by Ali Mozaffari
Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Lucy Lovegrove, Monique Fisher, Darcy Kent
Intro:
… twisted and compelling …
Melbourne’s James Hunter has made a successful transition to feature films with his debut, The Latcher. Following his ambitious short, Nest and its successful festival run a few years ago, Hunter took on a big task to self-produce a contained, yet bold indie horror which shows a great taste for and knowledge of the genre.
Working with a familiar trope of motherhood and pregnancy as the premise, the script manages to separate it from other examples by adding a folk tale that becomes the source of horror and the engine of the film. With nods to Rosemary’s Baby, Don’t Look Now and The Babadook, the film focuses on the grief of losing a child and connecting it to the increasingly more present ‘monster’.
The direction and editing coalesce for a thoughtful balance between jump scares and moments of grief and trauma that feeds them in the first place.
Hunter brings his distinct stylistic sensibility to the film by shooting in academy ratio and creating claustrophobic compositions and close-ups which feel in sync with the fear and paranoia that the protagonist is going through. Touchingly played by Lucy Lovegrove, the protagonist is a midwife, who ironically lost her own baby and has been caught in a web of grief and trauma ever since. The film sets up a parallel to her arc with one of the supporting characters, which results in a clever pay off via a twisted and compelling catharsis.
The world building of the film is clever and creative and manages to achieve a lot with the location and the effective work of production designers Valentina Serebrennikova and Lufan Shi.
The Latcher is a promising debut that proves yet again that a lot can be achieved on a limited budget if the storytelling and filmmaking is imaginative.
