ASCENDANT

Australia, 2021, 12 minutes, Colour.
Charlotte Best, Jonny Pasvolsky, Alex Menglet.
Directed by Antaiine Furlong.

One of the creative aspects of filmmaking in Australia is that young writers, producers, directors, have possibilities for developing their projects with the help of Commonwealth and state funding. Often the films are small-budget, rely on character actor casts rather than stars, are able to exercise technical expertise, especially when they make genre films – and many of them have made small horror films. This is one of those films.

However, one of the difficulties is financing distribution, a reliance on international audiences (and often some international settings and accents with a touch of the American). And, distribution often relies on streaming services. This also happens with this film.

Actually, it is the kind of horror-drama that is popular with audiences of specialised festivals of horror films. The title actually refers to a very tall building in Shanghai, a hotel, over 100 floors, and a series of elevators. One particular elevator is a lot in the ascendant but it also has some crashing down, descendant.

On the whole, the action is confined to the cabin of the elevator, making the early part of the film quite claustrophobic, not just for the young woman who has been abducted, drugged, awakens in the elevator to find herself bound and gagged, but for the audience itself. There is some relief for the audience – not for the young woman, Aria (Charlotte Best). She can escape in her memories and imagination – but they are visualised, however briefly, for some relief for the audience. Aria remembers her twin sister, playing on the beach, their devoted parents, the loving father, and the suggestion of some mysterious powers that the girls have. Just suggestions in the early part.

The action is literally jolting, especially when the lift suddenly descends, Aria hanging suspended and then crashing to the floor (quite a number of times).

There is some explanation as to what happens – and the use of a television screen in the elevator cabin, showing Aria’s father, being tortured, the standover interrogator, Russian, with a couple of thugs, wanting to get information from her father. He refuses. She does not know the answers.

Aria also has the benefit of a mobile phone – although, at one stage, she has to get herself out of the elevator and onto high beams in the shaft to recover her phone.

This kind of mysterious claustrophobic thriller may not appeal to a number of audiences – but for those who find the synopsis and its mysteries rather tantalising, most probably their film.

1. The title? Expectations? The elevator? The high building? The many floors?

2. The unfolding of the plot? The abduction, the imprisonment of Aria? The taking of her father, the torture, motivations, the search for the missing expert? The Russian background?

3. The more exotic aspect of the screenplay, cosmic, superpowers? The twin girls? The visualising of their past, with their father, together, the secrets, the powers? Aria and her growing up? Her bond with her father?

4. The sequences in the elevator, the confined space, claustrophobic, Aria coming to consciousness, trapped? The lift going up and down? The sudden falls, her being suspended, collapsing onto the floor? Her calling out, confusion, anguish? Her trying to get out, the heights, the beams, recovering the mobile phone? The importance of the mobile
phone, communication, battery running low, her uncle Jack and the communications? (And the irony of the revelation that it was a Russian impersonation?)

5. The screen in the elevator, the Russian, her father, the interrogation, the torture, blood? His appeal to his daughter? The device of the threat coming by visuals?

6. Aria, her response, her memories? Her fears? The attempt at escape? The physical consequences?

7. The Russian, brutal, the henchmen, their participating in the torture?

8. The father, his silence, anguish with his daughter? Pleading with her? Is not revealing the truth?

9. The deception, father and daughter speaking, the fact that there was no missing expert? Aria and her powers?

10. Aria, discovering powers, exercising them?

11. Aria, her future, the Russians, her father?

12. An Australian thriller, Shanghai setting, filmed in Australia, the Australian cast? Accents, issues, for an international audience?