Canuck Horror and Canuck Comedy offer up distinctive shrieks- Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - BERKSHIRE COUNTY ****, MANGIACAKE ***

In the middle of nowhere, on All Hallows Eve:
THERE WILL BE PIGS!!!

Berkshire County (2014)
Dir. Audrey Cummings
Starring: Alysa King, Madison Ferguson, Cristophe Gallander,
Samora Smallwood, Bart Rochon, Aaron Chartrand, Leo Pady, Robert Nolan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Pigs get a bad rap. They're gentle, friendly and intelligent creatures. Alas, in the parlance of western culture, since time immemorial, really, the pig has been synonymous with a variety of grotesqueries such as filth, greed, gluttony, violence, corruption and most decidedly, just plain uncouth behaviour. With that rather unfair but common understanding of piggishness, it seems only appropriate that the damnable porkers abound malevolently in Berkshire County, the dazzling first feature by Canadian filmmaker Audrey Cummings. On the surface and at its most basic level, it could be seen as a simple, straight-up babysitter-in-peril-during-a-home-invasion thriller.

Sure, it most certainly is that, especially if that's all you're looking for. However, it's not quite as straight up as one might suspect. The reason it works so superbly is that the simple premise is successfully mined to yield several levels of complexity which add to the picture's richness. Most notably, there's the matter of the movie's virtuosity. Cummings directs the picture with the kind of within-an-inch-of-her-life urgency and stratospheric level of craft that, with the whiz-bang cutting of editor Michael P. Mason and Michael Jari Davidson's evocative lensing, yield a horror suspense thriller that infuses you with creepy-crawly dread and one astounding scare set-piece after another.

That, frankly, would be enough to spew laudatory ejaculate right in the face of the whole affair, but on a deeper thematic level, Cummings and screenwriter Chris Gamble offer up a delectably sumptuous and varied buffet for an audience to gobble up with the ferocity of snuffling hogs at the trough. Berkshire County is an intense, topical, nasty, darkly funny and even politically-charged feminist horror picture in the tradition of other leading Canadian female genre directors like the Soska Sisters, Karen Lam and Jovanka Vuckovic.

It's proof positive, once again, that Canadian WOMEN are leading the charge of terrifying, edge-of-your-seat horror-fests that are as effectively drawer-filling as they are provocative and politically astute. It's unabashed exploitation injected with discerning observational power.

The film begins during a Halloween party in the rural enclave of the film's title. The gorgeous teenage girl-next-door Kylie Winters (Alysa King) arrives adorned in the sexiest Little Red Riding Hood costume imaginable. Heads swivel in her general direction, but none more so than that of the handsome Marcus (Aaron Chartrand), a hunky stud-horse-man-boy from the local high school. He, like the other small town, small-minded fellas is swine (of the male chauvinist variety) incarnate.

In what's possibly one of the more disturbing acts committed in any genre picture of recent memory, Kylie is plied with booze, coerced - essentially date-raped - into blowing Marcus. Unbeknownst to her, she's captured on his smart phone movie camera which he promptly uploads to cyber space for all to see.

Though the film has previously opened with a creepy Kubrickian traveling overhead shot of the county's forested, isolated topography (a la The Shining), Cummings and Gamble plunge us into very unexpected territory. Initially, the horror is neither supernatural nor of the psychopathic variety, but a monstrous act of sexual abuse, followed by the insidious cyber-dissemination of pornographic images of said abuse and then the teasing, bullying and shame experienced by Kylie who was the target of the abuse and subsequent derision levelled at her by peers.

Ripped from the headlines of a veritable myriad of similar cases involving tragic sexual abuse, we are privy to one of the more abominable aspects of contemporary teen culture. In Canada, the most horrific example is that of Nova Scotia teen Rehtaeh Parsons who, plied with booze and gang raped on camera, committed suicide when the images went viral. What faces Kylie is so debilitatingly nasty that she's the one made to feel like a pariah - as if she were to blame. Even Kylie's repressed dough-headed mother blames Kylie for bringing scandal upon the family.

