Andrew Sensenig | Through the Shattered Lens

The fifth film on my DVR was the 2015 haunted house film, We Are Still Here. I recorded We Are Still Here off of the SyFy channel on March 20th. Sad to say, I really can’t remember what I was doing or watching on March 20th while my DVR recorded one of the best horror movies of the previous year. I was probably watching something pn Lifetime. That usually seems to be the case.

But anyway, let’s talk about We Are Still Here.

As a self-professed lover of both horror and old grindhouse exploitation films, there is really no excuse for it to have taken me this long to see We Are Still Here. We Are Still Here is one of those wonderfully low-budget indie films that mixes a traditional genre — in this case, the haunted house film — with a far less traditional view of humanity. With its mix of bump-in-the-dark horror and cynicism about human nature, We Are Still Here feels like a mix of the Coen Brothers and H.P. Lovecraft.

Anne (Barbra Crampton, a veteran of horror films like Castle Freak and You’re Next) and Paul (Andrew Sensenig, who played the mysterious antagonist of Upstream Color) are a married couple who are struggling to deal with tragedy. Their son, Bobby, was recently killed in a car wreck. Anne is trapped in a prison of depression, while Paul just wants to move on with their lives. Hoping that it will help them to forget their sadness, Paul and Anne buy a house in New England.

(New England, not coincidentally, was also the home of H.P. Lovecraft, as well as being the setting for some of his best-remembered stories.)

But, of course, the house proves to be anything but therapeutic. From the minute they move in, Anne is convinced that they are not alone. With every mysterious sound and strange happening within the house, Ann becomes more and more convinced that the spirit of Bobby is with them.

If you’re a horror fan, you will not be surprised to learn that they are not alone. There is a presence in the house but is it Bobby or is it something far more sinister? Shortly after moving in, Anne and Paul meet their new neighbors. As friendly as they may be, there is definitely something off about Dave (Monte Markham) and his wife, Cat (Connie Neer). Dave tells them that the house was originally a funeral home an about how it was owned by the mysterious Dagmar family. The Dagmars were reportedly forced to leave town after it was learned that they were selling the bodies brought to them for burial and burying empty coffins. Could this have anything to do with the strange vibe that Anne and Paul both get from the house?

Despite Paul’s skepticism, Anne invites her friends, May (Lisa Marie) and Jacob (Larry Fessenden), to come for a visit. May and Jacob are both spiritualists and Anne hopes that they can contact Bobby’s spirit. Again, it’s not a spoiler to reveal that they do contact something. The surprise comes from what they contact and what happens as a result.

We Are Still Here is a chilly and dream-like film, one that wisely devotes as much time to creating and maintaining a properly creepy atmosphere as it does to all the expected scare scenes. When the presence in the house is finally revealed, it’s a scary moment but for me, the most haunting scenes in the film are the shots of the snow-covered landscape surrounding the house. The icy roads are as cold and unforgiving and as potentially dangerous as anything that might be living in the old Dagmar house. And, just as the weather cannot be controlled, neither can the paranormal.

We Are Still Here is a deliberately paced film. In fact, it’s probably a bit too deliberate to really be effective when viewed with commercial interruptions. We Are Still Here works because it creates an atmosphere of foreboding and certain doom and it’s hard to maintain an atmosphere when, every 20 minutes or so, the action has to stop for a commercial about Tide pods. To best appreciate this film and what it has to say about loss, faith, and delusion, it’s necessary to watch the story unfold without any pause to the narrative.

Fortunately, this intelligent and well-acted horror film is currently available on Netflix, where it can be viewed without commercial interruption! If you’re a horror fan, you owe it to yourself to watch.

(Minor Spoilers Ahead)

Is Upstream Color, the new film from Shane Carruth, the best film of 2013?

Realistically, it’s probably too early to say. After all, it’s only April and there’s a lot of films waiting to be released. However, it’s hard for me to imagine how a more thought-provoking, haunting, and occasionally frustrating film could be released this year.

