There
have been plenty of sisters in horror movies, such as The Shining, Twins of Evil, and A
Tale of Two Sisters. Usually, it is immediately clear what we should make of
them and their relationship (assuming that word still applies), but Mula and
Kaja are something else entirely. There is no question their sibling ties have
frayed, but just who we should sympathize with, if anyone at all, is hard to judge.
Regardless, family is the ultimate horror show in Jagoda Szelc’s Tower. A Bright Day (trailer here), which screens
tonight as a selection of the 2018 Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
Kaja
is a little off, but there are good reasons for her aloofness. After a long
absence (obviously implied to be a term of institutionalization), Mula has
allowed her to attend a family celebration. It will be the first communion of
Nina, Kaja’s daughter, whom Mula and her husband have raised as their own. As
part of the ground rules, Kaja must strictly preserve this secret.
Nevertheless, her quick rapport with her biological daughter inevitably
unnerves Mula.
Soon
the responsible sister’s neuroses are bubbling over, but her family hardly
notices. They are too distracted by the sudden miracle-like recovery of her
formerly dementia-addled mother, Ada. For her happy-go-lucky brother Andrzej
and his wife, it is another reason to celebrate, but Mula and the audience will
pick up on ominous signs and a general vibe of foreboding.
Isabella
Eklöf’s Holiday is bound to be the
most divisive film at Brooklyn Horror for content reasons (we saw it at
Sundance and still don’t feel like revisiting it), but Tower is bound to inspire equally divided reactions, solely for its
aesthetic. Just calling it a horror movie is controversial (but defensible). Szelc
truly instills the film with an utterly eerie vibe (it is almost Hanging Rock-esque), but she is
maddeningly committed to its ambiguous indeterminacy. What ultimately happens?
It gets big-picture apocalyptic, yet it is still hard to say with any
certainty.
Regardless
of all that, great credit is due to the ensemble (a few of whom are actually
related), which truly convinces us they are a messy, unruly, angst-ridden
family. Malgorzata Szczerbowska sets off all sorts of alarm bells as Kaja, yet
we sometimes feel instinctively inclined to take her side against her
overbearing sister. Anna Krotoska is forceful yet nakedly exposed (sometimes
literally) as the martyr-complex-suffering Mula. Yet, Artur Krajewski is
probably more unsettling than anyone playing the unnamed priest, who is
undeniably losing his faith and might even be the subject of some sort of insidious
supernatural attack.