52 Films by Women Vol 6. 26. AMULET (Director: Romola Garai)
No one ever questions
why first-time male writer-directors choose horror. It is unfair to ask this of
actress-turned-writer-director Romola Garai. Garai has an eclectic CV, cast as
the female lead opposite Diego Luna in the immemorable Dirty Dancing spin-off Havana Nights as
well as appearing in the films Atonement, Suffragette and The Last Days on Mars.
She most recently played the titular Miss Marx for Italian
director Susanna Nicchiarelli. Garai has
not found the award-friendly or Hollywood-calling card role that will transform
her into an A-lister, unlike her contemporary, Keira Knightley. From a career
point of view, going behind the camera makes sense, a move she has cultivated
for some years, having directed the 2012 short, Scrubber. Garai has
written a number of as-yet-unproduced screenplays (including adaptations) for
mid-range budgeted movies before penning the modestly budgeted Amulet, where most of the action takes place in a house and where Dartmoor
doubles for Eastern Europe.
The film opens with
images of a forest, including the arresting overhead shot of some trees. We are
introduced to Tomaz (Alec Secareanu) waking up in his hut, before going to work
at a checkpoint. Coming towards him at speed is a woman in her forties, Miriam
(Angeliki Papoulia). Speaking in English – this is one of those movies where foreign
languages aren’t spoken - Tomaz does the ‘stop or I’ll shoot’ routine. For her
part Miriam stumbles and disappears below the frame. Tomaz gives her sanctuary in
his hut and learns that Miriam wants to be reunited with her daughter. ‘You’ll
never get across the border,’ he insists. We see a truck filled with soldiers,
some bloodied, pass through the checkpoint. ‘They’re gone,’ he tells Miriam. It
is unclear how Tomaz gets his supplies. He doesn’t appear to have a radio. At
any rate, Miriam is not persuaded by Tomaz telling her that the war will be over
soon. She makes a run for it. Tomaz kills her. His motivation is never made
clear. My guess is that he fears she will be captured and then reveal that he
had given her shelter. An alternative motive is that, in spite of the age gap,
he had fallen for her and didn’t want her to leave, attracted by the idea of
making an instant family. Digging a hole, Tomaz discovers the amulet of the
title, though given the straightness of the front of Tomaz’s hair, I did
briefly wonder whether the title of the film was A Mullet.
At any rate, Tomaz
feels guilty. The next time we see him, he is in London, has a beard and is
sleeping in an abandoned building with other migrants. Tomaz awakens with his
hands tied up with carpet tape. He does this, we discover, to stop himself
clawing at his face, though I daresay cutting his fingernails might achieve the
same effect. In spite of limited opportunities to shower, Tomaz gets day work
as a labourer. He looks at another man’s shoes and warns him it is dangerous
work. Before then, Tomaz and his friends get shouted at by a passing racist
motorist, telling them to ‘go home’. One night, Tomaz is awakened by another
migrant who tells him the building is on fire. Tomaz has to cut through the
carpet tape with a knife between his knees before he flees the premises. In an
alley away from the building, he collapses. It is noteworthy in this sequence,
that Garai and her cinematographer Laura Bellingham suggest fire by having an
out of focus yellow light in the corner of the frame. Garai uses sound to suggest
the arrival of the fire brigade as Tomaz emerges into the alley.
When we see him
next, bloodied and stirring, Tomaz is attended to in a hospital bed by a nun,
Sister Claire (Imelda Staunton). The nun has a kindly face, though there is a
saying I have just invented, never trust an apple pie. She is keen to help
Tomaz get back on his feet. She has looked after his possessions. ‘Did you find
some money?’ he asks, referring to the roll of fifty-pound notes he had secreted
about his person. ‘No,’ says Claire. She takes him to a house in Balham where
he can stay for no rent. Just two people live there, Magda (Carla Juri) and her
ailing, invalid mother who doesn’t go out. Right on cue, the mother moans. She
is, as Tomaz is told more than once, in an enormous amount of pain. However,
she is near the end.