To add insult to injury, Kylie is further estranged from those who should be offering support when she is practically forced by her mother to take a Halloween night babysitting gig at an isolated mansion on the outskirts of the community. That said, Kylie seems to welcome the peace and isolation the job might afford, far away from the piggish behaviour of her abuser, his stupid friends, her idiot mother and everyone else who teases and/or affixes blame upon her. A gorgeous mansion with all the amenities and two sweet kids has Heaven on Earth written all over it. Or so she (and we) think. She (and we) are wrong about that.

Pigs, you see, are lurking in the woods. Not just any pigs, mind you, but a family of travelling serial killers adorned in horrifying pig masks. And these sick fuckers mean business. Happily, Cummings and Gamble have fashioned a terrific female empowerment tale within the context of the horror genre. By focusing, in the first third, upon the teen culture of abuse and bullying and then tossing their lead character into a nail-bitingly terrifying maze of sheer horror, they, as filmmakers and we, as an audience, get to have the whole cake and eat it too. The final two-thirds cleverly and relentlessly presents one seemingly impossible challenge after another and we're front-row passengers on a roller coaster ride of mostly unpredictable chills and thrills until we're eyeballs-glued-to-the-screen during some deliciously repellent violence and, of course, a bit of the old feminist-infused empowerment.

Joining a fine tradition of home invasion movies like The Strangers and You're Next, it's a film that, in its own special way exceeds the aims of those seminal works because it places the horror in a context of the kind of horror which has become all too real in contemporary society. In a sense, the film's target audience, teens and young 20-somethings (and middle-aged horror geeks who've never grown up) will get everything they want out of the picture - and then some.

And just so we're not feeling too warm and fuzzy after the film's harrowing climax, Cummings spews a blood-spattered shocker upon us - one that horror fans have seen a million times before, but when it's served up right, we're always happy to see it again. So take a trip to Berkshire County. It's a fork in the road (and blade in the gut) worth choosing.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Berkshire County, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the esteemed Shriekfest Film Festival in Los Angeles will be released in Canada via A-71 and is being sold to the rest of the world by the visionary Canadian sales agency Raven Banner. Playdates so far are as follows:

OPENS Theatrically – JUNE 5, 2015
TORONTO – Carlton Cinema, 20 Carlton St.
OTTAWA – Landmark Kanata, 801 Kanata Ave
WHITBY – Landmark Cinemas 24 Whitby, 75 Consumers Drive

More cities to follow

Mangiacake (2015)
Dir. Nate Estabrooks
Scr. Christina Cuffari & Estabrooks
Starring: Melanie Scrofano, Christina Cuffari, Jocelyne Zucco, Paula McPherson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Mangiacake takes the cake for being one of the most perversely entertaining ethnic family comedies I've seen in quite some time. It's not perfect; the film's ultra-low budget sometimes betrays it in the production-value department with spotty sound, flat lighting and spartan production design, BUT, if you can overlook those elements, then you'll probably have a good time.

Two early-20-something Italian sisters (Melanie Scrofano, Christina Cuffari) move back home with their mother and grandmother. They're major-league squabblers and sparks fly right from the beginning.

One sister has suffered a massive concussion and suffers from memory loss, an especially inconvenient state of affairs since she's studying for finals in traditional Chinese medicine. (There are a couple of knee-slappers involving acupuncture needles and fresh produce.) The other sister, a not-too-successful actress is fleeing responsibility, auditioning for roles she'll probably never get and embroiled in a very odd text-only romantic relationship.

Mom (Paula McPherson), unprepared for being assailed by the squabbling sisters is hitting the sauce a bit too heavily and Grandma (Jocelyne Zucco), devoted to Jesus and the Virgin Mary, attempts to broker peace with her endless looks of displeasure and nonsensical old world sayings.

A good chunk of the movie is devoted to the bickering twixt the sisters. This is pretty easy to take since both actresses are easy on the eyes and acquit themselves especially well -- they've got to spit out lines at each other faster than a gatling gun and often, at the top of their considerable Italian lungs. In fact, this is what I found especially insane -- the movie is an almost non-stop screamfest with plenty of good insults hurled back and forth and eventually building to a chaotic everything but the kitchen sink climax of madness and not without hilarity.

Watching two young, hot Italian babes screaming at each other and engaging occasionally in cat fights is probably what I responded to most of all. At times I couldn't believe how intense their jousting got, but the bigger it got, the more I thoroughly appreciated it.

