House of Salem, 2016.
Directed by James Crow.
Starring Jessica Arterton, Jack Brett Anderson, Liam Kelly, Leslie Mills, Robert Lowe, and Dean Maskell.
SYNOPSIS:
A gang kidnaps a young boy but instead of receiving a ransom they discover they are part of a satanic ritual.
Writer/director James Crow’s House of Salem is a film full of ideas and potential, melding together crime and horror in a story that really is a lot bigger than what you get to see on the screen. However, it is a potential that largely goes unrealised by the time the end credits roll despite some spirited attempts at recreating the off-kilter dread and sense of impending doom of fellow British genre movies like Kill List and The Wicker Man.
The setup is that a young boy named Josh (Liam Kelly, playing a lot younger than he obviously is) is kidnapped by a masked gang, with a female member of the gang named Nancy (Jessica Arterton) promising to look after the troubled boy and promising him he won’t get hurt. They take him to a secluded house where they await further instructions from somebody other than gang leader, and Nancy’s father, Jacob (Leslie Mills, sorely lacking a moustache to twirl) until it becomes clear that nobody is interested in rescuing Josh and the gang are now part of something else at play as more masked and cloaked figures start arriving on the scene, and the reasons for Josh’s kidnapping become clear.
Well, clear-ish as House of Salem has a few different ideas going on and heads in several different directions, from the initial home invasion scenes of Josh being taken while his babysitter gets a fairly well executed smack in the mouth to the realisation from Nancy that she’s really playing for the wrong team and the whole cult-needing-a-sacrifice thing that the final act stretches out for a good 10 minutes longer than it needs to, and throughout there are the seeds of good ideas as James Crow clearly has a vision for a genre-melding folky action occult horror in true Ben Wheatley style but unfortunately he does not have the budget or the talent standing in front of the camera to pull off what he likely can see in his mind’s eye, resulting in a film that feels incomplete and needs another pass through the writer’s room to try and iron out some of the wrinkles.
But while the story feels incomplete it does at least have a sense of direction, with Crow clearly wanting it to end up where it eventually does, although that muddy journey could have been a lot more satisfying to sit through had Crow managed to get actors who could actually act and deliver the unremarkable but serviceable dialogue with any sense of passion. As it is, despite Jessica Arterton marking herself out by being noticeable better than everyone else – mainly because everyone else is pretty bland and she at least puts in a bit of effort – it all just feels too undercooked to really get stuck into. There is a big attempt here to create a creepy and unsettling atmosphere, which it does in small doses, but just when you think it is all going to fall into place any second and flow into a dark abyss of cod-satanic tomfoolery it just… doesn’t. The final five minutes try to ramp up the action a little but by then it is too little too late as the reason for Josh’s kidnapping doesn’t really seem to matter anymore and the remaining characters get haunted by some ghostly children with cake batter mix stuck to their faces.
Given a bigger budget to allow himself to create something a bit more cohesive and less choppy when it comes to pacing – and also to hire some better actors – it would be very interesting to see what James Crow could do as he obviously has ideas he wants to commit to film and, given the right circumstances, he could be a filmmaker to watch as on a technical level House of Salem is well shot and was clearly made with a lot of heart but in the end it is an indie film that is too ambitious for its obvious limitations.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Chris Ward
