Grim Farmer – Weekend
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Vincent Grashaw’s Whispers of the Dead House, a significant, albeit uncomfortable, contribution to the golden fund of the cinematic “southern gothic”
Even though Josiah Graham (Robert Patrick) and all his three children had biblical names, and their last name was the same as that of the most famous evangelist in America, he did not believe in God. And he would rather recognize it as a miracle if a leprechaun appeared before him, defecating a rainbow, than something really sent down from above. But one day he saw something that once and for all changed his attitude to this and that world … When out of nowhere businessmen laid eyes on the Graham farm in Willow Road, Oklahoma didn’t bother), for the first time in many years, Elijah (Nick Stahl), Thomas / Thomas (Scott Hayes) and Maria (Kelly Garner) gathered under the same roof.
The story of “The Fall of the House of Graham” is a reference example of “Southern Gothic”, a venerable and instantly recognizable American genre, ranging in literature from William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury to Edward Lee’s Brain Jelly, and in film from To Kill a Mockingbird. to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. “Whispers of the Dead House” is located approximately in the middle of this row, without slipping into either frenzied Redneck splatterpunk or humanistic sermons. But the darkness in front of my eyes thickens so much that you can touch it, and then unsuccessfully try to wipe it on the leg of your already stubborn jeans. In his previous films, Vincent Grashaw tested his heroes for strength quite ingeniously and ruthlessly, but neither a colony (“Cold Water”, 2013), nor even a regular high school (“And Then I’m Gone”, 2017) can even come close to comparing with nightmares that lie in wait in the circle of his own family. Especially if you come from the South, but not simple, but Gothic.
For all its obvious merits, Whispers of the House of the Dead is not entirely unique. At specialized horror festivals last season, Grashaw’s film more than once crossed paths with his own doppelganger – released a little earlier, but filmed in parallel with Brian Bertino’s Wasteland of Darkness and Evil, where in the same way (and with no less impressive and tragic result) they were going to the parent farm had heterosexual heirs and a mother who had committed suicide hung in a noose. Discrepancies in particulars (the action of “The Wasteland” takes place not in Oklahoma, but in Texas; there are not three brothers and sisters, but two; on the ethno-esoteric plane, it is not nomadic gypsies, but native Indians) that only enhances the feeling of how similarly both films endure on the screen all the “irrational, horrific and criminal thoughts, desires and impulses” inherent, according to the Oxford Literary Dictionary, to the Southern Gothic genre. Even the sonorous names given to them in the Russian box office can be interchanged without any damage to the meaning and mood. However, one argument in favor of The Whispers still seems undeniable, and this, of course, is Robert Patrick as the head of the Graham family (the name of his hero is taken out in the original title of the film – “What Josiah Saw” – absolutely rightly). A very great artist, who already washed away the seemingly life-long stigma of the “liquid terminator” a hundred years ago, demonstrates a virtuoso and incredibly creepy immersion to the bottom of the consciousness of the “deep people”, and not only Oklahoma; goes beyond the southern Gothic to the expanses of the early Vladimir Sorokin. After an unbearable, but what is there, powerful scene in which Josiah discovers obscene magazines in Thomas and makes him “ride his bike” in his presence, thereby proving that he is a “real man”, there is no doubt that Patrick is impeccably would look like Ivan Alekseev, the father of the title character of Marina’s Thirtieth Love. And when Josiah, bending over the bed of his son, excitedly says: “Mother didn’t tell you anything, but the light that spoke for her said what you would need to do,” it seems that there is a different assignment than in Sorokin’s story “Memorial Word” , Thomas Graham doesn’t have to wait: GET THE DUDE AND SICK THE TOP.
In theaters from 24 August
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