At times, the pace of the dialogue (courtesy of the oddball screenplay) is a kind of Speedy Gonzalez version of Howard-Hawksian back and forth (courtesy of direction, cutting and performances) and that, almost in and of itself offers considerable pleasure. The writing feels like it comes from a real place, even though much of it is overwrought -- it's overwrought in ways I've witnessed in many ethnic family dynamics.

Estabrooks' coverage as a director, is usually spot on. He shoots simply for the laughs, and production value aside, it's nicely directed. A dinner table scene is especially well done and, believe it or not, scenes around tables can often be the most difficult things to properly do. Hell, they can sometimes be more challenging than a bloody car chase. Happily, it and a number of other comedy set-pices are nicely covered and cut. Oh, and yeah, the dinner table scene is especially grotesquely funny (as is much of the movie).

I'll admit to spitting up my Chinotto on more than one occasion.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** Three Stars

Mangiacake is in limited theatrical release across Canada and also available via VOD. It opens July 19 at the Magic Lantern Rainbow Carlton Cinemas in Toronto.

THE VALLEY BELOW - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Goin' Down The DeadEnd Drumheller Road

What do Leonard Cohen, Raymond Carver and Drumheller, Alberta have in common? The Valley Below

The Valley Below (2014)
Dir. Kyle Thomas
Starring: Stephen Bogaert, Alejandro Rae, Kris Demeanor, Mikaela Cochrane, Joe Perry, Lori Ravensborg, Mandy Stobo, Alana Hawley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Ya gotta keep your stick on the ice." - Canuck advice in The Valley Below

Leonard Cohen's great post-modernist novel "Beautiful Losers" is an important book on many levels, but for me, it's always been the place to begin in terms of exploring the complex mystery of what it means to be Canadian within the context of our culture, and by extension, our popular culture. Cohen charts the disparity between the indigenous populace with the sons and daughters of the European colonizers, but furthermore, that of the great divide twixt French and English. Diving even deeper, we're confronted with both the historical building of a nation based upon exploitation, theft and violence and the contemporary results of said exploitation.

It's those very results, which count the most, and they're what come to the forefront of writer-director-editor Kyle Thomas's important first feature film, The Valley Below. Structurally the film is imbued with a kind of Raymond Carver flavour in terms of it being comprised of four ambiguity-fraught short stories about love, relationships and alcoholism. They're related, yet separate and all tied to the lives of those who make their home in the dead-end world of Drumheller, Alberta. I am inclined, however, to more strongly associate Thomas's film with Cohen's work than that of Carver.

The legendary Bard of Montreal's novel is essentially broken into three different "books", separate, yet intertwined. In spite of the novel's post-modernist qualities, its poetry, its harrowing evocation of rootlessness is rooted as deeply as the deepest roots can possibly drill down into - that being, the psyche of a fractured, regionalist nation. Amidst the post-modernist style, I'm still walloped by Cohen's equally attuned sense of realism, albeit measured out to taste, if you will, in healthy dollops here and there.

The Valley Below has realism to burn, but it's adorned with its own dollops - generous birthday-cake-icing-squirts of exquisitely-wrought cinematic poetry. Also, not unlike Cohen's book, the film's parts operate in stylistically distinctive ways (especially in Thomas's use of different composers for the astonishing score representing each part), yet ultimately its parts are skilfully welded together by the whole.

If there's one central character in Thomas's multi-character film, I might suggest it's the setting itself - a repressed small town of honky tonks, greasy spoons, strip malls, bargain basement "getaway" hotels and a whack of grotesque folk-art - everything from the cheesy statues of ancient dinosaurs which once ruled the vicinity to a humungous plaster of Paris Jesus Christ overlooking the desolate beauty of Alberta's Badlands, the topography of which, dwarfs everything. (In "Beautiful Losers", it's history itself which feels like the central "character", that which holds dominion over all.) In more ways than one, Drumheller is as much to The Valley Below and, by extension, to Canada, as Nashville was to Altman's Nashville which, furthermore was reflective of America itself.

The characters of The Valley Below are a familiar, yet colourful grab-bag of people we all know or have been ourselves, or, indeed are. They're also decidedly Canadian and as such, are virtually inconsequential compared to the vastness of the land itself. It's the macrocosmic focus of Thomas as the filmmaker which gives the characters' collective inconsequence the weight of individual consequence and at times, challenges which seem virtually Sisyphean.

