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HEAD COUNT
Director: Elle Callahan Cast: Isaac W. Jay, Ashleigh Morghan, Bevin Bru, Billy Meade, Hunter Peterson, Chlcie May, Tory Freeth, Michael Herman, Amaka Obiechie, Sam Marra, Cooper Rowe MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:30 Release Date: 6/14/19 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 13, 2019 Horror movies usually train us to await something outside the frame to enter it, either through the motion of someone (or something) or the camera. Head Count trains us to pay attention to who and, possibly, what exist in the frame—more specifically, who or, probably, what shouldn't be there. The debut feature of director Elle Callahan is a clever little chiller, based in an urban legend (the authenticity of which will have to be left to people more willing to dig into such stuff) and crafted with a keen sense of staging. Things don't jump into the frame here. No, what's scary is right in front of the characters. It's up to us to spot who or what doesn't belong, only to realize that the appearance of that person or, likely, thing is unnerving. The story has Evan (Isaac W. Jay) abandoning a weekend visit with his older brother Peyton (Cooper Rowe) to join a group of strangers—nine friends who have rented a house in the desert to drink and do drugs. There's a mutual attraction between Evan and Zoe (Ashleigh Morghan), the ninth wheel in the group of couples, which includes Zoe's ex Max (Billy Meade), whose antagonism toward the new guy doesn't help matters when things go wrong. During a scary-story session around a fire, Evan discovers a tale online, having to do with a strange name repeated five times and a stranger poem. Later in the hot tub, Evan and Zoe hear something moving and hissing nearby, and soon after, there appears to be an extra member in the group--always looking suspiciously familiar. Callahan and screenwriter Michael Nader take things slowly, establishing the eerie sense of isolation, the dynamics of the assorted characters, and, without drawing too much attention to it at first, the realization that certain characters seem to appear in two places at once. There's one moment, in which the reality of that suspicion is revealed, that's a genuine shock, because Callahan has prepared us without fully giving away the game. The game of Head Count is eventually revealed in full. The rather ludicrous situation, though, is grounded in the feeling of hanging out with these characters, in the uncertainty of the stranger or strange thing's motives and methods, and in how the filmmakers let the resulting actions speak more forcefully than any expository dialogue could. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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