Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Anne Ramsay, Ron E. Rains, Jeremy Holm, Larry Fassenden, Ezra Buzzington, Kristina Klebe
Intro:
… extremely entertaining and chilling …
After a six year absence, director Ted Geoghehan (We Are Still Here) steps behind the camera again for an unnerving and emotional ghost story set in post-second world war Brooklyn.
The year is 1945, and four friends and veterans of the war gather at a brownstone to support one of their own. There’s former interrogator Marla (Anne Ramsay, The Taking of Deborah Logan) and her Pentagon penpusher husband, Bob (Ron E. Rains). Flamboyant Archie (Jeremy Holm, House of Cards) might be outwardly jovial, but is currently facing charges of war crimes while being supported by Paul (Ezra Buzzington). The man they’ve come to rally around is Clive (Larry Fessenden), whose wife, Susan, suicided one month earlier convinced that her neighbours were German spies sent to get her.
Before the group down their first whisky, Clive is on to them about performing a séance to reach out to his beloved Susan. Although everyone is sceptical to some extent, they agree because, look, if you can’t help a friend out when they’re grieving, when can you? It’s not a spoiler to say that, surprisingly, Clive knows what he’s doing and is successful in his endeavours; proving that there is indeed an afterlife. However, things quickly fall apart when, not only does one of the aforementioned German neighbours, Hildegard (Kristina Klebe) make a surprise appearance, but they all realise that they are supernaturally trapped in Clive’s living room.
Geoghehan uses the confines of this one environment to slowly put the pressure on his troupe. Before the cruor hits the wall, the friends are wide grinned and bushy tailed; able to overlook each other’s past transgressions. When it’s joked that Marla was more torturer than interrogator during the war, she’s able to laugh it off in a way that you can only do with close friends. However, with nowhere to run, Geoghegan shows these same misdemeanours being used as ammunition against each other. Paul, in particular, appears to see it as his patriotic duty to take chunks out of the others; as seen when Archie’s openness about this homosexuality is later used as a reason to treat him with disdain. If this is how they treat each other, then imagine what it’s like for outcast, Hildegard.
On the basis of apparently nothing, except not being American enough, her character is regularly and eventually violently called into question. And woe be tide if she has any thoughts on what they’ve done. Whatever our ‘heroes’ have done was in defence of their country. “I followed my orders to the letter,” says one veteran without a hint of irony, when confronted.
Geoghehan has a stellar cast going to bat for him. From the humanity brought by Ramsay to the snarling of Buzzington, it’s impossible to identify one particular person standing above everybody else, as they embolden the director’s carefully constructed script. Despite its 1940s setting, watching them fight about who’s to blame for their troubles, it couldn’t be more relevant with today’s governments – looking at you America and UK – finding the most vulnerable targets to victimise, in order to distract from their own failures.
Overall, Brooklyn 45 is an extremely entertaining and chilling tale which reminds you regularly that even in a world of ghosts and ghoulies, the scariest monster in the world is mankind.