Kate (Mikaela Cochrane) is on the cusp of leaving Henry (Joe Perry), her good-natured, loving, yet aimless childhood sweetheart to seek out new horizons of academia and life experience in the big city. She's torn between flight and adhering to the small-town notions of having a family and staying behind. She's especially conflicted upon discovering a very real and pending reason to stay. Her choice, either way, will have substantial weight behind it.

Warren (Kris Demeanor) is the Zamboni operator and general caretaker of Drumheller's skating rink, a pleasant-enough job to finance and fuel his dreams of becoming a singer-songwriter. Still, what he wants more than anything is to be reunited with the mother of his little girl (and mostly, one gathers, the child), but he's both unwilling and unable to deal with his general lack of ambition (which, is probably skewed as opposed to being completely non-existent) and most of all, his alcoholism. His ex has escaped well beyond the confines of Drumheller and pursued her talent as a visual artist. Alas, Warren is satisfied with the repressive pettiness of his environment and merely paying lip service, to others as well as himself in terms of making the changes he needs to better himself.

Barry (Alejandro Rae) is the buff, amiable constable at the Drumheller cop-shop who prides himself on pulling local ne'er-do-wells out of the drunk tank for honest heart-to-hearts and dispensing sage advice (small-town Canuck-style, of course) instead of bringing criminal or misdemeanour charges against them. He volunteers as a D-Jay at the local community radio station and is married to the sexy, beautiful and loving Jill (Alana Hawley). Though they struggle with the real dilemma of being unable to have children, their sex life is as charged with excitement as their genuine, deep friendship with each other. They seem, in many ways, like the perfect couple. Barry, though, has a secret, or rather, an intense hobby he keeps solely to himself - a model reproduction of Drumheller with an ever-circling train within it.

Finally, though, Thomas delivers the heartbreaker of all the film's stories. Gordon (Stephen Bogaert) is a taxidermist and a damn fine one at that. He spends endless hours in his basement workshop with local wildlife dispatched by the locals. He meticulously creates glass-eyed stuffed trophies of these once living and breathing creatures of the bush. That enough clientele require his services for him to live in a nice house and provide very well for his family suggests just how many critters fall prey to rifles or to becoming roadkill in Drumheller.

Like the huge lifeless reproductions of dinosaurs and Jesus dotting the landscape, Gordon is able to provide a whack of equally lifeless approximations of the county's fauna to go on display in the living rooms and rec-rooms of dreary Drumheller's denizens. His work requires much in the way of solitude - maybe too much. He's neglected trouble spots in his marriage to Susan (Lori Ravensborg) and maybe, just maybe, left them too late. He loves her, his kids and their home. He believes that love, like taxidermy, requires hard work and he plunges himself and Susan into intense marriage therapy. Between stuffing animal carcasses, he goes out into the woods to cut down a fresh Christmas tree with his son and books a getaway romantic evening at the local inn. It's a cheap. tawdry little place, though and hardly conducive to reviving a marriage that is, for all intents and purposes, dead.

There is clearly, the possibility that this will not turn out to be a White Christmas for everybody.

This is a movie that gnaws away at you ever-so slowly and before you know it, the picture's ripped your guts out. Basically, Thomas has delivered a film that is as muted as it is charged with the kind of emotion that explodes when you least expect it. Visually, via the face-punching terrible beauty of Michael Robert McLaughlin's cinematography, The Valley Below is a film that indelibly aptures the myriad of exterior and interior vistas with a high level of artistry, always rooted in character and tone. Thomas elicits performances from his entire cast - from leads down to background extras - that ring with raw truth (especially Stephen Bogaert who manages to elicit tears and a sickening feeling of emptiness in your gut).

This is a film that's as much a reflection of Canada's indigenous landscape as it is a dramatic examination of the country's ethos.

Thomas doesn't provide us with a narrator for these four tales, but in a sense, his eye is the narrator, his simple, evocative quill=strokes as a writer create a silent storyteller to reflect the terrible truth.

Leonard Cohen's "Beautiful Losers" does have a narrator, someone to guide us into the complexities of his own multi-character narrative. Cohen's narrator is the character referred to in the first person as "I", an academic studying a tribe of near-extinct Native Peoples, a man who is all too aware that the subject of his research is a group of people whose entire history seems founded upon a dubious pedestal of constant and utter defeat at the hands of its colonizer enemy. "I" furthermore identifies himself, if not the entire nation of Canada as being afflicted with the literal and figurative ailment of constipation.

