The Razing is a slow burn horror tinged drama that I really wish I was more intelligent while watching. Co-directed by Paul Erskine (Paradox) and J. Arcane (Lunarcy), with the later also writing this, this tells the tale of an uncomfortable meet-up of old acquaintances set to the backdrop of a potential world ending event.
A group of people annually meet-up at the expensive looking house of Corey (Jack Wooton) with the pretext of celebrating his birthday. Included within the group is Corey's depressed wife Ellen (Laura Sampson Hemingway), Ray (Logan Paul Price) and Lincoln (Nicholas Tene - Apocalypsis), as well as a few new faces, such as Clare (Mia Heavner). It becomes clear that not a single person at the meet-up actually likes each other in the slightest, with it mentioned that this happens every year due to a pact that was made between the group a long time in the past. Incidentally this occurs during worldwide possible mass hysteria about an approaching endtime event known as 'the razing', leading to many families and friend groups turning on themselves and killing each other either as a result of this, or out of fear for this.
That synopsis is about as far as I got with the story here, with it never really being made clear exactly what is real and what is imagined. Key to the film are three different coloured drugs. These red, white and blue pills are said to represent different aspects of people, and are said to cause the lines between reality and fantasy to become blurred. I couldn't actually work out if what is happening is as a result of the group taking these drugs, or if they never actually existed and are meant to be an analogy for the way the characters have chosen to live their lives.
Nearly the entirety of the movie takes place within the curtained house of Corey, the uniform, lifeless beige design of the place made everything look so dull. A large chunk of the movie takes place in the past when the group were teenagers, and due to the design of the house never changing these scenes blend seamlessly with the present, with characters from the present day often walking into scenes from the past.
The characters were conundrums to me, their lack of chemistry was purposeful, there remained a layer of tension and mistrust for the duration of the movie, no character really felt like a good person in the slightest. It always felt to me the characters were one ill judged word away from coming to blows, that this felt consistent over the whole one hour forty runtime was impressive. There were some good casting choices, with Ellen, Ray, Corey and Lincoln all being played by two actors, the older adults and their teenage selves. In particular the young Corey, played by Carson Marquette and the young Ellen (Tori Ellis - Kin Dread) not only resembled their older versions, but the acting between the pairs made them feel like they were the same person, rather than obviously two different actors playing the different ages.
This is a dialogue heavy movie which for the most part has characters talking quite deeply with each other in almost philosophical terms. There isn't a large amount of action over the course of the film, but there are horror elements that creep in, such as the possible 'razing' that sees CG flames appear every now and again, and some murderous fallings out between various members of the group. At times things felt almost too slow, not helped by my struggling to pinpoint what exactly was happening. The conversational style and repetitive scenes sometimes nearly pushed The Razing over into arthouse territory, as do the many different ways scenes are presented, sometimes as trippy feeling sequences, sometimes with 24 style split screen segments..
The Razing was an interesting horror that felt like parts of it were left open for interpretation. On occasion the dialogue heavy story became a bit weighed down and threatened to stall things, but the film just about teeters on the edge of that occurring and avoids it. A different feeling horror whose feel-bad story of paranoia, control, jealousy and lust is told with bubbling restraint. The Razing releases on VOD on September 27th from Gravitas Ventures.
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