Amazing Grace’s Romola Garai makes her directorial and writing feature film debut in Amulet, which focuses on Tomas, a man who for reasons undisclosed has left his home country to live a harsh life as an undocumented immigrant in London. After he loses what little he has, an older woman introduces him to a young woman, Magda, who cares for her mother in a decaying home where he can stay in exchange for fixing it up, but as he begins to repair the home, he keeps discovering strange things and believes that the familial relationship has a disturbing quality that is more than dysfunctional.
Garai definitely needs to keep making films because while Amulet is far from the first time horror perfection that Luca Guadagnino accomplished with his remake of Suspiria, it is original enough for her to keep going, especially in the horror genre, and not a disastrous, almost unwatchable fail as Darkness Rising was. I admire anyone who tries to make a new story that departs from our traditional ideas of good and evil, especially if it departs from a Judeo-Christian framework. Being innovative can also come with being overly ambitious and not entirely succeeding in bringing all the elements together.
Amulet is maddeningly vague, and in horror, the details matter and eventually have to add up to a cohesive story that works in retrospect once you get to the end of the film. Tomas was a soldier in a home. Where? When? Suspiria used the political climate and era as a kind of curse that only the supernatural could lift, but Amulet omits that texture. Magda also seems like an immigrant. How does she get money to buy food? Even if she is abused and isolated, the property tax man does not care about her troubles. If the house is somehow supernaturally hidden from everyone, which is why no one disturbs its inhabitants, the ending does not really explain how it seems to be set apart in terms of time and space from other people.
Amulet is predominantly told from Tomas’ perspective, and we are supposed to relate to him since we are also clueless as to what is going on around him. We see him have nightmares, which are flashbacks of what happened to him while he was a soldier, and while awake, and as he spends more time with Magda and her mom, our vision of him becomes distorted, which reflects that something is happening to him. There are two tales being told: what happened to get him to end up here and what is happening to him now that he is here. These stories are related, but Garai makes a rookie mistake. She occasionally breaks the spell by momentarily showing us scenes from other characters’ point of view so we have more information than Tomas has such as Magda catching him looking through her mother’s keyhole or the older woman throwing something out in the gutter, which still does not make sense to me what I was supposed to glean from that moment so please feel free to clue to me in.
Alec Secareanu, who plays Tomas, is the strongest asset in Garai’s toolbox. He credibly plays his fear and vulnerability when he has the physical advantage in every scene. His awareness of his dominance is compensated with a gentleness and reassurance in his interaction with woman characters. Secareanu has to play a man at war with himself without immediately alienating his character from the audience’s sympathies, and he succeeds. He has a seemingly impossible task, but succeeds because his performance still works in retrospect.
Imelda Staunton as the older woman is also superb. It is no surprise that Staunton is a thespian since her resume is considerably packed with amazing roles, but she has a chance to play a wide emotional range and seems to be having a ball in this role. She may be the most delightful part in a movie without a lot of bright spots or moments of whimsy. I needed more of the energy that she brought to Amulet.
Visually Garai has a strong eye. I could tell in an instant where and when we were in each scene. The emotional tone of each scene was reflected in the lighting. The urban and dull life of London briefly gives way to the warmth and brightness when Staunton’s character initially meets Tomas. The interior and surrounding of the home is mostly grey and dingy with flickers of warmth. Does she quite pull off the gore or supernatural elements? With more money and experience, she probably could, but they are the weakest elements of the film. I appreciate the intention, but she does not quite pull it off. It already feels somewhat dated and goofy. Garai does not quite go there by giving the money shot, and I care about logistics.
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Amulet really exploits our expectation that Tomas is set up to have a romance with the women that he rescues, and he and these women can overcome their collective trauma, whether war or an abusive parent inflicted it, together and embrace their former innocence and joy, but we later discover that he plays “a good guy” and is actually running away from consequences of being a rapist. In retrospect, all the scenes of him furtively eyeing homeless women sleeping rough in the home that initially he squats in and the street make sense. He knows the right things to say so women gradually lower their guard around him, but he actually is counting on their gratitude to overwhelm them with desire for him. He wants to be noticed and be the central figure in their life. He ran away from home to escape the vengeful, ancient shell god just to wind up in her clutches. To be fair, he was offered numerous opportunities to return home. He never admits to himself who he is. Now he is forced to give birth to evil, albino bat babies.
