The Faceless Man (2019)

Emily is a recovering cancer survivor of three years. Faced with her fear of getting sick again, her best friend Nina plans a weekend away. Six friends venture out to a country holiday house to party over a weekend. Cut off from the rest of the world they soon learn the inhabitants are unsettling redneck individuals who terrorize and humiliate travelers. At the same time a para-normal monster seen as the faceless man haunts the house pushing the friends to their limits. [IMDb]

Recently, I had a chat with filmmaker James Di Martino, which was followed by me viewing his film, The Facelss Man. Upon viewing the film, I needed to take a day to gather my thoughts on it and below is what I came up with.

The independent film industry is so saturated these days that it is becoming increasingly more and more difficult to get through all the subpar work in order to find some decent films. In my work as reviewer, as a filmmaker, my involvement with festivals, distribution work and being a promoter of the indie artists, I come across a lot of work that is, and I’m being delicate, quite terrible, also some that is decent with some potential for improvement and, on very rare occasion, I find a diamond in the rough. A work that while far from being perfect, has many parts that are well above average that make the whole pretty damn good and shows potential for the future work of the filmmaker in question.

The story of The Faceless Man follows a group of friends who go on a drink-filled, drug-induced weekend at a rented party house in the country. Once they get to the place, they realise that the town’s folk are less than friendly and don’t take well to “foreigners”, especially ones who bring drugs into their town and interfere with their utopic existence. As if this wasn’t bad enough, our hero, Emily (Sophie Thurling), is haunted by a strange creature, our aforementioned faceless man.

There are a LOT of characters in this one. Our gang of young party-goers are about a half dozen characters (and they await one of their friends who is supposed to join them into the weekend). The town’s people are aplenty, with at least five or so with substantial speaking roles. There is Russian Mafia boss, Viktor (Albert Goikhman), and his two goons (Tom Vogel and Dirk Faller), who are after a drug-filled suitcase belonging to Viktor, but is in the hands of the group or more correctly Emily, who hides it in the party house. Viktor‘s wife and daughter also make a substantial appearance. There’ also Emily‘s father in an early drama-heavy scene. Of course, there is The Faceless Man himself and, just for good measure, a whole gang of bikers who roll up at a late stage of the film.

In short, there is a LOT going on and it is sometimes difficult to ascertain whether or not all these characters and all those scenes were needed. Then again, this also somehow works for the film just as much as against it, as the viewer is constantly trying to work out what is going on, which characters lead the story and where it is going. My biggest issue with that is that our group of unlucky party goers had no real depth to them and aside for Emily‘s character, all her friends were interchangeable and we could have lost some of them and it would not have made the least bit of difference. This resulted in actors who, while they may have done their best, had no real character development or clear motivation and ended up being quite forgettable. The bad guys, as in the town’s people and our Russian Mafia representation, had more memorable lines and clearer motives and therefore, stole the show.

The performances, while greatly uneven, were above average overall. The ones who stood out for me were characters like Albert Goikhman’s Viktor, the earlier-mentioned Russian Mafia boss. He was a little over the top, which fit perfectly here and was so entertaining, that his monster of a character became likeable and I almost ended up rooting for him. Andy McPhee as Eddy, took creepy to a whole other level and gave us another entertaining and somewhat fearless character. Daniel Reader as Barry, was an imposing presence that you end up fearing and sympathizing with at the same time. Leanne Campbell as Bunny The Waitress, gave us a short glimpse of what she can do when given the screen time and the right text. Dave Beamish as Jimmy Maxwell who showed some charisma in a short time on screen, and finally, Brendan Bacon as Harrison, Emily‘s father, who’s mere appearance gets the viewers’ curiosity piqued and he is a capable actor with a very interesting screen presence.

The film is also ‘paying homage to/influenced by/borrowing heavily from’ other cinematic classics the likes of Mad Max, Tarantino‘s work (mainly Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction) as well as other Ozpliotation staples and smaller references to the likes of Get Out, Evil Dead and Wolf Creek. This has made the film very difficult to pin down genre-wise. There are elements of crime, action , thriller, drama, horror and even a little comedy. Not to mention, the heavy indie spirit of exploitation/ozploitation.

While this could generally hurt a film, Di Martino threw all this into a 100-minute feature film made on an indie low-budget production. This kind of enthusiasm and reckless abandon actually reminded me of one of the filmmakers he was borrowing from, who himself has stated that he “steals from every movie ever made”. I see that kind of fire in Di Martino. What we have here is a young (James is 26) filmmaker who is still finding his way as an artist and is already showing great potential by learning from his heroes. And he does it well. Is The Faceless Man the most original film ever made? Probably not, it is an amalgam of many other films, yet creates a whole film that has some originality to it and the potential of being an Australian cult film.

Di Martino should also be thankful to Rhys Sherring for his mostly amazing cinematography in his role as DOP, which greatly enhances this multiple-location production. Sherring was also the editor here and while I am of the thinking that the film would have been better had at least 15-20 minutes were cut from it, I can’t say I really suffered at any point during the viewing.

The film also relishes in quite a lot of violence and the Practical/Visual Effects and Make-Up departments did an admirable role within the allocated budget, which I am sure was restrictive. The soundtrack was also nicely put together and the Art and Costume design made for a more convincing experience. The design of The Faceless Man costume was not incredibly original, but still a fine job which ended up enhancing some the horror scenes.

Overall, I must say that this film will probably be quite polarizing to most viewers, yet it will get people talking and, most likely, in quite a heated discussion. That is always good for indie cinema. Personally, I think that this film has a “beautiful mess” kind of feel to it. It is a fun ride that even though I may not have agreed with so many choices or found the reason for some story elements to exist, I still got to the end of it and realised that I simply enjoyed the ride. Maybe I got swept up in Di Martino‘s enthusiasm and drive. My take from the film is that Di Martino wanted to look at the industry rule-makers and sticklers for only a certain kind of filmmaking and slowly raise a middle finger to their face, a “Fuck you” to the establishment and the old way of doing things, if you will. Basically, saying “I am here! Like it or hate it, this is what I do!” The future of Australian filmmaking just got a little more interesting.

A potential Aussie Cult film which will likely be talked about years from now. 8/10.

The film is set for a VOD release on August 28th. It will be available on multiple streaming platforms, including Amazon Prime, Vimeo on demand, Gumroad and Reelhouse! Stay tuned!