The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras
It’s an unwelcome duty which Gwyn recognises as necessary, a service to the community which he is called upon to perform, woken by an early morning call and ascending to the loft to retrieve a black holdall bag which contains the items he will need for his clandestine undertaking, using an anonymous mobile phone to contact the associates who will accompany him.
Emlyn frustratingly obvious when he should be discrete, Gwyn takes out his anger on him for his lack of thought, while Dai is if anything too eager, finding malicious delight in the task ahead, and then there is Dafydd, the unwilling but most important participant whom they bundle into the boot of the car, driving to Bwlch Pen Barras and marching him up the hill as the sun begins to set on them all.
A piece of few words, focusing instead on the actions of the almost silent men as they perform their duties led by Bryn Fôn as the regretful but resolved Gwyn rather than their deeper thoughts, The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras is a short film written and directed by Craig Williams which aims for the haunted and forbidding landscapes of folk horror but doesn’t quite find the right map position.
Filmed in Ruthin in Denbighshire in the rural north of Wales and nearby Bwlch Pen Barras, a nature walk and cycling route, Morgan Hopkins, Séan Carlsen and Morgan Llewelyn-Jones are Emlyn, Dai and Dafydd, a man who has nominated himself through his own behaviour which has damaged the community, with Victoria Pugh briefly seen as Gwyn’s wife Anwen, aware of what is about to happen and knowing better than to question it.
That unspoken acceptance of the way things are, have always been and must always be, unchallenged by all the participants, even Dafydd who makes only token struggle, is the undoing of The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras as much as it is of Dafydd himself as he is bound to a tree and prepared for what is to come, the lack of struggle removing any sense of the menace or dread which normally permeates the barren fields of the folk horror ethic.
Instead presenting a group of tired men going about their peculiar country business amongst the tall trees and deep green moss, without digging into the people, the past and the earth which binds them the film feels empty, superficial, a fragment of something larger about to arrive when it abruptly ends, the most haunting thing about it the whistled opening theme by Cian Ciaran and Dafydd Ieuan.
The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras will be available on the Arrow platform from Friday 2nd February