‘You’ve made your
first mistake, turning down Magda’s cooking,’ Sister Claire tells him. Tomaz
reluctantly helps himself to a lumpy brown stew that might conceivably be the
crew’s leftovers. His appetite recovers. Sister Claire gives Magda some
reassurance, but Magda doesn’t want the extra house guest. As evidenced by the
bitemarks on Magda’s arm, her mother is more than a handful – or armful. After
leaving, Sister Claire drops Tomaz’s roll of bank notes into a drain, easy
enough for someone else to find them, since the notes rest of top of it. Just
as well really, it might be the film’s sundries budget. While short of cash,
Tomaz discovers that he still has that amulet, which we understand is a
metaphor for his guilt – and then some.
Normally films about
houses where strange stuff happens don’t waste any time in dumping their
protagonists in sub-standard accommodation. In movies such as The Amityville Horror or The Conjuring we are
introduced to escalating creepiness at the twenty-minute mark. Amulet takes its time. That said, Garai’s scenes are economical enough. She drip-feeds
detail, with Tomaz’s story told through a steady series of short flashbacks.
After an
uncomfortable first night during which his nightmares continue, Tomaz is
determined to make himself useful. He finds a leather-bound bag of tools,
monogrammed ‘GC’. Thanking Magda for the clean shirt that she had found for
him, he is also curious about the house. ‘A man used to live here,’ Magda tells
him. ‘But then he went away.’ Tomaz discovers a hole just behind the toilet and
is just about to reach into it when Magda objects. She doesn’t want him to do
any repair work. Later, chipping away at the ceiling, he discovers a curly
design, a mark to ward away demons. He is shocked and falls off his ladder. But
Magda can’t see what he sees.
The house itself has
no functioning electricity – one overhead Magda doesn’t have to worry about. ‘Mother
tried to stick her fingers in the electric socket,’ she tells Tomaz. Later, we
see a bare light bulb flash on and off, the nearest Magda gets to holding a
party indoors.
Tomaz discovers that
she doesn’t venture far from the house. Her sole motivation is to visit a food
market, where she buys fresh produce. In a later scene, we see her remove the
insides of a fish. ‘That took some guts,’ I observed. Magda is desperate to go
dancing and Tomaz is happy to accompany her, though not before he tries to
clean the lavatory and discovers a pink-skinned bat in the toilet bowl. The bat
bites him, but Tomaz is given penicillin when treated for his wound.
On the dance floor,
Magda loses herself and Tomaz gets woozy. He hasn’t made a pass at her because
it isn’t that kind of movie. He is keen to find out what is going on upstairs.
For her part, Magda peers through a keyhole – never a good idea in a horror film
and gets the side of her face scratched with a sharp pin, one of the film’s few
jump scares.
In the climax, Tomaz
does indeed meet the mistress of the house and makes a series of unpleasant
discoveries. I won’t set out exactly what they are, but we discover the source
of the bats, the regenerative power of evil – you can’t just stick mother in the
neck – and that one preternaturally cheerful character isn’t what they seem.
Garai has flipped
the gender roles in a horror film so that a vulnerable male is our principal
viewpoint character. He is the one in danger, though nothing yucky happens to
him until near the end. The male is also the problem. Tomaz’s crime essentially
recommends him for a job for life and takes the film into surrealist – almost
David Lynchian – territory. Indeed he climbs through a fallopian tube type
passage to confront the living embodiment of his amulet. Then his belly starts
rumbling and he starts to scream.
This unfortunately
isn’t the end of the film. Stopping off on the open road, Magda meets Miriam in
a garage. It is a hedge-betting, jolly sort of ending, one that defangs any
sort of comment about the need to overcome the tyranny of men over women.
The twist is the
best thing about the movie, followed by the surreal bit and the bat-biting. Garai
stated that she consistently wanted to wrong-foot audiences, so that characters
seem neither one thing nor another. Explaining the twist in a rapid montage of
flashbacks – you may know the sort – Garai eschews any sort of discussion about
why male violence occurs and whether it is always inevitable. Once you stick
the tag ‘evil’ on someone, you remove debate. In this regard, the horror genre
is reductionist and certainly one of my least favourite. Secareanu is very
watchable; we root for Tomaz to a degree, overlooking his violent act at the
beginning (though we shouldn’t really). In Garai’s moral universe, there is no
redemption, only punishment. Amulet is not a film that is going to win any
medals, though it does a good job of presenting Balham as a hip part of South
London
Reviewed at BFI South Bank, Screen One, Waterloo, London,
Friday 21 January 2022, 18:30 (preview) screening
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