How? Garai punks out and never reveals it so even though David Cronenberg inspired her desire to focus on body horror, she fails to execute it. Also I felt some kind of way about making the demon babies resemble bats. Bats are nice, and I felt like it was too close to the vampire mythology to be truly original. Also I did not think the idea of demons should have been left standing and not later debunked after the revelation. It places it too much in the Christian world. Garai relied too much on traditional horror tropes such as possession, haunted houses and Gothic horror, which is fine when ensnaring Tomas, but undercuts her attempts at creating a new mythology.
I like the idea of a vengeful, shell god terrorizing rapists, but if I had not seen and adored Suspiria, it may not have occurred to me to question why Garai chose to make Tomas the protagonist. He seems like a peculiar invention. Do rapists have post-traumatic stress disorder from raping people? I do not think so, which is why the recidivism rate for rapists is so high. It is one of the reasons that I, as a viewer, was initially misled about him. I thought that he tried to rescue her, they fell in love then she got discovered and killed, and he could not stop it though I noted several alarm bells. Why was he so afraid when she first appeared? Why did he move suddenly when they were initially talking? Why did he act that way in the beginning when he recognized her? His mom knew what he was and put him out of temptation’s reach. It also explains why it was so easy for him to become antagonistic at the “mother. “
Why not centralize Staunton’s character, the shell god or the survivor? It feels as if Garai was more interested in a seemingly perfect guy who bears the seeds of evil. The Hannah Arendt reference is literal-the banality of evil, but the idea that all guys have the potential to be evil is an easy generalization. It is more shocking to envision a pagan savior and suggest that the suffering man maybe had it coming. While I enjoy twists, it makes what should be a more explosive, transformative, cathartic ending lose a little verve because we do not get a chance to build up a mounting desire for vengeance. At the end of Suspiria, I was able to feel how a pagan force redeemed the land from corrupted power, but did not feel anything broader and as resonant in Amulet. I would have preferred to stay in the land at war with those that needed her redemption and see how it needed that irreverent force to blast away the idea of forgive and forget. The imagery of the vengeful pre-Madonna figure never takes root. Why is it so important for evil men to be forced to give birth to evil? The tables do not quite get turned in a way that feels harmonious and right. It needs more development. Their bodies take on female characteristics, and their surface becomes as corrupt as their inside, which makes it seem as if birth is inherently negative, and I do not think it was Garai’s intention, it just does not quite work. The idea of him serving a woman god in the way that he lusted after her service to him felt right, but other than to initially trick potential victims, the rest of it falls flat. Why would a woman god want to be stuck with feminized, bat baby birthing rapist that she has to guard incessantly from escaping a life of pain? What does she get out of it? The idea of pitting rapist captives against each other in an eternal battle for her favor tinged with misunderstanding and lack of solidarity resonated more. Her revelation of her true form worked as well.
If there really is an independent force of evil that is inside of Tomas, and that he surrendered to, which she must contain, then Amulet needed to develop that evil in as specific a way as the shell goddess. Garai is more invested in a M. Night Shyamalan twist about Tomas and Magda as people more than making a coherent mythology about this shell god, whom I would have preferred as the main character, and the alternate dimensions that she can lead people to. Why does she spend so much time with one rapist? The shell god’s modus operandi seems to be to keep the rapist captive in the house where the crime was committed so I believe that Magda is returning Tomas to the cabin in the woods. How does she choose her victims? If she was only going for low profile rapists whom no one would notice were gone, his predecessor was definitely a poor choice since people noticed that he was missing, and I find it hard to believe that no one would go to his house. What is the deal with the house becoming an extension of the “mother?” Is the meat made from bat babies? I did crack up when Magda confesses, “I fucking hate cooking” and finally ditches the retro haus frau servant drag.
It would have helped if Garai played Magda because Carla Juri never translated as an ordinary British woman who could pass a wary, persecuted immigrant’s sniff test. She gave off signals of foreignness that could point to her true nature instead. Garai could have played the innocent quality that on second glance speaks to a more powerful quality without misdirecting audiences into believing that we were getting a story about immigrants coping with life in a hostile land and not successfully running away from their respective demons/pasts/heritage, which it was not.
I applaud Garai for trying to make a new mythology, but it does not quite work. I do not regret watching it, and I think that it works better with repeat viewing, but Garai would benefit by embracing details.
