Despite the approach of Christmas and the supposed season of goodwill there is little cheer for the homeless shivering in the Ohio weather, one day very much like any other but a new worry in their lives with over thirty confirmed killed and more missing, presumed by many dead but the nature of their off-the-record and out-of-sight lives making it difficult for police to track numbers, even presuming that they cared enough to investigate.
The latest death Ralph Eddington, a familiar face in the neighbourhood, sleeping in the garbage bags and rain behind an Italian restaurant where he scrounged for scraps, his remains are described as looking like leftover spaghetti, a shock to friends Constance Wilmenson and Percy ‘Sketch’ Williams, also homeless but with at least with a roof over their heads in the draughty industrial unit they share, wary as they pass by the dumpster where he was found.
Directed by Dusty Austen from a script co-written with Athena Murzda who plays Constance alongside Mia Jones as Sketch, sisters are doing it for themselves as The Beast of Walton St. is unleashed, an urban horror of cold streets and disenfranchisement of the unwanted underclass where the threadbare production refuses to let the lack of budget get in the way of ambition.
Like Constance when she is on a mission, determined to get what she wants by manipulation or just breaking the rules, she and Sketch are both smart and capable despite being caught in a situation that requires them to fend on the streets without support, implied to be escapees from the care system, and with the absent authorities indifferent when the killings are a solution to the homeless problem
A full moon inversion of the Bechdel test, with no more than one male character on screen at any time as the leads play shenanigans with waitress Debbie (Yvonne Newman) and Constance pines for lost love Gloria (Aimee-Lynn Chadwick), with even the titular beast living in the dumpster of death ultimately determined to be female even if they cannot ascertain if it is a big raccoon, a bear, a rabid dog or possibly a wolf.
Fighting through the limitations as gamely as the characters fight through body parts and pools of congealed and possibly infected blood, the nearby forest is neither as dense nor as threatening as it is implied to be and some of the homeless are suspiciously well groomed, but largely kept hidden in shadows the practical were-raccoon-bear-wolf costume is effective, The Beast of Walton St. perhaps not leading the pack but keeping comfortable pace alongside such hirsute kin of the indie scene as Late Phases and Howl.
The Beast of Walton St. will be streaming on Arrow from Friday 20th March
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The Beast of Walton St.
Despite the approach of Christmas and the supposed season of goodwill there is little cheer for the homeless shivering in the Ohio weather, one day very much like any other but a new worry in their lives with over thirty confirmed killed and more missing, presumed by many dead but the nature of their off-the-record and out-of-sight lives making it difficult for police to track numbers, even presuming that they cared enough to investigate.
The latest death Ralph Eddington, a familiar face in the neighbourhood, sleeping in the garbage bags and rain behind an Italian restaurant where he scrounged for scraps, his remains are described as looking like leftover spaghetti, a shock to friends Constance Wilmenson and Percy ‘Sketch’ Williams, also homeless but with at least with a roof over their heads in the draughty industrial unit they share, wary as they pass by the dumpster where he was found.
Directed by Dusty Austen from a script co-written with Athena Murzda who plays Constance alongside Mia Jones as Sketch, sisters are doing it for themselves as The Beast of Walton St. is unleashed, an urban horror of cold streets and disenfranchisement of the unwanted underclass where the threadbare production refuses to let the lack of budget get in the way of ambition.
Like Constance when she is on a mission, determined to get what she wants by manipulation or just breaking the rules, she and Sketch are both smart and capable despite being caught in a situation that requires them to fend on the streets without support, implied to be escapees from the care system, and with the absent authorities indifferent when the killings are a solution to the homeless problem
A full moon inversion of the Bechdel test, with no more than one male character on screen at any time as the leads play shenanigans with waitress Debbie (Yvonne Newman) and Constance pines for lost love Gloria (Aimee-Lynn Chadwick), with even the titular beast living in the dumpster of death ultimately determined to be female even if they cannot ascertain if it is a big raccoon, a bear, a rabid dog or possibly a wolf.
Fighting through the limitations as gamely as the characters fight through body parts and pools of congealed and possibly infected blood, the nearby forest is neither as dense nor as threatening as it is implied to be and some of the homeless are suspiciously well groomed, but largely kept hidden in shadows the practical were-raccoon-bear-wolf costume is effective, The Beast of Walton St. perhaps not leading the pack but keeping comfortable pace alongside such hirsute kin of the indie scene as Late Phases and Howl.
The Beast of Walton St. will be streaming on Arrow from Friday 20th March
Comments
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