Certainly, whenever I try to put my finger upon what it means to be Canadian, constipation is most definitely the first thing to pop into my head. (Certainly our neighbours south of the 49th parallel have no problems with being bunged up, but are, if anything, afflicted with all sluices open and gushing.) Curiously, whilst first seeing The Valley Below, I couldn't help but recall the "Beautiful Losers" narrator when he announces to himself and the reader the following sentiments:

"Why me? The great complaint of the constipated. Why doesn't the world work for me?…How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday within me?"

Cohen refers to "yesterday" as being that "unassailable bank" in his "psyche" that so desperately requires "shit." In a sense, Thomas's film is as inextricably rooted in this psyche as Cohen's "Beautiful Losers". All of the characters in Drumheller, Alberta are living on the long-decayed waste matter of dinosaurs, the refuse of some global disaster from millions of years ago that have turned the land, the province, the very psyche of its inhabitants into murky black oil wells, tar pits, endless rolling prairies and the gorgeous desolation of the Badlands.

The bottom line: How does one begin anything new with yesterday backed up within?

If Cohen's novel has an overriding link to Thomas's film, it can be found in the title "Beautiful Losers". Some of the greatest works in Canadian Cinema have been populated with what I like to think of as beautiful losers. From Joey (Douglas McGrath) and Pete (Paul Bradley), the beautiful losers on the road in their Chevy Impala from Nova Scotia to Toronto in Donald Shebib's Goin' Down The Road to beautiful loser Rick "Marshall" Dylan (Keir Dullea) the fast-drawing, gun-toting, alcoholic hockey player in Peter Pearson's Paperback Hero to beautiful loser Billy Duke (Art Hindle), the hard-playing pretty-boy goon in George McCowan's hockey classic Face Off, Gordon Pinsent's beautiful loser The Rowdyman, the man-child who refuses to grow up and last, but certainly not least, even French Canada has a fine history of the beautiful loser in the cinema - most recently and notably in one of the best Canadian films of all time, the tale of the crusty old car salesman in Le Vendeur by Sebastien Pilote.

Now we can add Kyle Thomas's The Valley Below to this stellar history of Canadian Cinema's ever-so-beautiful losers.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

The Valley Below is an A-71 Entertainment Release which began it's Canadian theatrical run at the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas in Toronto.

IN HER PLACE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - One of the year's 10 Best Films as selected by The Film Corner begins its Canadian Theatrical Premiere at the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas in Toronto. A GREAT FILM that quietly rips our hearts to shreds. AN ABSOLUTE MUST-SEE!!! ***** 5-Stars Highest Film Corner Rating

WINNER of numerous Accolades from Critic Greg Klymkiw
in The Film Corner Awards (TFCA 2014)
One of the 10 BEST FILMS of 2014
Best Canadian Feature Film: Time Lapse Pictures
Best Supporting Actress: Ahn Ji-Hye
Best Musical Score: Alexander Klinke
WINNER of numerous Accolades from Critic Greg Klymkiw
in the Film Corner Canadian Film Awards 2014
Director Albert Shin
Screenwriters Pearl-Ball Harding, Albert Shin
Actresses Yoon Da-kyung, Kil Hae-yeon, Ahn Ji-Hye
David Miller, A71 Entertainment,
Top 10 Heroes of Canadian Cinema

A daughter,
whose child
can never be hers.
A mother,
whose daughter
is everything.
A woman,
who comes
between them.
A baby,
that binds
all three
for eternity.

In Her Place (2014)
Dir. Albert Shin
Script: Shin
& Pearl Ball-Harding
Prods. Igor Drljaca, Yoon Hyun Chan & Shin
Starring: Yoon Da Kyung, Ahn Ji Hye, Kil Hae Yeon, Kim Sung Cheol, Kim Chang Hwan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Now and again, I find myself seeing a movie that feels so perfect, so lacking in anything resembling a single false note and so affecting on every level that I'm compelled to constantly pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming. In Her Place, enjoying its Canadian Theatrical Premiere at Toronto's Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas is a dream, but most decidedly of the dream-come-true variety. This is exactly the sort of film that restores my faith in the poetic properties of cinema and how the simplest of tales, at their surface, allow its artists to dig deep and yield the treasures inherent in the picture's soul. When a film is imbued with an inner spirit as this one is, you know you're watching something that hasn't been machine-tooled strictly for ephemeral needs. In Her Place is a film about yearning, love and the extraordinary tears and magic that are borne out of the company and shared experience of women. And, it is exquisite.

