THE FORGOTTEN. (2014) DISTRIBUTED BY STICKYBACK PICTURES. WRITTEN BY OLIVER FRAMPTON AND JAMES HALL. DIRECTED BY OLIVER FRAMPTON. STARRING CLEM TIBBER, SHAUN DINGWALL, ELARICA GALLACHER AND LYNDSEY MARSHAL. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
METRODOME are surely onto a winner with this one. Described as both 'a stunning directorial debut' for Oliver Frampton and 'a fantastic British horror' in general, this is one of the best and scariest films I've ever been asked to review.
Now, I know that when you watch a great film, it tends to push other great stuff you've watched out of your mind, and that's fair enough. But it'll take a truly exceptional horror film to make me forget THE FORGOTTEN. You see what I did there...? Believe me though, I mean it. This film is unforgettable. I can see myself watching it again and again and again until I can recite it by heart.
Its strengths lie in two things. One, the terrific performances of the four main characters. Two, the setting. The action mostly takes place in a deserted block of council flats which seem to have been long since abandoned by the people who used to inhabit them. Definitely long enough for the whole block to have fallen into depressingly grim disrepair, anyway.
These flats look genuinely deserted and dilapidated. Yes, I know I normally love horror films set in old country mansions surrounded by woodland, but this setting of creepy-as-f**k urban decay does the business equally well, if not better. These flats are terrifying. Even in broad daylight, you need lanterns and torches to light them.
They have downstairs bedrooms, which must be reached by dark stone staircases. The wallpaper peels, the floors are strewn with rubbish and the shadows reign supreme. By which I mean the all-encompassing darkness, naturally, not the pop group from the 'Sixties who brought us that savage instrumental work, Apache...!
I wasn't quite telling the truth when I said that the flats are deserted. At least one of 'em is occupied, if illegally. Fourteen-year-old Tommy Turner and his mentally unstable dad live there because Dad's life is falling apart and they've got nowhere else to go.
They live off takeaways because they've got no electricity for cooking with or running water for washing dishes. Dad seems to exist by selling the copper wire he can filch from the other flats. Tommy's mum's gone 'away' somewhere (Dad won't say where) so, when Dad needs female company, he brings home prostitutes. Isn't that nice...?
As if all the physical privations weren't bad enough (they are!), Tommy hears terrifying tapping and scraping noises on the other side of his bedroom wall in the dead of night that freak the living daylights out of him.
That flat on the other side of the wall's empty though, isn't it? All the flats are. That's what Dad says anyway, when a petrified Tommy tries to tell him what he's heard.
Dad's not abusive to the sensitive, timid Tommy physically, but some might say that bringing a vulnerable young motherless boy to live in what even Dad's prostitute describes as 'a shithole' is an act of abuse in itself.
The Mammy in me spent the whole film worrying myself sick about the poor little lad, who has artistic talent and a gentle nature but zero street-smarts, unfortunately. And if you're gonna make it out of the Farlow estate alive, you need those in spades.
Luckily for Tommy, the one bit of luck in his miserable life, his new friend Carmen has street-smarts coming out of her ears. Reared in rough council estates like Farlow, the slightly older Carmen saves Tommy from some local bullies and earns his undying gratitude and respect for life.
The scene where the beautiful young Rihanna-lookalike fearlessly wades in with a piece of wood to rout the thugs is magnificent. What a girl! Poor lonely Tommy really got lucky when he met her.
Carmen is more receptive to Tommy's stories about nocturnal hauntings than Dad is. She agrees to stay over in Drayton House with him one dark night and, when the knockings and tappings inevitably start up, the ballsy teenager does the unthinkable.
'Stay here,' she orders a paralysed Tommy, before taking a torch and going next door to Number Twenty-Three. When she reaches the pitch-black staircase going down into the bowels of the flat, she hesitates. Then she takes a deep breath and makes her descent...
I probably shouldn't be giving this away, but there's no annoying CGI in this film to put you off. All the scares are real. No-one looks into a mirror and sees a 'scary' face. No ghostly figures whoosh back and forth to silly accompanying sound effects.
The sound effects in THE FORGOTTEN are so genuinely eerie they'll chill your blood. Half the time they sound like the wind howling down the corridors of an abandoned sanitarium and the other half they sound like nothing on earth.
Who would have ever thought that council flats, even abandoned ones, could be so scary? I was so frightened watching this film that I turned on all the lights in the house, even though I normally watch all my films in the dark to heighten the atmosphere.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
I'm curious about what the ending was supposed to mean. From the conversation between Tommy and Carmen's adopted dad and at the end when Tommy said he had forgotten her name. Can you explain?
ReplyDeleteI have the same problem. Liked the movie, but did not quite understand the ending. What happened to Carmen? What was wrong with Tommy's dad and what happened to him after he left the hospital?
DeleteWhat happened tp Carmen? and Tommy's dad? Very confused about the ending, though the rest of the movie was very well made.
DeleteI'm curious what the ending was supposed to mean. From the conversation between Tommy and Carmen's adopted dad, to the ending scene where Tommy said he forgot her name. Any thoughts?
ReplyDeleteI'm curious about what the ending was supposed to mean. From the conversation between Tommy and Carmen's adopted dad and at the end when Tommy said he had forgotten her name. Can you explain?
ReplyDelete