Richard Blackburn

Strange, literate, eerie and subversive, this low budget chiller more than makes up for its lack of budget with ideas, intelligence and a sumptuously eerie atmosphere. On the face of it the plot is relatively simple: a young Christian girl, Lila Lee, (Cheryl Smith) runs away from home to visit her father, a notorious gangster, who is on his deathbed. Lost in the woods she ends up at the house of Lemora (Lesley Taplin), a vampire and leader of a strange, religious cult who seeks to initiate Lila Lee into her cult. Directed and co-written by Richard Blackburn the film comes across as a surreal Gothic fairy tale. It is a clever allegory that covers issues as diverse as religious faith and hypocrisy, duality, deception and the journey form adolescence into adulthood with all its attendant nightmares. Everything about the story seems to carry some form of symbolic significance and builds to a climax which seems to suggest the need to accept who we are. The performances are all commendable. with Lesley Taplin particularly good as the vampiric and otherworldy Lemora; her wooden acting style strangely working in favour. Cheryl Smith also does well as the betwitched young girl out of her depth in a nightmarish world. This is a genuinely creepy and atmospheric film. It has unique and intriguing aspect with many sequences coming across as both bizarre and mesmerizing. A hugely intriguing film that stands testament to what can be done with a low budget if a little imagination, a little originality and a little intelligence is applied.… (plus d'informations)