A childless couple nearing the early stages of middle-age, cut a private deal to adopt outside the purview of an official agency, which, they're convinced, will be the ideal no-muss-no-fuss arrangement. The Wife (Yoon Da-kyung), having been previously afflicted with serious health issues, especially wants the world to think she's the biological birth-mother of the adopted newborn.

She and her Husband (Kim Kyung Ik) concoct a cover for friends and family that she's waiting out her pregnancy in America instead of Seoul. In reality, she's not left South Korea at all and is staying on an isolated farm. Her hosts are The Mother (Kil Hae-yeon), widowed and forced to run the sprawling acreage on her own and her daughter, a shy, pregnant teenage Girl (Ahn Ji-hye). For a substantial sum, this financially needy rural family agrees to give up the baby to the well-to-do couple from the big city. The Wife stays in modest digs originally meant for onsite farmhands while her Husband returns to Seoul to work. From here, she can maintain the optics of being away from home during pregnancy but also take an active role in nurturing the young lady carrying "her" child. The arrangement seems too good to be true and sure enough, complications slowly surface and threaten to scuttle an otherwise perfect plan.

In Her Place is director Albert Shin's stunning sophomore feature-length outing. Working with co-writer Pearl Ball-Harding and co-producer Igor Drljaca (director of 2012's dazzling Krivina and Shin's old York University film school pal and partner in their company TimeLapse Pictures), Shin and Drljaca seem to have pulled off another miracle in the relatively short life of their seemingly perfect partnership. Evocatively photographed by Moon Myoung Hwan, wrenchingly and beautifully scored by Alexandre Klinke, featuring a cast as perfect as any director (or audience) would want and edited by Shin himself with the pace and deep sensitivity that's reminiscent of a Robert Bresson film, you'll experience as haunting and touching a film as any of the very best that have been wrought. This is great filmmaking, pure and simple.

What I love about this movie, aside from its emotional content, is just how Shin trusts in the beautiful writing and employs a mise-en-scène that allows his actors to inhabit the frame (always perfectly composed) for the kind of maximum impact that can come from holding steady on narrative action and only cutting when absolutely necessary to spin things forward in subtle ways - parcelling out information so that we are allowed to take in both information and the affecting layers of very palpable impression and subtext.

A perfect example of Shin's assured direction occurs right off the top. The film opens with a fade up from black into a perfectly composed fixed shot of a well-worn gravel road. Flanked by lush, green trees, an unassuming, slightly worn farmhouse sits deep in the centre background, while a car makes its way into the frame and moves with purpose onto the property. All is swathed in a strange grey light from the overcast sky and as the car reaches a halfway point on the road, Shin cuts to place us in a reverse as the vehicle comes even closer to the house. It's as if the point of view was not so much from that of a character, or even from the inanimate house as if it were personified, but rather taking the perspective of an omnipresent observer. This won't be the first time Shin delivers such a POV. From this point and onwards, he allows us, the audience to participate with a kind of fly-on-the-wall scrutiny.

This second shot of the film is masterful on several important fronts.

In both the writing and staging, the camera lets action play out in the time it takes and in so doing, always keeps us guessing (in all the right ways) as to who is in the car, who the people are once we meet them as they exit the vehicle, get an immediate sense of character from how the two people are positioned in the frame and also by their actions and finally, a very subtle dolly back as the two characters move forward and encounter a sweet, friendly, but sad-eyed dog, chained next to an empty food bowl as it observes the visitors.

This image of a chained dog resonates incalculably as the film progresses.

Another important element here is that these two people become identifiable as a married couple because the shot takes its time and is so perfectly blocked. Even more extraordinarily, the shot allows enough time for one of the people to notice something in the distance and move towards it before the next cut.