Don’t get me wrong. A lot of viewers aren’t going to embrace this low budget, independently made film. Some will dismiss Upstream Color as being pretentious or they’ll incorrectly assume that the film is all about style over substance. Even in this age of Tree of Life and Beasts of the Southern Wild, Upstream Color is not the type of film that’ll be embraced come Oscar time.

But no matter. As of right now, Upstream Color is the best film of 2013.

Director Shane Carruth made his directorial debut in 2004 with Primer. Made on a budget of $7,000 and filmed in my hometown of Dallas, Primer was a low-key but intriguing film about time travel. It was a science fiction film that succeeded not through CGI but through an intelligent presentation of ideas. I have to admit that I’ve watched Primer a handful of times and I still don’t quite understand everything that happens in the film. However, that’s a huge part of the film’s appeal.

The same can be said of Upstream Color.

Playing out like a mash-up of David Cronenberg and Terrence Malick and told through a series of jump cuts, Upstream Color begins with Kris (Amy Seimitz), a successful young woman who is kidnapped by an enigmatic figure known as the Thief (Thiago Martins). The Thief uses a drug made out of orchid larvae to hijack her mind. Once she has given him all of her money, the Thief vanishes while the larva continues to grow in Kris’s body.

A mysterious man identified in the credits as The Sampler (played quite brilliantly by Andrew Sensenig) comes to Kris’s aid. As Kris lies unconscious in a tent, The Sampler cuts the larva out of her body and then puts it into the body of a pig. The pig is set loose in a pen with hundreds of other pigs who apparently carry larvae in their bodies. Kris, meanwhile, wakes up the next morning in her car with no memory of why she’s covered in blood, why she’s lost her job, or why her bank account is now empty.

One jump cut later and suddenly, we see Kris riding a train through downtown Dallas.* We’re not sure how much time has passed but we can see that Kris has changed. With her hair cut short, Kris sits huddled in the back of the train. Also on the train is Jeff (Shane Carruth). Despite Kris’s efforts to be anonymous, Jeff notices her and eventually manages to strike up a conversation with her.

Kris finds herself oddly drawn towards Jeff, especially after he confesses to her that he once stole a lot of money from his employers and he’s not quite sure why he did it. Not realizing that they’re both victims of the Thief, Jeff and Kris fall in love. Fortunately, Carruth and Seimetz have a palpable chemistry. You believe both of them as wounded souls and as lovers. As a result, even as the film gets more and more surreal, you still care about these two characters and their relationship.

While Kris and Jeff fall in love and struggle to understand what happened to them in the past, the Sampler continues to appear throughout the film as a detached observer. Sometimes, he’s recording the sounds of nature. At other times, he’s looking over his pigs. And then, sometimes, he’s just there. For his first few appearances, the Sampler seems to be almost a benevolent figure but, halfway through the film, he performs one action that forces you to reconsider everything that you’ve previously seen him do.

Who is the Sampler and how is he connected to the Thief and Kris and Jeff? This is one of the many questions that the film poses and, quite frankly, the answer is not easy to find. Don’t get me wrong, the answer is there. You just have to be willing to look for it. Carruth, a former engineer, directs with an eye for the reoccurring patterns of nature. (For instance, the curve of the larva in Kris’s bloodstream is later replicated by the sight of Kris and Jeff curled up in each other’s arms.) As opposed to the very verbal Primer, Upstream Color is a film almost totally told through image and, as a result, one has to be willing to be an observant viewer in order to learn the answers to the film’s questions. The film’s final 15 minutes features no dialogue, just images scored to Carruth’s propulsive electronic score. It’s a brave move on Carruth’s part and, even more importantly, it works brilliantly.

As you might guess from reading this review, Upstream Color is not an easy film to understand. As a filmmaker, Carruth emphasizes the surreal and the obscure but, much like David Lynch, he comes up with images that are so haunting that you can’t look away even if you don’t fully understand what you’re seeing. Upstream Color may, at times, be an obscure film but it’s compelling in its obscurity. This is a film that is meant to be seen with four of your smartest friends. This is a film that is meant to be debated and argued about.

In other words, it may very well be the best film of 2013.

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*On a personal note, I do have to admit that I loved seeing how much of this movie was filmed at places that I either go to or drive by every single day.