This is not a great film by most means of deduction, but when witnessing something that transcends deduction, the idea of great cinema flies out the window and is replaced with pure cinema. And there is a difference... that critical, logical filter is shattered by a quiet, ethereal something... and you are whisked away into another world. Vast segments of Herk Henry's low budget horror film are just that. Its genuine veracity into realms explored so little by so many filmmakers, is not only admirable but inspiring, haunting; A film that sparks your mind with a flurry of a thousand thoughts, that charges your own creative batteries, and yet simultaneously quiets it into a place devoid of time and the necessity to think or process. While watching this I couldn't help but remember a piece of myself I had never recognized. I say this because essentially CoS is a less abstract, feature version of my own film school thesis. Now had anyone ever talked about this film in class? No. Had I ever heard of it before? Sort of... Once, long ago I recall seeing something of it (the beginning?) on TV, and then being brisked away for some reason or another. Could I have been affected that much as to store a very short but still powerful moment with me well into the next decade of my life? Perhaps it came from that collective ether of nightmare and imagination we all drown in from time to time.
Drawing inspiration from Ingmar Bergman and Jean Cocteau, and perhaps the macabre short fiction of Ray Bradbury, Henry's film is truly something special even in its uneven acting and sometimes cheap production value, there is an immediate care and devotion to it all. The small dedicated crew who crafted this film loved cinema, and dared to dive into its depths. And rarely is that so apparent in film.
Drawing inspiration from Ingmar Bergman and Jean Cocteau, and perhaps the macabre short fiction of Ray Bradbury, Henry's film is truly something special even in its uneven acting and sometimes cheap production value, there is an immediate care and devotion to it all. The small dedicated crew who crafted this film loved cinema, and dared to dive into its depths. And rarely is that so apparent in film.