Hooptober... And Then There Were Nine

12th Kill

I used to live in an apartment in Sydney and we had a really weird family living in the apartment directly above us. They had two sons about 17 to 20 years old who - and this is a desperate guess on my part - engaged in torrid bouts of Greco-Roman wrestling between the hours of about 2 and 4 in the morning, which would result in furious thumping through our ceiling, sounds of couches and furniture being knocked and overturned, that kind of thing. And that's not all - when those two kids were either away for the night or perhaps had collapsed into some kind of merciful idiot unconsciousness, the father would take the opportunity to engage in wall drilling - because there is simply no better time to erect a complicated wall-mounted installation than the small hours of the morning - as long as there are no rutting pubescent dickheads disturbing the living room with their contests of strength - you don't need that sort of nonsense going on when you have some masonry to drill.

Anyway, whenever I'd get woken up by a thump in the night, I would get this dread-soaked fury hit the pit of my stomach - it went beyond being woken up when you needed sleep, it was like a violation of my personal headspace. It went on for so long and it was so impossible to stop these fools (I'd complain, beg, berate, sob, snivel, bribe... everything was met by stony indifference by these people, and the body corporate could do nothing about it), I was living in this realm of existential angst. The only way I was able to finally put a stop to it was when, after checking with my other neighbours that they all worked normal hours like me and would usually head off to work in the morning, I started setting my big-ass sound system to play Slayer's South of Heaven followed by Portishead Third at full volume just as I left for work around 7.30 - right under where I figured these assholes slept off their nocturnal adventures (I figured the unnatural combination of Slayer and Portishead would unpleasantly disorient them even further). A week of this seemed to do the trick.

Anyway, I only indulge in this little memoir to illustrate how deeply I sympathised with the existential horror of the knocking that our protagonist, Molly has to endure in this tight little psychological thriller from Sweden. After some kind of nervous breakdown following what was clearly the tragic loss of her partner (although exactly what happened is never precisely revealed), Molly is discharged from hospital and left to pick up the pieces of her life in a new apartment building. Soon she starts to hear knocking and muffled screams and sobs from someone in one of the neighbouring apartments. Of course, when she knocks on doors, no one else is hearing it and her sanity or lack thereof becomes the subject of doubt.

It's another film which trades in the all-too-convincing phenomenon of female disbelief i.e. the disbelief of female testimony by a predominantly male cohort, a cohort which happens to control our protagonist's personal freedom and existence. It also successfully avoids getting too obvious or on-the-nose about it either - the gender angle could have easily been excised and this would still work, but it sure deepens the stakes.

This could be a little thin in the plot stakes, but the film is short and sharp and the tension is built masterfully. Also, Cecilia Milocco gives a wonderful performance - her portrayal of emotional vulnerability and pain is really quite affecting, I really wanted to give her a hug, the poor thing. This is good stuff - maybe a little overlooked among the more overt horror films in the Shudder catalogue but this is well worth a look.

Best Kill (may contain traces of spoiler)

Not that kind of movie, but let's just say that my real life run-in with the neighbours from hell could have ended a lot more gruesomely. That musical overture was only the first step in the reign of terror I had planned. I didn't even get a chance to visit them one night in my Black Skulls Biker Gang costume. Who knows how it all would have ended...