Analog Horror Rewinds Horror’s Past for Better (or Worse) [Brooklyn Horror Fest]

A particular brand of supernatural horror post-Insidious succeeds largely on how scary you find loud noises and spooky, distorted faces. James Wan pioneered the contemporary scary face (or as Variety critic Owen Gleiberman calls it, simply ‘the face’) way back with Billy the Puppet in 2004, and since then, oodles of supernatural horror tales have endeavored to cash in on a scary face of their own. Josh Tanner’s Posthumous has a really scary face, but it’s constrained by the trappings of a haunted house you’ve seen not once, not twice, but as many times as you’d like (read: a lot).

Zoe (Sophie Lowe) crashes at her dad’s place late on her birthday after a fight with her boyfriend, Alex (Remy Hii). Dad’s already zonked for the evening, so she has the most maudlin celebration imaginable: rewatching old VHS tapes of her deceased mother, one for every year. Mom (Kira-Che Heelan) passed away at Zoe’s birth following a cancer diagnosis, though she was certain to record tapes for her daughter, all the way from first birthday into Zoe’s thirties.

It’s here that Tanner (and co-writer Jade Van Der Lei) imbue the contemporary phenomenon of analog horror with Insidious-lite scare tactics. There are plenty of jarring images interspersed throughout the tapes, and Zoe’s grief leads her to interrogate her mother’s death as film reels point toward a larger, more sinister conspiracy at play. Answers aren’t easy to come by, either, since Zoe’s dad, Neil (David Roberts), leans hard into the tropes of the genre, otherwise refusing to validate or even acknowledge Zoe’s curiosity. Everything is fine… until it isn’t.

Zoe’s insistence on unraveling a mystery (anything to avoid responsibility in her own life, a poignant theme that the team gives earnest weight to) leads her to all kinds of supernatural mumbo-jumbo including, but not limited to: her mother’s specter, eldritch entities, architectural horror, Spirit Halloween witchy stuff, and more. Tanner manages the slow drip of tension successfully enough in the more patient, atmospheric first half, but soon, the burnt-out VHS tapes are analogous to audience interest.  

Tanner and co. go full kitchen sink with jump scares, Hideo Nakata-esque liminality, and grainy, spoooooky tapes in an effort to keep the latter half moving as quickly (and as loudly) as possible. The finale itself, with its warped worlds and “sacred geometry,” calls to mind the better, more streamlined The Night House from five years ago, though Posthumous lacks the gravitas of Rebecca Hall or the narrow specificity of Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski’s script. It’s certainly never boring, but the possessive chaos isn’t anything that hasn’t been done to death a dozen times before (and even the sacred, ritualistic setting looks culled from this year’s The Mummy).

Luckily, Sophie Lowe manages to elevate Zoe’s paint-by-numbers trauma, and her performance is more dynamic than similar fare often allows. Sure, she’s often saddled with Big Feelings, but she remains engaged in the broader premise, always acting with intention rather than merely reacting to the Aussie spook show unfurling around her.

That spook show, however, is covered in cobwebs. It’s been cribbed from the attic of horror’s past. Tanner and his team manage a pretty gnarly final monster, sure, but it’s a small, unique beat in an otherwise deeply, unequivocally standard supernatural horror show. Competent regularly came to mind. The analog flourishes and strong performances stand out, but otherwise, Posthumous struggles to distinguish itself among the year’s already-crowded horror slate. Tanner has the sauce, but maybe next time, he’ll work with a premise that’s not already DOA.

Tags:Brooklyn Horror Fest Josh Tanner Kira-Che Heelan Posthumous Sophie Lowe

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