MORRIS COUNTY
2009, USA
Starring indie regular Pamela Stewart (Hal Hartley's Trust and Amateur) alongside powerhouse performances from newcomers Alice Cannon and Darcy Miller, Matthew Garrett's debut feature is a triptych of subtle terror tales set in the bleeding underbelly of suburban New Jersey.
While all three stories pack a nasty punch, the tales that bookend the feature - Ellie and Elmer & Iris - are of specific interest here.
In Ellie (which first played the festival circuit as a standalone short film in 2006), Darcy Miller plays the title character, a high school girl on an enigmatic path of self-destruction.
The film takes place over a single day, and expertly withholds expository information so that we experience the transience of identity that Ellie feels in what we suspect is the aftermath of some sort of debilitating trauma.
When the film opens, Ellie is vomiting (that the film's title appears on a black screen to the tune of the toilet flushing is a nice touch), and after packing off for school she instead takes a detour to a park bench for an unwanted cigarette before hitting up the convenience store for a bottle of whiskey.
When she is denied due to her age, she desperately states that she "needs it", prompting one of the two store employees to offer it to her in exchange for sexual favours.
She obliges, but once in the back storeroom she shrieks when touched, which freaks out one of the boys but doesn't rattle the other, who has no qualms about taking advantage of this clearly troubled young girl.
While he doesn't ask any questions, we as the audience are full of them: why is she doing this?
Unlike other film characters who are reacting to an emotional disturbance, Ellie is not jaded; we can tell through Miller's distressing performance as well as through tiny hints carefully planted that her behaviour is inconsistent with what came before.
Even the fact that she does sit-ups in the morning before embarking on a terrible day where she will prompt her gag reflexes by forcing herself to smoke and drink indicates that her self-damage is a recent development.
But this mystery, and the fact that Garrett is able to contain it so compellingly, is part of what makes Ellie a special film.
After emerging from the storeroom tryst in a daze, Ellie walks into the woods where she meets up with some stoners who are surprised to see her skipping school to drink alone in the woods (their response indicates that she is thought of as a 'good girl').
She agrees to smoke up with them - apparently a first for her - before they pair off, and Ellie awkwardly makes out with obnoxious Kevin - until he puts his hand down her pants and it emerges covered with blood.
It's a horrifying spectacle, partly because we are as confused as he is, and partly because he reacts with such disgust that we can only guess at how devastating this must be for Ellie.
His reaction is to slap her, smearing her own blood on her face while yelling expletives: "What the fuck is wrong with you, you fucking bitch?!!"
She runs off, and finds her way to a Christian youth after-school meeting.
She's a mess, her clothes dirty and dishevelled, dried blood on her face - but she's not there for support, she's there to confront.
Because this day will have a bodycount.
The closing story, Elmer & Iris, begins on a sad note with the elderly Iris (Alice Cannon) forced into retirement because she can't keep up with technological advancements in the workplace.
Her husband Elmer is a curmudgeon whose contribution to conversation consists of a few grunts here and there, in sharp contrast to Iris's unnaturally chipper personality.
But the smile plastered on her face becomes more heartbreaking with every scene; not only has she lost her job, but when she wakes up the next morning she finds Elmer dead in front of the TV.
When she goes out the door to get the morning paper after finding Elmer dead, she looks around and goes back in, where she pretends everything's fine, like looking through a window after a dream and having it dissipate.
Over the next 6 days, as Elmer's body starts decomposing, she piles up the bowls of potpourri, and loads up on room sprays and flytraps.
She still enjoys sitting next to him to watch TV - she tunes into Reali-date religiously, a superficial romance program - and appreciates the opportunity to be more affectionate with Elmer than she could when he was alive.
This isn't the first time she's been in denial about something.
She confides shocking truths her former employer (Pamela Stewart), the one who was adamant to see her go.
Ms. Jacobs is condescending (she talks loudly and over-annunciates) but being put in the position of a confidant is visibly alarming to her.
She's a power office woman and the sentimentality of this elderly woman with her homemade cookies and butterfly brooches is really what the office environment doesn't have room for anymore.
While being let go was a pivotal moment for Iris, she hasn't had anything to live for in a while other than a multi-layered fantasy where people love her. But for Iris, each new development in her story will be more undignified than the last.
Bolstered by grotesque FX from Brian Spears (I Sell the Dead, Stake Land, The Innkeepers) and a diverse score by electronic musician David Kristian (who also scored Karim Hussain's La Belle Bête and Doug Buck's Sisters, both reviewed elsewhere in this appendix), Morris County exposes suburbia's dark heart and the self-destructive compulsions that fester within.