Across the River [Oltre il Guado] (2013)

This Italaina film, directed by Lorenzo Bianchini, is a curious effort.  It is pretty much setting and atmosphere in search of a story. 

There are some very ambitious ideas here - the film is virtually a one-man show, with our attention centered squarely on wildlife researcher Marco Contrada (played by Renzo Gariup) who wanders into an old abandoned village, redolent with menace, and finds himself somehow unable to leave.

It starts brilliantly - the first half is an assured demonstration of building up unease, as Marco potters about putting cameras on foxes and so on, before exploring the obviously doom laden abandoned village. Even with essentially one character and virtually no dialogue, it is is fascinating. The use of sound is particularly good - every crunch of gravel, scrape and creak seems to intimate a mysterious danger. The cinematography is brilliant - stark and drained of colour, to the point where it seems we are watching a series of sepia photographs come to life.

The word we are looking for is rustic.  very rustic.  And deadly.

It gets less certain as it goes on, with the director opting for some fairly tired tropes and the ending is disappointing. There isn't any real explanation as to what is going on or what happened to the village.  Attempts to offer context - via cutaway scenes to an old man muttering darkly about Things That Happened Long Ago don't help us understand what is happening or increase our fear for Marco.

It wasn't much to look at outside, but the interior is quite charming.

The successful part dwells on familiar terrors too - but the ones that are rarely explored in modern horror films.  The sense of isolation conjured is unsettling, and the silence suggests an even greater separation from humanity than just being somewhere in the woods - Marco might as well be on Mars, not just the woods.

And the sense of transgression implied in the title - of crossing from one realm (safety, life, the present) into another (danger, death, the past) taps into a primal fear.  Marco's role as a scientist makes his progress into the supernatural realm especially poignant - someone who observes and measures and records encounters something incomprehensibly hostile and inexplicable.  There is a sense that he has - innocently - violated the sanctuary of the evil and brought it out of its slumber.

But in the end, the director feels he needs to offer some sort of explanation as to what is going on.  It isn't terribly interesting and certainly not original.  Turning to a human explanation - bad stuff happened and revenge is being sought - it lacks the primitive terror provoked by folk horror, and by not framing it in a sufficiently developed historical narrative it lacks the power of social horror.

Nice to meet you, sinister girl in the woods.  Is this your favourite tree?

As we move towards the climax, jump scares with Sudden Nasty Faces dispel the dread that has been carefully built up, and the final minutes degenerate into incoherence as our cast of one is suddenly multiplied - but since the new comers are nameless Red Shirts we aren't too engaged in their fate.

This seems to be a common failing in modern horror - directors seem adept at finding stark and terrifying locations and creating suspense or menace.  But the purpose of narrative seems to elude.  As they move towards their Big Reveal - and there is always a big reveal, they lack the courage to simply leave things in a state of terrifying irresolution - they fall back on the standard, familiar and tired tropes.  Weird girls with twisted up faces, sudden screeches and sudden spurts of gore and viscera.  It might be shocking but it isn't horrifying, and following on from such an expertly crafted first hour of the film, the finale is a disappointment.

How much more mysterious and terrifying would this film have been if the director had played out his idea to the final extreme, and simply kept Marco inexplicably trapped, increasingly terrified and desperate?

I think that would have been a far more disturbing and memorable trip across the river.

Star Rating: **