Baal

Grace Jennings (Meg Clarke) left home a long time ago. She couldn’t face going back whilst her father was alive. Now she has returned to bury him. Naturally, this being a family event, she wants to discuss it with her brother David (Gautier de Fontaine), but he isn’t answering the phone. Is he reluctant to do so because it has been so many years since she called, because she never went back for him? When she arrives, nobody in the small New South Wales town seems to know where he is. The wall of the local police station is plastered with missing person posters – it seems that people vanish from this place all the time.

The remainder of the film focuses on Grace’s search for David, first in the town and then out in the woods. Visiting her father’s closed-up house, she makes an interesting discovery, but the situation becomes disturbing when she realises she’s not alone. Increasingly, we get the impression that she’s being watched, that someone wants to stop her from venturing further. In the forest, she learns, is something called the Utopia, and people who go there don’t come back. She persuades a former teacher, Mr Green (Leighton Cardno) to show her the way, but once they get out into the wilds he starts to behave strangely. She finds herself depending on an unknown radio contact for support, and she’s not sure whether he is friend or foe.

Doubtless some viewers will complain about the pace of the film, which is short on action for most of its running time (something it later makes up for in spades), but there’s always something going on, with disturbing hints of what might be out there. The film builds up a heady atmosphere of dread, from the claustrophobia of the town to the primitive terror of the forest. Wherever she goes, Grace keeps encountering the same strange symbol. Have the townsfolk fallen under the sway of a cult? Has something more ancient come to claim them?

Cinematographer Sam Powyer, working on a feature for the first time, does an impressive job of creating an even tone across these different environments, shifting it only towards the end when the story takes a sudden lurch and additional elements some into play. It’s not the first time we’ve seen mountains heavy with mist, nor watched a flashlight nervously darting between trees, but there’s a sense here of a presence out of keeping with what these environments ordinarily have to offer. Towards the end, as the use of rock formations brings inescapable reference to Picnic At Hanging Rock, Baal still has an atmosphere all its own, cosmic in its implications and yet very much a part of the present moment, where flight from a strained society brings people into contact with unspeakable things.

At the centre of all this, Clarke wisely keeps things simple, the ordinariness of her character making her seem extraordinary by contrast. We get hints of Grace’s troubled past but she comes across as someone who has done a lot of work to overcome that. She’s calm and focused and determined to achieve her objectives, yet the very real dangers that she faces drive her to panic at times, and may well have the same effect on viewers. Baal is a film that will get under your skin, unsettling to a rare degree, holding onto its creepiness even at its most dramatic. Screened as part of Beyond Fest, it’s a treat for those who appreciate simple horror tropes rendered with skill.