Other

by Hope Madden

David Moreau makes enough really fascinating horror movies that there’s always reason for optimism when a new one releases. The filmmaker often plays with the language of film to refocus attention and generate dread. Last year’s MadS used point of view filmmaking and the concept of a single, unbroken shot to remarkably tense results.

Other, Moreau’s latest feature, is another opportunity for narrative experimentation. Olga Kurylenko plays Alice, a veterinarian called back to Minnesota to deal with her estranged mother’s remains. Alice hasn’t been home in many, many years and the house, isolated in the middle of the woods and surrounded by surveillance cameras and barb wire fencing, is no more inviting than it was when she left.

Kurylenko has a lovely face, which is good because it’s the only one we see clearly in the entire film. There are other characters, but their faces are obscured, either by broken screens or odd point of view, or masks, which many of the characters wear. Moreau is making points about a surveillance state, the objectification of women, and identity with this move. It’s an interesting idea, or set of ideas, but he never manages to pull them together into a cohesive or rewarding theme.

Because you see no faces clearly, Moreau isn’t obligated to use dialogue from any of the actors, aside from Kurylenko. And he doesn’t. The result is the kind of dreamily absurd voiceover work Lucio Fulci was known for: adult women doing voicework of young boys and European actors badly attempting American accents. In the context of the delightfully nonsensical logic of a Fulci film, this can be acceptable, even entertaining. But Moreau is taking his film and its mystery seriously, so the painfully unrealistic Minnesota accents feel comical.

Not that American actors would have had much better luck with this script. There’s too little for Kurylenko to work with for two thirds of the film, leaving her to her own devices to compel interest, and she’s just not strong enough an actor to pull that off. When the film falls off its rails in Act 3, Kurylenko’s shortcomings and the silly voiceovers just seem par for the course.

Not every experiment works, and Moreau deserves credit for once again stretching. But I’d recommend watching or rewatching his 2006 masterwork Them instead of Other.