This entire shot is a brave and bold stroke so early in the proceedings. The shot lasts for two minutes of screen time, setting the mood, tone and pace of how the tale will unfold, but also establishing how we, as viewers, are observers. And we are not passive viewers. It's as if we were actually in the frame, unseen by the characters, but participants in the narrative nevertheless, almost complicit in the actions of the story. Complicity is indeed a key thematic element at play in the film and Shin does not let us off the hook.

Finally, though, the shot also gives us the sense that this will be the story of The Husband. He is, after all, the most active half of the couple. This is essential at this point, especially since we soon find ourselves within an interior shot set back from a table where the Husband, his back to us, continues to be the most active character in terms of his domination of the conversation and by his declarative statements regarding the heat and stuffiness of the interior.

The notion of being able to breathe, to feel the sort of freedom this natural, rural environment should inspire, to not be hemmed in by circumstance, a lack of communication and/or connection to the outside world is also an element that is established and will reverberate throughout the film with great force.

The other vital component here is that the position of the camera allows us to see all three women very clearly. Though their interaction seems tentative compared to that of the husband, the very length of the shot allows Shin to establish trinity between these women and we're soon plunged into their story - which ultimately, the film is. The Husband seems a mere appendage or, if you will, the chauffeur. He gets his wife there, he even gets us there, but when his job is done, he's dispensed with save for a few key moments later on wherein he still, strangely, feels more like an instrument of mere conveyance.

The dynamic between these three women is so powerful, so telling and finally, so devastating, that Shin's subtle control of his film is at once invisible and yet always present because we are where we have to be for every single emotional and narrative beat.

In Her Place so quietly rips our hearts to shreds. We are included in the emotional journeys of a daughter whose child can never be hers, a mother whose daughter is everything to her but comes to this realization when it's too late and a woman who has come between them because her own desire to love and nurture is so strong and true.

Finally, it's all about a baby - a new life that binds all three women for what will be an eternity.

This is a great picture. See it.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

In Her Place enjoys its Canadian Theatrical Premiere at the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas in Toronto via A71 Entertainment.

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BERKSHIRE COUNTY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Hot babysitter-in-peril thriller superbly directed, intelligently written and laced with female-empowerment undertones.

In the middle of nowhere, on All Hallows Eve:
THERE WILL BE PIGS!!!

BABE IN PERIL: FROM DATE RAPE
TO HALLOWEEN HOME INVASION!

Berkshire County (2014)
Dir. Audrey Cummings
Starring: Alysa King, Madison Ferguson, Cristophe Gallander,
Samora Smallwood, Bart Rochon, Aaron Chartrand, Leo Pady, Robert Nolan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Pigs get a bad rap. They're gentle, friendly and intelligent creatures. Alas, in the parlance of western culture, since time immemorial, really, the pig has been synonymous with a variety of grotesqueries such as filth, greed, gluttony, violence, corruption and most decidedly, just plain uncouth behaviour. With that rather unfair but common understanding of piggishness, it seems only appropriate that the damnable porkers abound malevolently in Berkshire County, the dazzling first feature by Canadian filmmaker Audrey Cummings. On the surface and at its most basic level, it could be seen as a simple, straight-up babysitter-in-peril-during-a-home-invasion thriller.

Sure, it most certainly is that, especially if that's all you're looking for. However, it's not quite as straight up as one might suspect. The reason it works so superbly is that the simple premise is successfully mined to yield several levels of complexity which add to the picture's richness. Most notably, there's the matter of the movie's virtuosity. Cummings directs the picture with the kind of within-an-inch-of-her-life urgency and stratospheric level of craft that, with the whiz-bang cutting of editor Michael P. Mason and Michael Jari Davidson's evocative lensing, yield a horror suspense thriller that infuses you with creepy-crawly dread and one astounding scare set-piece after another.

That, frankly, would be enough to spew laudatory ejaculate right in the face of the whole affair, but on a deeper thematic level, Cummings and screenwriter Chris Gamble offer up a delectably sumptuous and varied buffet for an audience to gobble up with the ferocity of snuffling hogs at the trough. Berkshire County is an intense, topical, nasty, darkly funny and even politically-charged feminist horror picture in the tradition of other leading Canadian female genre directors like the Soska Sisters, Karen Lam and Jovanka Vuckovic.

