Dementer
As is often the case, Katie deals with the problems in her own life by helping others, focusing on their needs rather than her own, hoping that if they can be saved then perhaps she is not beyond saving herself. Living in her car, washing herself in convenience store bathrooms, she has managed to find a job as a care assistant for developmentally impaired adults, working with them at their centre and supervising them on sleepovers in their homes.
Carrying with her the scars of her past, branded into her flesh, a carry bag of medications and a lot of emotional baggage, Katie becomes concerned for her charges Stephanie who has developed an illness which makes it difficult for her to eat, triggering memories of Katie’s own experiences in a cult from which she believed she had escaped; could they have found her, and are they now using Stephanie as tool to force her back, or is Stephanie their target who Katie must protect?
Written and directed by Chad Crawford Kinkle and shot in his Tennessee hometown, Dementer is a deeply personal project which had long been gestating in his mind seeking the right approach and opportunity to bring it into being, a horror film featuring his elder sister Stephanie Kinkle who has Down syndrome, essentially playing herself as events and forces beyond her comprehension and control play out around her, filmed by Kinkle with minimal crew so as to avoid confusion or disruption of her routines.
Katie Groshong taking the lead as Katie, her car filled with totems and her journal filled with the scribbled notes and sigils which she believes will guide and protect her, Sean Spillane’s soundtrack of oppressive distorted noise conveys her disorientated state of mind, her colleagues well-meaning but of limited imagination, oblivious to the trauma embedded in her now expressing itself in violent headaches and hallucinations.
As disjointed and fragmented as the jagged shards of Katie’s mind, Dementer is a challenging and uncomfortable film in both the subject and Katie’s escalating methods for dealing with her situation through blood and the purity of fire, never sure whether she is recalling memories or having premonitions, a victim on the path to recovery and salvation or a doomed soul cursed to repeat the hell of her life over and again.
Released as a double disc with Kinkle’s previous feature Jug Face by Arrow Films, Dementer contains no less than three commentaries, Kinkle solo, with cast and crew and with critic Chris Hallock, a documentary, an interview with Larry Fessenden who plays the cult leader who indoctrinated Katie, a discussion of the film and independent filmmaking between Kinkle, Fessenden and Lucky McKee and a selection of Kinkle’s early short films.
Having screened at FrightFest, Dementer will be released on Blu-ray by Arrow on Monday 4th October
