Portraiture rarely turns out well in
horror stories—just ask the model in Poe’s “Oval Portrait.” Religious
experiences generally turn out badly as well. Little Siobhan Callahan has the misfortune
of combining both. Her infamous disappearance inspires an American artist to take
a pilgrimage to the scene of the “dark miracle” in Michael Tully’s Don’t Leave Home (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in Brooklyn.
The title sounds like a gimmicky riff on
American Express, but it is actually a moody, existential Irish horror movie,
very much in the tradition of The Devil’s Doorway. In fact, the films share two principle cast members. As is usually
the case with tales of mysterious evil forces, it began years ago. The Callahan
family worked for the parish priest, Father Alastair Burke, a skilled amateur
painter. One day, Burke painted Siobhan as she stood at an early Christian
altar in the forest, where she seemed to become bathed in light. The she disappeared,
both from the canvass and real life.
Years later, Melanie Thomas is trying to
depict the incident in her work. She is a diorama artist, not unlike Toni
Colette in Hereditary, but fortunately
she doesn’t have a family of her own. After a getting an unfair critical
drubbing, Thomas receives a call from Father Burke’s caretaker, Shelly. He read
about her show and wants to see and most likely buy the Callahan piece for
himself, so off she goes to Ireland. It turns out Burke is nice old gent, who
clearly remains haunted by events from his past. On the other hand, Shelly seems
to mass produce bad vibes. Their taciturn handyman-manservant Padraig is not
particularly welcoming either.
Thomas’s experiences on their secluded
estate are all kinds of Gothic, channeling all the usual suspects, from Du Maurier
to The Innocents to Hammer Films, but
Tully has something rather fresh and original up his sleeve. He also has two terrific
trump cards in Lalor Roddy and Helena Bereen (also recently seen together in The Devil’s Doorway), who are both
terrific as Father Burke and Shelly. Here Roddy is refined and anguished but
also unsettling, in the tradition of vintage Peter Cushing, while Bereen just
has a knack for putting viewers immediately on edge.