It's proof positive, once again, that Canadian WOMEN are leading the charge of terrifying, edge-of-your-seat horror-fests that are as effectively drawer-filling as they are provocative and politically astute. It's unabashed exploitation injected with discerning observational power.

HALLOWEEN BABYSITTER
VS
PIGGLY WIGGLIES GALORE!

The film begins during a Halloween party in the rural enclave of the film's title. The gorgeous teenage girl-next-door Kylie Winters (Alysa King) arrives adorned in the sexiest Little Red Riding Hood costume imaginable. Heads swivel in her general direction, but none more so than that of the handsome Marcus (Aaron Chartrand), a hunky stud-horse-man-boy from the local high school. He, like the other small town, small-minded fellas is swine (of the male chauvinist variety) incarnate.

In what's possibly one of the more disturbing acts committed in any genre picture of recent memory, Kylie is plied with booze, coerced - essentially date-raped - into blowing Marcus. Unbeknownst to her, she's captured on his smart phone movie camera which he promptly uploads to cyber space for all to see.

Though the film has previously opened with a creepy Kubrickian traveling overhead shot of the county's forested, isolated topography (a la The Shining), Cummings and Gamble plunge us into very unexpected territory. Initially, the horror is neither supernatural nor of the psychopathic variety, but a monstrous act of sexual abuse, followed by the insidious cyber-dissemination of pornographic images of said abuse and then the teasing, bullying and shame experienced by Kylie who was the target of the abuse and subsequent derision levelled at her by peers.

Ripped from the headlines of a veritable myriad of similar cases involving tragic sexual abuse, we are privy to one of the more abominable aspects of contemporary teen culture. In Canada, the most horrific example is that of Nova Scotia teen Rehtaeh Parsons who, plied with booze and gang raped on camera, committed suicide when the images went viral. What faces Kylie is so debilitatingly nasty that she's the one made to feel like a pariah - as if she were to blame. Even Kylie's repressed dough-headed mother blames Kylie for bringing scandal upon the family.

To add insult to injury, Kylie is further estranged from those who should be offering support when she is practically forced by her mother to take a Halloween night babysitting gig at an isolated mansion on the outskirts of the community. That said, Kylie seems to welcome the peace and isolation the job might afford, far away from the piggish behaviour of her abuser, his stupid friends, her idiot mother and everyone else who teases and/or affixes blame upon her. A gorgeous mansion with all the amenities and two sweet kids has Heaven on Earth written all over it. Or so she (and we) think. She (and we) are wrong about that.

THIS LITTLE PIGGY
CAME HOME!!!
He has a butcher knife
. . . and friends!

Pigs, you see, are lurking in the woods. Not just any pigs, mind you, but a family of travelling serial killers adorned in horrifying pig masks. And these sick fuckers mean business. Happily, Cummings and Gamble have fashioned a terrific female empowerment tale within the context of the horror genre. By focusing, in the first third, upon the teen culture of abuse and bullying and then tossing their lead character into a nail-bitingly terrifying maze of sheer horror, they, as filmmakers and we, as an audience, get to have the whole cake and eat it too. The final two-thirds cleverly and relentlessly presents one seemingly impossible challenge after another and we're front-row passengers on a roller coaster ride of mostly unpredictable chills and thrills until we're eyeballs-glued-to-the-screen during some deliciously repellent violence and, of course, a bit of the old feminist-infused empowerment.

Joining a fine tradition of home invasion movies like The Strangers and You're Next, it's a film that, in its own special way exceeds the aims of those seminal works because it places the horror in a context of the kind of horror which has become all too real in contemporary society. In a sense, the film's target audience, teens and young 20-somethings (and middle-aged horror geeks who've never grown up) will get everything they want out of the picture - and then some.

And just so we're not feeling too warm and fuzzy after the film's harrowing climax, Cummings spews a blood-spattered shocker upon us - one that horror fans have seen a million times before, but when it's served up right, we're always happy to see it again. So take a trip to Berkshire County. It's a fork in the road (and blade in the gut) worth choosing.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Berkshire County, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the esteemed Shriekfest Film Festival in Los Angeles, enjoys it's Canadian premiere during the 2014 Blood in the Snow Film Festival at the Magic Lantern Carlton Theatres in Toronto. It will be released in Canada via A-71 and is being sold to the rest of the world by the visionary Canadian sales agency Raven Banner.