These
days, Christmas horror is all about being naughty rather than nice. The lamer
ones are transgressive just for the sake offending, while the best are darkly
comic. Yet, there is a different tradition, exemplified by the BBC’s annual
literary short film program, A Ghost
Story for Christmas. Of course, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is the granddaddy of all Christmas horror (Jacob
Marley and the Ghost of Christmas Future are pretty sinister cats). Sean Hogan’s
new horror short is definitely in the latter tradition. Yet, We Always Find Ourselves in the Sea is still
spooky enough to screen as part of the launch tour for the new anthology book, Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Filmand Television (trailer
here).
Patrick’s
modest seaside hovel might be pleasant in the summer, but it is depressingly
dreary during the dead of winter. Due to past mistakes, Patrick is spending the
holiday season alone, writing Christmas cards to himself. That sounds bad, but
it gets worse when he starts to hear ominous voices rising from the sea. Yet,
when a visitor from the past suddenly arrives, he hopes it heralds redemption,
but it is more likely to be a reckoning of sorts.
Britain’s
southern coast is clearly unremittingly chilly and gray around this time of
year, but cinematographers Paul Goodwin and Jim Hinson make it look startlingly
cinematic. Visually, this is a heck of an impressively framed film, yet there
is also some real human drama going on. Billy Clarke’s portrayal of Patrick is
as honest and real as any you will see in “proper” Oscar-bait films. He is
clearly haunted, in every conceivable way. On the other end of the spectrum, Jamie
Birkett keeps viewers completely off-balance as his reserved but vaguely unsettling
visitor.
In
some ways, Hogan’s film shares a kinship with Jo Lewis’s short, Whisper, but it is more fully realized.
Perhaps somewhat awkwardly, it is considerably superior to many of the features
it has shared a bill with with, in conjunction with Yuletide Terror launch events. Very highly recommended, We Always Find Ourselves in the Sea screens
tonight (12/21) in Philadelphia at PhilaMOCA and Saturday (12/23) in Chicago,
at Heirloom Books.
