One of the films that deserved a wider release in theaters was Opossum. Matthew Holness The debut had an extremely limited theatrical release in both the UK and the US, with a total gross of $33,225. The deeply unsettling Holness film is an incredibly bold film and difficult to pull off with so little dialogue and perhaps almost no plot, reminiscent of StalkerX repetitiveness, pace and creeping supernatural fear.
It begins with a series of jumps and Philippe’s voice-over (Sean Harris) reciting an eerie poem, a wide-angle shot of him silhouetted against the evening sky, watching a bag in a distant bedroom with a look of pain on his face, before moving on to the opening credits. The BBC Radiophonic music is accompanied by close-ups of a frustrated Philip, rambling images of the East Anglian landscape and stop-motion animation offering a sneak peek of what he’s hiding in that big brown sack. All images are painted sickly green with a yellow filter.
Philip is a tortured puppeteer returning by train to East Anglia. On the seats across from him sits a group of teenage boys, and he watches one boy who is illustrating intently. The boy catches his eye and closes the notebook and they leave the train, but Philip follows him and asks what he was drawing. Shocked, the boy runs back to his comrades. Philippe returns to a dilapidated house with boarded up windows, an overgrown garden, peeling wallpaper, dirty carpets, and closed doors. Upstairs, he reads from a note/storybook about children in danger from sinister humans and giant spiders. He takes the brown bag out into the yard, takes out a thing from it and notices a fox watching him. Nightmares and reality intersect in Opossum, often with a nauseating effect. The thing is back when he wakes up from his nap.
The only occupant of the abandoned building he calls home is his creepy and dirty uncle Maurice (Alan Armstrong), which alludes to the “scandal” that brought him back to his hometown. Philip speaks in monosyllables and deflects Maurice’s barrage of questions, refusing to display his puppetry skills. Philippe tells Maurice that the house is disgusting with its dark hallways, closed windows, dirt and grime covering every surface. Philip makes several more attempts to get rid of the puppet, but all attempts fail. And when the boy from the train goes missing, he becomes the prime suspect.
At first sight, Opossum may appear as a ghost story going back to basics in the spirit of Jonathan Hill or Jeremy Dyson as well as Andy Nyman. This is a psychological study about a traumatized man who survives in a small town and struggles with the consequences of something terrible that he cannot express. Matthew Holness fires all cylinders: hypnagogic wanderings, animal mutilations, displaced persons, defaced places and missing children. Opossum echo Nicholas Roeg Don’t look now, Tales from the crypt and writing Roald Dahl. Very similar to animation David Firth it captures the essence of nightmares and the typical British casual vibe of weirdness.
The film is repetitive. We see Philip return to the forest and we see him on the bridge, but often we are not sure if these frightening episodes are a dream or reality, or a mixture of both. He briefly contemplates suicide. He watches a news report and discovers that a man matching his description is being sought in connection with the disappearance. Maurice tells him that people are talking - he does not understand what. Maurice leaves and asks Philippe to keep a low profile. He stands at the gate of his old school, and the teacher talks him out of it. He later returns to a childish and frustrated state, demanding to see the teacher, who he hopes will take him to the police.
Adapted from Holness’s own short story The New Supernatural: Tales of Anxiety (first published in 2008 and republished in 2018 by Comma Press), where each story is built on Freud’s clue. The film becomes more abstract and whimsical as the story nears its conclusion. Nightmares and reality overlap, Philip begins to regress into a childish state, visions of balloons in the room are consumed by smoke, Opossum is weighed down by rocks and returns hanging on the wall or in bed face to face with the protagonist. . Miles of desert landscape, abandoned buildings and long empty corridors full of shadows. Maurice intimidates Philippe into sharing disturbing memories of animal cruelty in the swamps. All in Opossum causes anxiety, disgust or bewilderment.
However, it is not only the sinister style, not the content. Despite having only two main characters, opossum Philip is well developed, harmless and perhaps obnoxious, but it’s a testament to Holness’s prowess as a writer and director that we take care of him at the end of the film. Maurice is sleazy and vicious, without any redeeming qualities. And yet he is depicted as completely human, and not a complete monster. Holness stays true to the source material and turns a complex short story into a feature-length screenplay that any other director would find unsuitable for film adaptation. The allegory at the dark heart of the story is, of course, the Possum, the puppet is Philip’s psychological straitjacket, and it’s conveyed both discreetly and subtly, the realization of what she represents is a punch in the stomach for viewers.
There is very little dialogue in the film. Holness took a look at the silent era of filmmaking in Expressionist cinema Roberta Wiene Doctor Caligari’s office as well as F. W. Murnau Nosferatuand it’s an interesting way to tell the story of a mostly silent ventriloquist who refuses (or can’t) express himself out loud. “Films like Nosferatu as well as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920s version), Doctor Caligari’s officeall those dumb dumb horror movies Opossum somehow,” director Alice Verdin of Film4Online said. Opossum. British services videos were developed as warnings to the public about car accidents, child abductions or worst-case scenarios, with disturbing visual content and light-hearted voice-overs, sometimes by Jimmy Saville.
Opossum transfers the image of a killer doll deep into the Uncanny Valley. The creature is the epitome of the Uncanny Vale, with a frighteningly realistic (and yet unlike any human face you’ll ever see) human head and long, furry spider legs. In one horrifying scene, Philip is sitting on his bed with a bag on the edge. First the legs appear, then the face, it watches him for a few seconds and in a quick blurry movement is almost next to him. “The thing is, often the most ‘simple’ and ‘low-tech’ builds end up being the hardest,” creature designer Adam Johansen told HeyUGuys. “The opossum was a difficult puppet to make and a complex operation, as you are dealing with eight long, thin, articulated legs, and a hand-controlled body and head. It takes several puppeteers to control it.”
Opossum it’s a nightmare that deserves a larger audience.
Source: Collider
