Faceless After Dark
**Seen for the 2024 Atlanta Film Festival.
Psychological horror is a very tricky thing to get right. The films that do are uncompromising and don’t try to be too clever by half. Raymond Wood’s “Faceless After Dark” is a fascinating attempt that works to a point, but trades the horror of an unhinged mind with gore and violence, which works for its story, but doesn’t really allow the film to stick the landing.
We begin on the set of a violent clown horror movie. Bowie (co-writer and “Terrifier” actress Jenna Kanell) is going through the scene, and she’s not quite sure if her dialogue will work for the film. We next see her at a horror convention, where she is doing selfies with die-hards who loved her work in the film. The opportunities are few and far between, however, and it’s bothering her, especially when her girlfriend (Danielle Lyn) and good friend (Danny Kang) are getting the chance to be make films. When she’s taken hostage by an obsessed fan, though, the old adage, “Write what you know,” becomes a very real possibility for her.
Kanell is very much working off of her notoriety in the “Terrifier” films (which, I’ll admit, I have not seen), but this is more in line with films like “Audition” and “Psycho” with a visual style that reminds me of one of my favorite films of the 2020s, “Black Lake.” The second half of the film in particular, as we follow Bowie’s downward spiral, is where the film’s visual flair kicks into high gear. The constant throughout is Kanell’s performance, which is well-calibrated to follow the character through this film. The narrative, however, is on shakier ground, as it relies of plot contrivances to really build much in the way of suspense. By the time it gets to its final scenes, it feels like it’s trying to say something more about the industry than it ever implied during the rest of the film, and as interesting as it is, it didn’t really land effectively, in my opinion. That said, I think fans of genre fare will dig it.
"Faceless After Dark" | Official Trailer from Raymond Wood on Vimeo.
