Shadows of Willow Cabin review – secrets fester beneath horny hookup in low budget horror

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Two men’s romantic getaway turns creepy in a talky elevated chiller about escaping the binds of the past The best elevated horror makes a metaphor out of its writhing emotional subtext, but writer-director Joe Fria sadly can’t make the leap in this low-budget debut that undoubtedly has issues on its mind: repressed homosexuality, compulsive hookups and generational trauma. For much of the film the horror elements abruptly waylay what is otherwise a fraught two-handed gay drama. After meeting on the apps, middle-aged English teacher Albert (Bryan Bellomo) and lithe paramedic Devon (John Brodsky) are finally getting cosy at Willow Cabin – the former’s childhood summer getaway, named for a line in Twelfth Night. But secrets fester beneath this ostensibly horny hookup. In Albert’s case, he has a wife and son – and this spot, which once belonged to his uncle, is where he first explored the other side of his sexuality, with his cousin. As for Devon, Albert is the latest in a long line of unf...
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The Integrity of Joseph Chambers review – tense parable of troubled masculinity

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A city slicker moves his family to Alabama in search of a wholesome life and sets off for a solo hunting trip. It’s not going to go well

Robert Machoian is an indie film-maker drawn to a certain type of troubled American masculinity: the type that’s never so toxic as when weak or insecure. His previous drama The Killing of Two Lovers was about male anger, and this tense, suspenseful new film has similar ideas: a Dostoevskian parable set over a single day in remote woodland, with a slow-moving simplicity that belies its storytelling ingenuity and force, and again featuring Machoian’s longtime collaborator, actor-producer Clayne Crawford. This actually looks as if it could have been conceived in the 1970s, with a hint of Boorman’s Deliverance: right down to the Burt Reynolds moustache that the male lead smugly sculpts for himself one morning in front of the shaving mirror, to his wife’s annoyance.

Crawford plays Joseph Chambers, a prosperous insurance salesman and Christian family man who has moved to rural Alabama with his wife Tess (Jordana Brewster) and their two boys, to find a more wholesome place away from the city for the children’s upbringing. But Joseph has got it into his head to have a day’s hunting on his own in some nearby woodland belonging to his friend Doug (Carl Kennedy), to learn some survival skills and generally prove his manhood. Tess, who grew up with a dad and brothers who hunted, and actually knows more about this kind of stuff than her naive city-slicker husband, is dead against him going on his own like this.

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