{"id":21723,"date":"2016-08-04T09:49:47","date_gmt":"2016-08-04T13:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=21723"},"modified":"2020-07-29T11:12:10","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T15:12:10","slug":"shelley-2016-fantasia-international-film-festival-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/04\/shelley-2016-fantasia-international-film-festival-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Shelley (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"shelley\"<\/a>In a remote house completely off the grid, Louise and her husband Kasper hire a Romanian maid to help with house chores and take care of their chickens.\u00a0 As the bond between Louise and Elena, the maid, grows, Louise asks her to carry a child for her as she cannot do so herself.\u00a0 After careful considerations, Elena accepts.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this is where the honeymoon phase ends and things take a turn for the odd and creepy.<\/p>\n

The film is directed by Ali Abbasi who co-wrote with Maren Luise Kaehne.\u00a0 Together they created believable characters in an interesting setting as they live completely off the grid without any technology but make due with what they have.\u00a0 In this film, it\u2019s a choice by the characters and not imposed in any way.\u00a0 The characters have different backgrounds and speak different languages, leading them to speak English to understand each other which is a nice way to get a European film shot in English for a good part of it.\u00a0 The differences in cultures also add nicely to the depth of the characters.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, these characters are given very little to do that is of interest.\u00a0 Even when Elena\u2019s pregnancy takes a turn for the weird, it\u2019s barely enough to keep the attention which is too bad as it could have been great had it been exploited better, a great take on pregnancy horror, a sub-genre we see very little of (Grace, A l\u2019interieur, Rosemary\u2019s Baby), that fell flat without enough happening or strong enough happenings.<\/p>\n

The very small cast keeps the film feeling intimate and minimal with three strong lead performances.\u00a0 In the part of Louise, Ellen Dorrit Petersen brings a calm and quiet, yet strong presence.\u00a0 She handles things beautifully when it would have been so easy to go into overacting in a movie with this subject.\u00a0 Together with actress Cosmina Stratan as Elena, they build a visible friendship and bond and then, when things change, they show the strain between them without saying much.\u00a0 Supporting these two performances is Peter Christoffersen as Louise\u2019s husband Kasper.\u00a0 He does well with the smaller part he is given.\u00a0 His emotions feel rawer, less controlled. The rest of the small cast is also talented and believable in their parts.<\/p>\n

Shelley is another film with two cinematographers working in tandem where which scene is whose is indistinguishable.\u00a0 Nadim Carlsen and Sturla Brandth Grovlen do this while bringing serenity to the scenes, particularly the outdoors sequences.\u00a0 The film looks peaceful, even once the creep factor is turned up.\u00a0 Many scenes on the lake could be turned into a tourism add for overworked city folks.<\/p>\n

Supporting all of this is the music by Martin Dirkov which is subtle yet effective.\u00a0 Some of the scenes when things are going oddly and supernatural elements may be involved, the music bring home the creepiness while not becoming overbearing or telling viewers what to feel.<\/p>\n

While Shelley is an interesting take on the pregnancy horror sub-genre, the film is very slow with very little going on, making it less interesting than it had potential for.\u00a0 The less is more approach usually works for this reviewer, however here it was much too little and lead to an expected ending with very little pay off.<\/p>\n

Fantasia International Film Festival ran from July 14th<\/sup> until August 3rd<\/sup>, 2016 and will be back in the summer of 2017.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a remote house completely off the grid, Louise and her husband Kasper hire a Romanian maid to help with house chores and take care of their chickens.\u00a0 As the bond between Louise and Elena, the maid, grows, Louise asks her to carry a child for her as she cannot do so herself.\u00a0 After careful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2497,1284,12],"tags":[302,367,477,885,1008],"class_list":["post-21723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fantasia-fest","category-festivalsevents","category-movie-reviews","tag-drama","tag-foreign","tag-horror","tag-s","tag-supernatural"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21725,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21723\/revisions\/21725"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}