House of Ashes
She’s not a criminal by any reasonable judgement, she is a victim twice over, a suspect in the death of her husband Adam for which she was exonerated when it was ruled a suicide, then in suffering a miscarriage, yet under the draconian law of her state Mia Sheldon is convicted in the matter of the death of her unborn child, her probation officer taking unseemly pleasure in enunciating the restrictions to be enforced on her as though she were his personal project for punishment.
A pariah in the neighbourhood where months before she and Adam ran the popular Happy Valley Pet Clinic, tagged day and night and forbidden to leave the house except by prior arrangement, with ghouls knocking on her door to taunt her for podcast material and her only companion her old school friend now turned sort-of-boyfriend Marc Winters first he then Mia begin experiencing strange things in the house, he losing personal objects, she fearful she is being watched.
The feature debut of director Izzy Lee co-written with frequent collaborator Steve Johanson, life in the House of Ashes is full of righteous but suppressed rage, Mia (Creepshow’s Fayna Sanchez) consciously treated like a criminal when she should be consoled, her freedom and agency stolen from her by men who delight in controlling women, Marc (Fck’n Nuts’ Vincent Stalba) the limp straw at which she clutches to stop herself drowning completely.
A domestic horror in that the house is her prison, the growing threat manifesting in commonplace objects, as Mia unravels House of Ashes transforms from the psychological to the psychedelic, all the time Adam’s ashes sitting in his urn on the dresser, her late husband wordlessly judging from beyond the grave, Mia suffering the most distress but the physical aspects of the attacks focused on Mark whose own behaviour is increasingly childish, pressuring Mia into violating her probation then going into a huff when she refuses.
Lee and Johanson’s partnership having previously offered the inappropriate joy of Meat Friend, while more serious throughout, the disturbing real-world parallels as undeniable as the bleeping red light on Mia’s ankle monitor, the film is not without humour, awkwardly funny in the specificity of the abuses heaped upon Marc even as the cramped space fills with portents, though moving at a uniform pace it might have benefitted from growing urgency as it progressed to the final stages of grief and release.
With little attempt to disguise the coming revelations, the journey becomes the point, Mia waking from a nightmare of isolation and enforced guilt which she knows is undeserved to rediscover herself, perhaps looking back and realising that living in a haunted House of Ashes was less unbelievable than the thought that even at her lowest moments she ever saw anything in that creep Marc who attached himself to her like a needy nerdy leech.
Glasgow Film Festival continues until Sunday 9th March
