by Annette Basile
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:
Benedict Cumberbatch, Henry Boxall, Richard Boxall, David Thewlis
Intro:
… strangely beautiful, well paced and moving …
The central characters have no names. They are simply Dad, the Boys and Crow – a human-sized creature with human legs and an avian head. Benedict Cumberbatch as Dad plays a widower, consumed by grief over the sudden death of his wife. He is, to use Nick Cave’s words, a “creature of loss”. He neglects his dad-duties towards his sons – played by real-life brothers Henry and Richard Boxall – and his pain is manifested in the strange creature that is Crow.
Crow is spectacularly voiced by David Thewlis, with Eric Lampaert inside the somewhat awkward crow costume. A visual metaphor for grief, Crow physically and brutally batters Dad – just as much as the sorrow knocks Dad’s psyche around. Crow is Dad’s tormentor and occasional comforter, taunting him with delicious lines in this essentially modern-day gothic horror tale.
At one point, Dad is on the sofa, deep in sorrow with melancholy music on the turntable. Crow calls the grieving husband’s musical taste “fuckin’ awful” – it’s “middle-aged, middle-class” music. The bizarre bird tells Dad that he’s a “Guardian-reading, beard-stroking” widower. “You’re such a cliché,” echoes Thewlis’s distinct voice. Dad pleads to be left alone, but Crow uses his enormous beak to scratch the stylus across the vinyl, and puts on another record – something darker and bluesier by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. The critter makes Dad unwillingly dance. Then the camera shifts and we see Dad through the window – he’s dancing alone. There’s no oversized bird pulling the strings.
But the Boys also see Crow, and this film is about their sorrow as well. The primary school-aged Boxall brothers are excellent, while the perfectly cast Cumberbatch effortlessly moves between fever dream, painful reality and apparent hallucination with every cell in his body present in the character.
The cinematography is sometimes striking – from dimly-lit, gold-hued interiors to stark or slightly surreal winter landscapes. It’s all so finely crafted, which makes it strange that a little more care wasn’t taken with the creation of Crow’s look.
Making its premiere at Sundance, this is horror is both visual and psychological, and while it’s not scary or especially gory, you feel Dad’s visceral fear.
Written and directed by Dylan Southern – who has a background in music videos and co-helmed the excellent music doco Meet Me in the Bathroom) – the film has been adapted from Max Porter’s acclaimed book, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers (a play on the title of the Emily Dickinson poem, Hope is the Thing with Feathers).
It’s a strangely beautiful, well paced and moving film that shows that grief is not only something that tears you apart, but it is also – like Crow – an uneasy yet necessary companion.
