Bit of an announcement before we head into the review. If you visit this site enough, you’ll notice that the frequency of the reviews has slowed, especially with theatrically released films. Well, I’m using this chance to state that I’ll no longer be reviewing theatrically released titles like I used to, sure there will be exceptions to the rule, but they are now a thing of the past. Instead, I’ll be dedicating my writing time to home releases, from the hand full of distribution labels that I have worked with. There will also be reviews of festival films (with Raindance 2013 being our début), and short films (this very article). My free time will thank me, and I’ll finally be able to work more on my short films. It’s all for the best in the long run. So fear not, No Frame of Reference is going nowhere; it’s just the goal posts that are being moved. Now without further ado, here is my review of Leslie Simpson’s debut short film – Grandpa.
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Like any sub categorisation of horror, the haunted house is as formulaic as any other, especially when it comes to the mainstream. For any titles of interest you have to fish a little deeper, by looking at some of the work coming out of South East Asia, Spain or directors like Mike Flanagan and Ti West. Contrary to the utter cliché that is consuming megaplex horror now, there is a small group of people who are restoring some semblance of order to the haunted house. For an actor- director who has displayed a clear affinity with the genre through his career, it’s surely of no great surprise to report that Leslie Simpson’s 15 minute short, Grandpa, fits firmly at the higher end of this quality spectrum.
Simpson himself stars as Luke, husband to Audrey (Claudia Greenstone) and Father to Milo (Francesco Basile). The family has moved into their (one can only assume) recently deceased Grandpa’s house to renovate and sell on, but it isn’t as cut and dry as that, the sale of the house has hit a stumbling block and Milo is having night terrors. He is seeing his Grandpa, and his Dad is taking out his frustrations on the poor kid. Of all the haunted house tropes, the most profound one to appear comes in the form of “Bad Dad”, which Luke takes to its very apex. As Simpson himself says, “if you remember any of this when your older, you’ll be telling your therapist that I’m the boogieman”.
Luke being an impatient and unsympathetic father is far from the sole talking point in Grandpa. Director Simpson perfectly captures the chaos of the house through the fevered imagination of a scared child. With that the house they have a set is an absolute gold mine, with its dark corners and mysterious corridors are brought to foreboding life by Karl Siemon’s ominous Cinematography. He brings meaning and depth to those corners and crevices, even a simple chair is an effective item of horror. Keeping in mind that a lot of this short is observed through a child’s imagination, all those unfamiliar noises of the building crew going about their business, there’s an awful lot of the unknown. This is where Simon Rosenberg’s Sound design turns all of that potential and promise into something genuinely eerie. A doubly impressive achievement when there is so much to get across in so little time.
All of this aspects point towards that which holds Grandpa together, that is the detail. The house itself is a great prop and within that plot there are little details and touches scattered throughout that hint at something strange afoot. Those details are just that, hints nothing concrete. Even though the arrival of the titular Grandpa is accompanied by a cacophonous wail in the score, that ideology that the scariest things are left unseen is still practiced. Thanks to the often recycled promise of ambiguity. Is any of this real? Is it all a hallucination? Is it just Milo’s imagination? None of these questions are answered for the greater good.
There it is then; Grandpa’s a simple story of a haunted house that happens to be entirely open to interpretation. There are two small problems; the very appearance of the bad dad tropes suggests one-dimensionality and a limited budget, but to pick on Grandpa for industry wide complaints is far from just. With a nicely subdued performance from the young lead and a complete understanding for what makes a horror film tick, we should look forward to Leslie Simpson directing some tantalising horror films down the line.
Filed under: Cinema, Short Films
