DARK WHISPERS VOLUME 1
Australia, 2019, 99 minutes, Colour/black and white.
Andrea Demetriades, Asher Keddie, Anthony la Paglia, Ed Speleers, Tosh Greenslade.
Directed by:
An anthology of Australian short stories, one with aboriginal themes, another with Indonesian themes, another filmed in Dorset. As with most anthologies, audiences will pick and choose with the ones that they enjoy best.
The framework is a young woman visiting her mother’s house, a touch of the eerie, her being drawn to a locked book and starting to read it, each short story shown with its title on a page, the woman reading, having a variety of reactions of empathy with the stories, horror reactions, an atmosphere of creepiness in the house but she is compelled to keep reading. She is played by Andrea Demetriades.
The short stories range in time, none more than 10 minutes. The tone is set with the Birthday Girl, a mother at hospital in the lift, having a hallucination with the ghostly presence of her young daughter reminiscing about her birthdays. The tone is changed to a suburban house, a shed, a middle-aged man trying to hold his breath under the bath water. Seems normal, but his wife on edge, he goes fishing, the taunts of his mates, wants to catch a mermaid. Then the horror when he has actually a mermaid captured in his shed, his wanting to feed her, her fears and reaction – but, all a hallucination as his wife comes to rescue her, but his taking her to the jetty, a terrified hostage, and pushing her into the water. The issue is a middle-aged man’s sexual power obsession.
A brief animation film follows, Gloomy Valentine, the sadness of a young woman, her longings, with the grotesquerie of how of the characters appear. Then there is obsession, a woman who wants to be a celebrity, what Me, photographed, recognised, having an outing with her boyfriend who is upset by her.
Storytime shows a group of aboriginal children in the swamps, sharing stories of the strange woman of the swamps – and their being swallowed up by her. This is quite in contrast to The Ride, a young man in the countryside getting a lift, a bigoted driver talking about sex with black women, insulting a Chinese and then knocking him down, forcing the young man to bury him – the young man arriving in town for his university course, meetings girlfriend who wants him to meet her father: the driver. The driver is played by Anthony la Paglia and the student by Ed Speelers.
White Song is quite exotic, Indonesian setting, images, themes of marriage, sexuality, domestic abuse, birth, death. Exotic in quite a different way is an inner-city story, a young woman who glances at her dates neck, looking vampiric, bites him, has another date, with a dentist but instead of biting him, flirts and has her teeth redone even with a pair of gold fangs!
Little Share a House of Horrors is obviously paying tribute to Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors as well as the musical remake by Frank Oz, a shop, an eccentric owner, a young woman stealing an exotic plant, her housemates high, drinking her herbal potion, convulsing, and the strange plant growing rapidly and stranglingly.
The last story, The Intruder, has an eerie stranger Wanting a young woman at night, her calling the police, her friend with whom she had fallen out knocking at the door, manifesting a wound, wanting to reconcile and have forgiveness – a ghost.
This anthology gives young Australian writers and directors an opportunity for short films – with help from some actors including, Asher Keddiee in The Intruder and, Tosh Greenslade, who showed his versatile comic talent in Shaun Micallif’s Mad as Hell.
