The Peril at Pincer Point
It’s been a strange day for sound recorder Jim Baitte, woken by screaming, his girlfriend believing there is a rat in their flat, Jim realising when he receives a nasty snap on his probing fingers that it is actually an errant crab, central London far from its natural habitat in the sea, then other fingers pointing at him in a meeting with director P W Griffin, helpfully demanding that his new film boast “a sound unprecedented in the history of cinema.”
Griffin recalling the sublime voice of a sandwich girl he met on a location recce, Jim travels light to Pincer Point, little more than his equipment and the clothes he stands up in, the good mic boom having been taken by previously assigned engineer Gavin who hasn’t been seen since, the locals eccentric and foul tempered and sandwich girl Marina Hurley missing for two weeks.
A square-framed monochrome microbudget oddity of a city fish out of water on a strange island, The Peril at Pincer Point not only the distressingly large crabs but superstitious locals who tell tales of the legendary buccaneer Sye Telson, Jim (Jack Redmayne) trying to muster enthusiasm for his job but met with hostility and indifference, even from the brother of Marina (Alyth Ross).
An eerie intersection of land and sea, of city expectations and country manners, of the old ways and the new-fangled ideas of 2002, Jim calling his office from a payphone and his recordings sent by post, written and directed by Jake Kuhn and Noah Stratton-Twine (both of whom appear in supporting roles, the latter as hapless Hollis Hurley) Pincer Point exists in a place all its own, resembling the world Jim knows but adjacent rather than congruent.
Playing like a Channel 4 sitcom crossing Lake Michigan Monster with Enys Men, illuminated by flashes of lightning over the dark seas and the sweeping beam of The Lighthouse, seeking a place to belong the waves call to Jim despite the warnings that the Captain takes the souls of the young to man his crew, that he has been marked by the crabs as kin, hearing their thoughts as they struggle in the bucket.
Existing in the liminal spaces of folk horror, stories of the sea, its traditions, tragedies and large scuttling denizens, The Peril at Pincer Point is a unique and very British film but somehow less than the sum of its parts, wading in the shallows of weird rather than plunging to the depths, the sitcom analogy continuing in that it might have better as a one-off hour-long standalone rather than a full, albeit short, feature.
Edinburgh International Film Festival continues until Wednesday 19th August
