|
★★★★☆
26 June 2019
A movie review of IN FABRIC. |
“Be bold. Your date will compliment you,” Miss Luckmoore (Fatma Mohamed)
Giallo is totally overrated as a movie genre. And the modern references have been done to death. Writer-director Peter Strickland has spent his last two feature film projects (THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY, BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO) spoofing and homaging the acquired taste to mixed effect. The opening credits sequence worryingly suggested he might be ploughing the same fatigued furrow. However, hold the perspiration, IN FABRIC is an enjoyable and unsettling horror-comedy mash-up. This initial montage is packed with screams and grimaces, foreshadowing what is to come.
Giallo is totally overrated as a movie genre. And the modern references have been done to death. Writer-director Peter Strickland has spent his last two feature film projects (THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY, BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO) spoofing and homaging the acquired taste to mixed effect. The opening credits sequence worryingly suggested he might be ploughing the same fatigued furrow. However, hold the perspiration, IN FABRIC is an enjoyable and unsettling horror-comedy mash-up. This initial montage is packed with screams and grimaces, foreshadowing what is to come.
|
|
Great horror makes the mundane and everyday intimidating. IN FABRIC does it with clothing (specifically a demonic dress), a department store, and the annual winter shopping sales. Consumers are the targets. Interwoven is not just surface stylisation and genre-bending engaging absurdity, there is subtle commentary on class, race, gender, toxic masculinity, vampiric consumerism, etc. The vulnerability of the lonely is a staple of thrillers. Where the odds are against the protagonist. Safety through solidarity is the implied bulwark. Sheila (Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who should be the next M in Bond by the way) is surrounded by people, yet is not cared for. A divorcee bank clerk leading a humdrum existence, a red dress catches her eye.
Sales assistant Miss Luckmoore is part of a disquieting department store, Dentley & Soper’s. She loquaciously speaks in other-worldly prose. The shop does not have changing rooms, it has “transformation spheres”. Even though seemingly set in the 1980s, Dentley & Soper’s collects Sheila’s data. Our lead is the next victim of a red dress that emits the rage of aeons – something from another dimension à la Stephen King.
|
|
(Set in the past. How many genre flicks neutralise the mobile phone? For all the criticisms and negatives surrounding that piece of tech, there is something so reassuring about having it on you. Maybe we have become inured over the last 20 years? But that thing in your pocket is seismic to cinema and us.)
Sheila is not beaten down, but she appears rudderless. She does not acknowledge she is in a rut and therefore cannot take steps to seek fulfilment. The horror works on multiple layers. Being trapped in the prison of thankless routine creates its own type of terror for many.
Mixed in with the dread of deadly clothing is the comedic portrayal of modern living irritations. IN FABRIC touches on incompetent, inappropriate bosses to the indignities of crap dates and ungrateful kids. Even character names are both oddball and funny: Neal the Deal, Ribs, Bananas Brian, Adonis, etc. In tandem with the humour is the unnerving surreal nightmare of everyday existence.
All the cast are game. They deftly skate across the eerie, the bizarre, and the laughable.
|
|
