SILVER HAZE - Mark Reviews Movies

Silver Haze, Dark Star Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 29, 2024

Silver Haze contains so many characters with so many assorted issues that writer/director Sacha Polak seems unsure as to how to juggle them. The result is an unfocused concoction of intriguing setups and half-cooked drama.

The central figure, at least, does remain the primary focal point. She's Franky (Vicky Knight), a young 20-something who suffered severe burns as a child when the pub where she was staying at the time caught fire. She and her family, including sister Leah (Charlotte Knight) and mother (played by Carrie Bunyan), are convinced the bar's owner, a woman who is now married to Franky's father, is responsible for the blaze that left Franky scarred and killed the family's eldest son.

The police did little then, and with no evidence to back up the suspicion, they're doing nothing now. Franky wants revenge.

It's a simple-enough premise but also one that takes a backseat to Franky's romantic entanglements, the mother's debilitating alcoholism, the sister's sudden conversion to Islam as a way to find some peace in her own life, and much more involving even more characters. For example, there's Florence (Esme Creed-Miles), who's admitted to the hospital where Frank works as a nurse following a suicide attempt.

The two start a romance, which means Franky's mother quickly disowns her (and changes her mind when required later) and she starts living with Florence, who has been raised by the kindly Alice (Angela Bruce). Alice has cancer, by the way, and Florence's younger brother Jack (Archie Brigden) has an unspecified developmental issue. At a certain point, this stops feeling like a realistic drama and begins to seem as if Polak has a checklist of melodramatic possibilities. The filmmaker is determined to include as many as possible.

Additional complications emerge from all of this, too. Franky and Florence hit an emotional impasse, after a homophobic confrontation on a bus and failed revenge attempt that goes wrong and nowhere. The sister might have killed someone in a moment of passion, and Alice's condition begins to worsen.

There's so much past, present, and likely future misery on display here that it's mainly the naturalistic performances that give the material any kind of grounding. As Franky, Knight is an obvious standout, but Bruce brings such compassion and gentleness to her role that it we can at least recognize what Polak is attempting—apart from all the dramatic commotion, of course, which seem to jump to and fro with just how much of it there is.

Mainly, it's not the pain and anger that come to define this story. Silver Haze tries to become a study of how easily and reasonably people slip into those negative states, looking for solutions in various place and with assorted notions. Ultimately, it's about the effort of overcoming those feelings in oneself, and if the movie didn't wallow in despair so much, we might believe that theme to be genuine.

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