It Is In Us All, 2022.
Written and directed by Antonia Campbell-Hughes.
Starring Cosmo Jarvis, Rhys Mannion, Claes Bang, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, and Lalor Roddy.
SYNOPSIS:
A formidable man who cares for nothing is forced to confront his self-destructive core when a violent car crash involving a sexually charged boy who epitomises life, challenges him to face his truth.
Actress-filmmaker Antonia Campbell-Hughes skilfully explores the essence of being alive in the wake of a near-death experience in this resonant if sometimes frustratingly spare mood piece.
Hamish (Cosmo Jarvis) is a well-off Londoner visiting Ireland’s County Donegal to size-up the house left to him by his recently deceased aunt – a house that his own late mother also grew up in. But while driving to the house, Hamish is involved in a brutal car crash with two young men, one of whom is killed. The other, Evan (Rhys Mannion), escapes physically unscathed and develops a fixation on Hamish, who beyond his breaks and bruises is far more shattered than he ever wants to let on.
The film’s portentous title and stark vibe may seem to frame It Is In Us All as a horror film, yet anyone hanging on for heightened thrills is sure to be left disappointed as the horrors here are strictly of the human existential sort. Campbell-Hughes’ film teeters on a tonal razor’s edge, where even something as simple as Evan handing a packet of crisps to Hamish feels loaded with ominous intent.
At its core this is a fraught drama about the uniting power of trauma, Hamish and Evan drawn to one another through palpable survivor’s guilt, the precise particulars of which aren’t revealed until later on. The pair debate the minutiae of the crash in clinical detail, Evan clinging to the belief that Hamish could’ve swerved to avoid the wreck in the split-second prior, all while the narcotised, affect-devoid Hamish can scarcely muster the resolve to react to any of it.
If vaguely reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s Crash at times, Campbell-Hughes’ film also keenly examines the ties that tether people to places and spaces. Beyond the accident, Hamish is deeply ambivalent about his own personal history, namely his mother’s decision to leave Ireland to marry his English father.
It would be too pat to say with any certainty that Hamish’s pre-crash troubles stem purely from his mother’s prior suicide or his inattentive, insensitive father (Claes Bang), but there’s no denying the bruising impact this dynamic, and his uprooting from his home nation, have left upon him.
Campbell-Hughes’ decision not to overtly commit to any definitive character throughline will surely frustrate some; there aren’t any grand emotional epiphanies to be found nor any precise clarity on what the titular “it” is, but that opacity feels true in how so much of life’s pain isn’t simply closed off with a grand realisation.
Even those dissuaded by the dramatic vagaries will likely appreciate the superb upfront work from Cosmo Jarvis, a performer who’s been quietly stacking up a cachet of quality work, and adds another to the pile with his shambling portrait of a man both physically and spiritually destroyed. So much of the film is singularly centered around his sombre physicality – particularly a protracted sequence in which he attempts to set his own broken arm – yet the quietude of those earlier passages gives way to fiery intensity in the pic’s second half.
Hamish vacillates between flattened affect and grief-stricken rage, playing terrifically opposite Rhys Mannion, who brings subtle fear to the part of a young man struggling to make sense of what has happened to him. Elsewhere Campbell-Hughes herself appears as the dead boy’s aggrieved mother, though it’s a surprisingly insubstantial and undeveloped role that could’ve used a little more flesh on its bones.
Production-wise this is an extremely assured piece of work that makes the most of the sparse, misty Donegal setting, courtesy of both its filmmaker’s keen eye for framing and the immaculate work of DP Piers McGrail. The beautiful shots of Hamish rambling through the Irish countryside feel both epic and intimate, and McGrail even impressively makes the mere sight of an unfinished plate of beans on toast feel unnerving.
It’s not all miserable, though; at the same time a fireside dance sequence is gorgeous and somehow tonally consistent with everything else, and a strobe-filled dance-off between Hamish and Evan in a nightclub is an hypnotic highlight. Backed by Tom Furse’s airy electronic score, the aesthetic ties together tightly.
If the indefinite storytelling may leave some viewers cold, the strength of the technical execution and the truth of the performances are tough to ignore. This is a richly atmospheric examination of shared trauma’s binding power and the devastating impact of death’s touch, elevated by a stoic turn from Cosmo Jarvis.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more film rambling.
