7 Keys
It is a sad truth that in an age when relationships are regarded as ephemeral, when people can be removed from one’s life without explanation or apology, that arrangements can be similarly broken, Lena waiting for her date to show up and slowly having to accept that he’s not going to, that she has been ghosted, the only small consolation being the man at the next table in the restaurant who has found himself in exactly the same position.
Striking up a conversation over dinner and drinks with no expectation or prior investment on either part, Lena finds it liberating, she and the more reticent Daniel forming an unconventional relationship where she is the wild one, acting impulsively on his comment that the many keys he carries open the doors to every place he has lived in across London, she suggesting that they visit them all, to see how other people live and exist for a moment in their private places.
Primarily a two-hander starring The Serpent Queen‘s Emma McDonald and Silo‘s Billy Postlethwaite as Daniel, 7 Keys is the feature debut of writer and director Joy Wilkinson, a twisted relationship drama of dysfunctional people with little to lose, grasping for something to hold onto and finding excitement in their transgressive behaviour in an alien space in the same way that others steal or vandalise for kicks.
Those living on the edge of society more prone to taking personal risks even before anonymous dating apps declared open season, while Daniel is a loner, apparently easily led, she has a young son, Cal (Kaylen Luke), who spends most of his time with his wealthy father while she tries to fill the void his absence leaves, a woman whose ambition was thwarted by circumstances, seeing this as a chance to perhaps even the score, experience a moment of the good life she was denied.
Both Lena and Daniel messed up and full of secrets, they find that as strangers they can offer confessions to each other they can tell nobody else as there is no comeback, no connection to their wider lives, and while at first she takes the lead and plays games with Daniel he soon throws himself fully into their adventure like a man who has found something to cling to, a possessive devotion which would be alarming if Lena could distance herself and consider her situation more rationally.
The other characters peripheral, they are pawns in the game until the moves require that one be sacrificed, Lena finally realising that it is she who has been played from the start by a man who has no control over his impulses, in over her head and complicit in all that they have done as the last of the 7 Keys are counted down, a thriller carried by its two excellent leads over even a couple of frustrating moments of egregious stupidity required to move the plot forwards.
7 Keys was screened at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest
