Bury the Devil
Once Evelyn was a strong, capable and independent woman, an anthropologist, an artist, a wife, a mother, but time has taken a toll; divorced, her daughter Sarah long dead, she is elderly and frail, still kind-natured but sometimes difficult, her live-in carer Julia brushing her hair before helping her to bed as the storm outside moves closer, a firm hand needed to guide her through routines established before dementia took over.
Evelyn unpredictable, confused, forgetting who Julia is, thinking she is Sarah one moment and an intruder the next, there is more trouble with a late night knock on the door, Evelyn’s ex-husband Randall, at first bringing back memories of better times but soon taking a darker turn, Julia asking him to leave but instead being given a warning and a threat, that she has no idea what is happening in the house and that she should watch herself.
Presented as a single take, the action unfolding in real time over eighty minutes with any cuts and edits cleverly disguised as the camera moves around the house, upstairs, downstairs and into the basement, Bury the Devil is directed by Mom‘s Adam O’Brien from a script co-written with Brad Hodson and producer Philip Kalin-Hajdu, revisiting the themes of their earlier collaboration, isolation, uncertainty, motherhood and sacrifice.
With Emmanuelle Lussier Martinez ostensibly in control as Julia, her composure fading as the night progresses, it is the magnificent Dawn Ford around whom the film pivots, complacent and pliable in her calm moments but the thunder outside only a prelude to the storm within, strong emotion bringing back memories of happiness and tragic mistakes which lurk in the shadowed corners of her mind, the record of her failures in notebooks and audio tapes echoing Evil Dead.
Conceived as the middle part of a trilogy with the origin story currently in pre-production, it is the camera which makes Bury the Devil a success, always present, always watching, panning with one character then returning to show a change in the background, something which should not be there, a physical change in a character, or secrets hidden in plain sight, a filtered light revealing bloodstains all through the house and smeared across paintings in strange sigils.
Suffering from a late lull as the action moves to Randall (Bill Rowat) and his friends gathering outside, convinced that as men they can handle the situation despite earlier failures and their collective presence less interesting than the two women, it is the only lapse in a film which otherwise holds the attention and builds atmosphere and dread, fortunately rousing itself as the dawn approaches, Evelyn offering one final smile for the damned.
Glasgow Film Festival continues until Sunday 8th March
