No horror movie that comes out this October is likely to be half as haunting as God’s Creatures, a dismal, moody Irish film from directors Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer, that speaks gloomily and with quiet anger to the ways in which assailants are reprieved from consequence whilst their victims’ trauma goes discredited. Often, movies that take on this subject matter do so in blunt, uncomplicated terms -a fair few have the courage to tackle the roots honestly. As surely as The Assistant examines thoroughly and with harrowing immediacy the underlying essence of the Weinstein story, I know that She Said, the Awards-bait studio take on the controversy is going to be shallow and, quite frankly, gross.
God’s Creatures though is drenched in firm conviction and an all-too-real understanding of how the standards to believe men and ignore women when these cases come up is perpetuated. And it does this through the lens of someone protecting an abuser, and the crisis of conscience that that creates. She is Aileen O’Hara, played by Emily Watson, who works in fish processing in a lonely Irish fishing village, whose monotony is broken by the sudden return of her favoured son Brian (Paul Mescal) from Australia. He is an alien loner figure, suspicious in the small community; clearly having left years prior with a few burnt bridges, not least from members of his own family -but not his mother significantly. Not long after he returns, a charge of sexual assault comes against him from his local ex-girlfriend Sarah (Aisling Franciosi), which Aileen responds to by fervent defence of her son and a false alibi on the night of the apparent crime.
Written by Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly, the script in focusing on the mother over either the abuser or victim, crucially doesn’t excuse her from indictment. A lesser film might have, or played her as a confused innocent herself, simply struggling to accept such a harsh truth about her son. But the critical scene in God’s Creatures where she is confronted by a constable about the allegation, it’s instantaneous -without even a second thought- her lie to protect him. Her face betrays no conflict, it’s simply what she must do as a mother. And it takes time for her to register the gravity of that choice.
The movie in general takes its’ time, it is a moody slow burn as it carefully constructs and then deconstructs its’ environment and community. Abetted by a chilling score from Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans that seems to owe something to Wendy Carlos, there is tension from before Brian sets foot in the village, and its’ only exacerbated then in the awkward-bordering-on-hostile relationships he has with his father Con (Declan Conlan) and sister Erin (Toni O’Rourke), frequently snubbed by her mother. But rather than aggravate these agitations much, the directors more often emphasize the slight details: how other people look at Brian -Sarah especially, the way he goes about his business fishing (he plans to start an oyster farm apparently), and little acts of Aileen’s towards him like lending him money or dotingly doing his laundry. Such subtle touches forecast everything, and the movie maintains that sombre minimalism all throughout in the changes that the family and community undergo, how the former becomes more fractious while the latter warms to Brian and quietly shuns Sarah.
It might all be too distant, too grimly ambivalent, if not for Watson’s keen performance and Mescal’s unsettling one. Aileen goes through a lot of psychological turmoil, little of which she can express openly -Sarah had been a family friend after all and a close co-worker of hers. Watson plays astoundingly the gradual disillusionment in her perception, grief for her choice, confusion for her love, and strained self-reflection. It’s all there even if not talked about in the way she looks at her son afterwards, at her daughter -who of course believes Sarah and knows that Aileen lied. And it seems a very conscious choice to put the audience in her shoes, implicating them, or more rightly the larger systems of society that encompass them, in letting women be scapegoated so as not to hurt a mans’ reputation. He was a good boy in Aileen’s estimation -although not particularly in that of others. Brian has had a history of being trouble, being aggressive. He demonstrates as much his first night home in an argument with his father, who doesn’t share Aileens’ affections. He’s solitary, often doing his fishing by himself and doing it fairly irresponsibly at that (he slices his hands pulling up wire netting without protection) -and he keeps quiet about why he came back all of a sudden. Mescal does really well with that mysterious volatility, that spoilt assuredness , and a general attitude of avoidance. It suggests something deeper and darker than the film is willing to address, making the right choice in keeping him far from sympathy.
As to Sarah, it is particularly interesting how Davis and Holmer handle her in the aftermath of the incident. She is a distant character, referred to more than seen, evoking that sense of ostracization -in one scene she is awkwardly kicked out of the local pub for no stated reason other than the proprietors’ clear belief she spread a lie about Brian. In that same instance Brian is seen bonding with other men over trivializing such allegations in one of the most biting illustrations of toxic male groupthink. It’s so easy to just go along with it in an atmosphere of jocularity -and it’s a vital wake-up call for Aileen, who recognizes she played a part in this young womans’ misery.
The story of God’s Creatures belongs to Aileen -it is her journey to accept an uncomfortable truth and reckon with her participation in stifling a victim of rape. It’s for this reason that Sarah is often backgrounded -yet what she goes through isn’t. And the movie doesn’t attempt to absolve Aileen or diminish her accountability -it simply seeks to expose her character and that of her customs to both the audience and herself. Even where the arc concludes for Brian, in a place that I don’t think really works dramatically and feels honestly too easy -as though the directors were pressured to give him ramification for his actions no matter how unbelievable- a once friendly relationship between two women is never going to heal. In her sparse appearances, Franciosi is great, and especially so in the end where, absent of Brian, she is at last allowed her own agency, the film finally making her its’ subject for its final minutes. It’s such an endearing choice that it makes up for the ill-fitting climax.
God’s Creatures has been called gothic, and it certainly meets several of that genres’ aesthetic requirements -as much as any modern movie can do so. It also subtly is imbued with a fair bit of Catholic guilt -the church appears a few times, culpable as anyone in this insular Irish community, and it too of course an institution responsible for protecting predators. Perhaps what the movie succeeds at most is showing how disturbingly normal that sort of thing is -just one person leaping to the defence of an abuser is enough to sew widespread doubt and disdain towards their victim. The films’ technical style and pace only makes it more grounded, more unsettling and raw a thing to confront. As I said, the scariest movie of the Halloween season.
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