← Back to Reviews
in
For Those in Peril, 2013
Aaron (George MacKay), is the only survivor of a disaster at sea that killed all of the rest of the crew of the boat he was on, including his older brother, Michael (Jordan Young). Living with his bereaved mother, Cathy (Kate Dickie), Aaron becomes obsessed with the idea that his brother and the other young men were taken by a sea monster from local folklore.
Elevated by strong central performances, this is an involving and potent mixture of drama and fantasy.
There are two pillars that make this film much stronger than I expected, the acting and the overall structure.
To begin with MacKay does a great job portraying Aaron’s potent mix of survivor’s guilt, obsession, and possibly some other unrelated mental illness. Several times during the film, Aaron is asked directly by his friends just exactly what happened on the both. And there is always a beat, a significant pause, before he tells them that he doesn’t remember. As a viewer, you can’t tell if he’s telling the truth or if he’s concealing something. And if he is concealing something, is it his own culpability, or did he see something out there in the water that he knows no one will believe? Further, at times it’s hard to tell if Aaron believes what he says about a monster, or if it’s a way of denying his own guilt. MacKay keeps the character’s emotions raw and at the surface, but at the same time his specific knowledge and motivations somewhat obscured.
Dickie is excellent as a woman whose grief over the loss of her son is complicated by her other son’s involvement and the looming possibility that he needs to be committed to a mental health institution for his own good. I mean it as a high compliment that Dickie manages to navigate a very cliched moment in the story. You know, where a person having a breakdown performs an emotionally raw song at karaoke? What she’s given in the script is frustrating and cliched at many times, but she mirror’s MacKay’s performance in the way that you can practically feel a swirl of intense and even contradictory emotions radiating out of her.
Finally, the supporting cast is very good. In the flashbacks that we see of Aaron and Michael, Jordan Young lets us see how Michael felt protectiveness but also frustration when it came to Aaron and his eccentricities. Nichola Burley plays Jane, Michael’s girlfriend, who forms a tentative friendship with Aaron in the wake of the disaster. It’s perhaps in Jane that we best see the way that the whole town transitions from sympathy to fear and anger at Aaron’s erratic behavior. Michael Smiley plays Jane’s father, a man who didn’t much care for Michael and certainly doesn’t care for Aaron.
On top of all of the solid performances, the structure of the film is really clever, slowly unfolding for us a vision of what life was like for Aaron before the disaster at sea. The more we see of the past, the more we understand the precarious relationship Aaron had with the people in his village before the disaster, the way that Michael shielded Aaron from harm, and that Aaron may have already had an unhealthy fixation on the folklore well before the fateful voyage.
Something that hangs over a movie like this is the question of whether the sea monster is real or a delusion. Andt the movie admirably keeps us just on the edge of that question for the entire runtime. As Aaron grows more and more desperate to lure the monster out----to prove its existence and, as per the folktale, possibly revive his dead brother---some part of you wants it to be true. Early in the film, at a service for the dead young men, a mourner reads the famous lines “Do not stand by my grave and weep/I am not there, I do not sleep . . . Do not stand by my grave and cry/I am not there/I did not die.” Aaron takes this sentiment literally, and there’s this push-pull as you know that believing in the monster is an expression of serious mental illness, and yet you want it to exist.
I was really pleasantly surprised by this movie. Between the performances and the way it unfolds its story, it had me fully engaged beginning to end.
For Those in Peril, 2013
Aaron (George MacKay), is the only survivor of a disaster at sea that killed all of the rest of the crew of the boat he was on, including his older brother, Michael (Jordan Young). Living with his bereaved mother, Cathy (Kate Dickie), Aaron becomes obsessed with the idea that his brother and the other young men were taken by a sea monster from local folklore.
Elevated by strong central performances, this is an involving and potent mixture of drama and fantasy.
There are two pillars that make this film much stronger than I expected, the acting and the overall structure.
To begin with MacKay does a great job portraying Aaron’s potent mix of survivor’s guilt, obsession, and possibly some other unrelated mental illness. Several times during the film, Aaron is asked directly by his friends just exactly what happened on the both. And there is always a beat, a significant pause, before he tells them that he doesn’t remember. As a viewer, you can’t tell if he’s telling the truth or if he’s concealing something. And if he is concealing something, is it his own culpability, or did he see something out there in the water that he knows no one will believe? Further, at times it’s hard to tell if Aaron believes what he says about a monster, or if it’s a way of denying his own guilt. MacKay keeps the character’s emotions raw and at the surface, but at the same time his specific knowledge and motivations somewhat obscured.
Dickie is excellent as a woman whose grief over the loss of her son is complicated by her other son’s involvement and the looming possibility that he needs to be committed to a mental health institution for his own good. I mean it as a high compliment that Dickie manages to navigate a very cliched moment in the story. You know, where a person having a breakdown performs an emotionally raw song at karaoke? What she’s given in the script is frustrating and cliched at many times, but she mirror’s MacKay’s performance in the way that you can practically feel a swirl of intense and even contradictory emotions radiating out of her.
Finally, the supporting cast is very good. In the flashbacks that we see of Aaron and Michael, Jordan Young lets us see how Michael felt protectiveness but also frustration when it came to Aaron and his eccentricities. Nichola Burley plays Jane, Michael’s girlfriend, who forms a tentative friendship with Aaron in the wake of the disaster. It’s perhaps in Jane that we best see the way that the whole town transitions from sympathy to fear and anger at Aaron’s erratic behavior. Michael Smiley plays Jane’s father, a man who didn’t much care for Michael and certainly doesn’t care for Aaron.
On top of all of the solid performances, the structure of the film is really clever, slowly unfolding for us a vision of what life was like for Aaron before the disaster at sea. The more we see of the past, the more we understand the precarious relationship Aaron had with the people in his village before the disaster, the way that Michael shielded Aaron from harm, and that Aaron may have already had an unhealthy fixation on the folklore well before the fateful voyage.
Something that hangs over a movie like this is the question of whether the sea monster is real or a delusion. Andt the movie admirably keeps us just on the edge of that question for the entire runtime. As Aaron grows more and more desperate to lure the monster out----to prove its existence and, as per the folktale, possibly revive his dead brother---some part of you wants it to be true. Early in the film, at a service for the dead young men, a mourner reads the famous lines “Do not stand by my grave and weep/I am not there, I do not sleep . . . Do not stand by my grave and cry/I am not there/I did not die.” Aaron takes this sentiment literally, and there’s this push-pull as you know that believing in the monster is an expression of serious mental illness, and yet you want it to exist.
I was really pleasantly surprised by this movie. Between the performances and the way it unfolds its story, it had me fully engaged beginning to end.