By Jackie Shannon
Private investigator, Parker (Lindsay Farris), has been hired to perform surveillance on a young woman, Tenneal (Stephanie King), by an unknown client. Setting up shop in an abandoned apartment across from her home, Parker is ready to collect his “easy money”…but there are strange noises in the apartment. It could just be old pipes creaking. But how does one explain the jar of black tar and eyeballs that sits on a shelf, or the animal corpses that appear under his bed?
Haunting and horrific, Observance feeds into a paranoia that dwells within us all. The plot was initially clear-cut, but as the edit took shape, director, Joseph Sims-Dennett, realised that there was something much more important at stake for the film’s leading character. “He’s completely powerless, as though he’s being used and manipulated for this unknown purpose. That is a really powerful thing to talk about in a film.” Sims-Dennett tells FilmInk. “That’s genuinely how a lot of people think about their lives. And conveying that feeling in this film felt far more powerful.”
Find out all about this provocative, utterly original thriller right here, in this Q&A hosted by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas.
