaged. Things may grow increasingly dark as the story unfolds, but even daylight does not guarantee safety. We see that in the sun-drenched scenes of a war-torn landscape, we see it as our leads encounter "neighbours", and there's no escape from a nightmare that could end lives in a couple of different ways, either by destroying the Majurs physically or resulting in them losing their status in the UK, which would lead to them being deported back to somewhere they would be much less likely to survive.

Dirisu and Mosaku are both excellent in their roles, believably earnest and worried about their futures, trying to work things out within an environment that places extra restrictions on their freedoms (as they wait in hope for a real freedom that will allow them to finally relax). The full story of their journey to the UK, revealed in flashback throughout the film, doesn't really change how well-placed they are as lead characters, because you've taken a liking to them from the earliest scenes, and you can consider how desperate anyone escaping their situation could be. Matt Smith gives great support in the role of Mark, the liaison officer who shows them to their new home and seems to hope for their success. There are other, no less important, characters who appear, but I'll leave you to discover those for yourself.

Loaded with poignancy and real consideration, and with a script that emphasises the language used to keep things officious at all times, even as people may be almost crying out for a more human, a more empathetic, approach to their situation, His House is one of the best films of the year, a timely one at that, and certainly the best horror movie.

9/10

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