THE LOBSTER – Colin Farrell arrives at a seaside resort where singletons are given an ultimatum – pair up or be transformed into an animal of one’s choosing. Farrell’s brother once failed in similar efforts and has now made a sorry return in the form of his pet dog. ‘The Lobster’ is from Yorgos Lanthimos, director of ‘Dogtooth’ and ‘The Killing Of A Sacred Deer’. Like those films, it brings detached, Haneke-like tones to a scenario full of rampant social dysfunction. JG Ballard’s dictum about ‘the death of affect’ seems tailor-made for the population of Farrell’s hotel, where any of the guests might remind you of Kraftwerk’s showroom dummies as they queue to have their boundaries trampled in scenes that often strain for maximum queasiness – room service seems to include chamber maid-enforced dry-humping. The way the characters taIk, it’s like listening to emotionally constipated toddlers, and it’s grating, enough to push the viewer out at times, or at least that was true for me. But sometimes the awkwardness gets rivetingly painful, as is the case when Olivia Coleman does an onstage duet accompanied by the most depressing holiday resort cabaret band this side of Skeggie. On the other hand, the sang-froid elegance of ‘The Lobster’s aesthetic conjures an eeriness that has you absorbed before you realise it’s crept up on you, one reason why the film is so hypnotic. Eventually Farrell escapes the hotel to join a rebellious group of self-described ‘loners’ in a nearby forest, where he and Rachel Weisz find love but don’t really know what to do with it. A blackly comedic dystopian fairy tale that will make you wince as you look on admiringly.
THE NIGHT HOUSE – A teacher struggles to make sense of her husband’s suicide. What was he up to, besides that and a lot of really strange DIY? Maybe a question better left, especially if you’re Rebecca Hall and have just ended up on your own in a big house by a lake in the middle of a vast forest. ‘The Night House’ adopts the look and feel of much recent high-end genre product – spectral palette, measured pace, a sense of inhabiting its own angst in a way that signals refinement… it’s not hard to see where it’s coming from. There are some obvious and hackneyed moves that could almost key it as an upmarket variant of the kind of stuff that served as multiplex fodder a decade ago (the supernatural glut that came along after ‘Insidious’ et al), but the bottom line is, ‘The Night House’ really works. Its two main assets are its atmosphere and its performances. A feeling of constant, rolling menace is just about the hardest thing in horror cinema to pull off, but ‘The Night House’ mostly does that. After a certain point a twilit mood descends, and unease grows with each passing scene. Even the jump scares are very well crafted and thoughtful, particularly one sequence that blends seamlessly into a scary dream and back. It’s in the camerawork, the setting, but probably the main reason the film stays so tonally focussed is the great Rebecca Hall. Here, she puts in a very wintry turn as the teacher dealing with all the loss and abandonment of a sudden death, as well as the strange questions that start to gather in the aftermath. Pretty excellent overall, I thought. Many seem to think the ending was obscure and perhaps slightly fumbled in some way - I partly agree but don’t really care, and anyway it’s not the main reason to watch ‘The Night House.’ Recommended.
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