Starring Anne Ramsay, Ron E. Rains, Jeremy Holm, Larry Fessenden, Ezra Buzzington and Kristina Klebe

Written and directed by Ted Geoghegan

Shudder, out now

It’s the night of December 27th 1945 and Marla Sheridan (Anne Ramsay) attends a reunion of her old war friends along with her husband Bob (Ron E. Rains). Marla was a spy and a torturer, her leg shattered by a bombing raid. Bob is sweet, grounded, a civilian, united with her comrades only by how much they dislike one another. Archie Stanton (Jeremy Holm) is an openly gay former Colonel about to be tried for war crimes. Paul DiFranco (Ezra Buzzington) is a grim, buttoned-down uniform for whom the war has never ended. Poor doomed Clive ‘Hock’ Hockstatter (Larry Fessenden) is the glue that holds them together and tears them apart. A recent widower, Hock has found God, and… other things. Tonight he’s holding a séance.

Ted Geoghegan’s movie takes place in one room and its theatricality is one of its strongest points as the movie locks its broken veterans and criminals into a room with their ghosts. The cast are uniformly incredibly strong. Buzzington’s DiFranco seethes with impotent rage while Holm’s Archie balances rage and terror with the desperate need to justify his actions. Genre legend Fessenden as Hock does a lot of the emotional heavy lifting and the horror and tragedy of Hock is at the core of the plot and the centre of the room. It’s his damage, damage which we realize is not entirely supernatural, that brings everything and everyone to a boil. These people are all horribly wounded, all unable to move past the dreadful things they’ve done, had to done or chosen to do. The war is over everywhere but there, and Geoghegan and the cast unpack this with dark glee. Especially when Hilde (Kristina Klebe) makes her appearance. A local German woman who Hock is convinced is a Nazi, she becomes the focal point for every theory and every ounce of hate the others have even as they realize their friend kidnapped her.

This is where the movie really kicks into gear. Ramsay is staggeringly good on her own but her scenes with Klebe thrum with tension and conspiratorial kindness. Marla is the only one of them who knows what she did and made her peace with it and the way she deflects the situation around Hilde is subtle, brutal and tells you just why the men are in awe of her service.

As the third act begins, the movie becomes a battle for the souls of everyone in the room. Geoghegan puts the supernatural elements on display with admirable restraint, especially in this final act and that makes the dynamics even more chaotic. Only Marla is a point of stillness, with Archie and Ron pushed past breaking point by events and Hock revealed as villain, victim and everything in between. These are big issues and the wickedly smart, buttoned-down script and extraordinary cast dive all the way into them all. This all culminates in moments of absolute violence and absolute stillness that map trauma onto people in surprising, poignant ways. Holm and Rains are stunningly good in these final scenes and the movie wraps up with an almost Twilight Zone-like sense of something terrible brushing up against the world and leaving the characters to pick up the pieces.

Verdict: Clever, unflinching, tragic and horrifying in multiple ways, this is a horror movie that leaves a mark in the best of ways. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart