Day 16: Absentia (2011)

Absentia (2011)
Starring: Katie Parker, Courtney Bell, David Levine, Justin Gordon, Morgan Peter Brown, James Flanagan,
Scott Graham, Doug Jones
Category: New, favorite
Plot Tags: abduction, supernatural, fairy tale
Original release: March, 2011
Format viewed: DVD - rented from Vulcan of course
Directed by: Mike Flanagan
Written by: Mike Flanagan
Produced by: Morgan Peter Brown, Mike Flanagan, Justin Gordon, Joe Wicker
Studio: Fallback Plan Productions
Distributed by: Phase 4 Films

The film Absentia is one of the reasons I got to thinking about doing this writing and reviewing project in the first place. I saw this the first time this spring (and three times since) and it is most certainly one of my favorite films (of any kind) this year. When you combine sincere storytelling, interest in characters' bonds and development, original ideas and strong performances you get a film that exceeds expectations and frustrates at the same time. Frustrates because this is the kind of film that deserves larger audiences and more notoriety as opposed to many/much schlock drifting around a good portion of the time. This comes with a couple caveats but they aren't big ones. Primarily, this is hyper low budget so if you're expecting huge splashy CGI effects, you won't get them. There are a fair amount of jolts and a general errie-ness that amps up the heartbeat for long stretches but this is not achieved by piles of big time effects. Honestly, I couldn't imagine it with all that stuff. Also, the way it is filmed, you aren't going to get a ton of depth that you'd get with film film. I understand that this is a budgetary issue and I respect that you get the most out of what you can use but I felt in a few scenes where the feel of film would add more to the overall deal. That's it, those are my caveats.

The film centers around the story of two sisters, a pregnant Tricia (Courtney Palm) and Callie (the lovely Katie Parker) reuniting over a traumatic event. Tricia's husband (played remarkably well by Morgan Peter Brown - this gives nothing away, he is in a bunch of the movie) has been missing for seven years. The film opens with Tricia removing tattered 'missing' signs for her husband and replacing them on power poles around her neighborhood. We then meet her sister Callie (Katie Parker) who is there to help Tricia work through the filing paperwork for declaring her husband dead by absentia after the length of time he was missing. In addition to this, her pregnancy has come from a relationship with the detective that originally worked her husband's missing person case. Anyway, back to Callie's arrival - it is made clear pretty early on that she has been a wayward soul in every sense of the word - driving from halfway house to rehab center to this and that and apparently has found a good bit of religion in the process of getting sober. What is funny about that is that she still seems like who she was as a person/personality, just with a more grounded sense of things thanks to rehab and God.

As we are meeting the two women, getting a feel for their relationship etc, we start to see haunting and terrifying visions of Tricia's missing husband as they grow closer to packing the house up and signing all the paperwork. These visions come when she is awake and asleep and represent some of the early chills in the film. Callie takes a run and goes running through a tunnel near Tricia's house. This tunnel (a real place/thing in this neighborhood) is so damned freaky in and of itself that they didn't need to do much to make it foreboding thing it is. Upon her run back, Callie comes upon a badly beaten up, pale looking guy (Doug Jones - Hellboy films) who seems overjoyed and also scared that she can see him. He starts to offer to trade, rambling about his boy etc and tries to reach into his pocket for 'trade'. Callie gets away from him and back to the house where she explains to her sister that this 'Christian thing' means you have to reach back to help and she brings a tupperware of dinner leftovers to the tunnel but cannot find him. She leaves it there and the next day, upon return to the house after her jog, she is greeted with a pile of metal trinkets, keys and stuff all wired together in a heap on the doorstep. She tries to take it back to the tunnel but is advised against it by a man walking by. 'You can't return it'.

Soon after this, Callie and Tricia are in the lawyers office signing the paperwork to declare Daniel (Tricia's husband) dead in absentia and she sees yet another scary vision of him. ((As an aside, one of the reasons I absolutely loved the way they handled these visions is that they are startling and all, but not in a super-jump scare type of way. They startle you but there is a lack of menace so much as a presence that maybe isn't as easily explained as guilt)). They come back home and Callie recommends Tricia go out on a date and pushes her in that direction. She gets ready to go, the detective guy shows up and upon leaving they spot Daniel out in the street. Initially Tricia thinks it is a vision but the detective guy sees him too. Immediately the police are rousted up and set upon the case to try to figure out where he has been and who took him etc. As this is going on, there is a growing disturbance that is making all manner of issue for Daniel and the sisters which seems like it is coming to get him back. All the while you have Callie's drug past creeping back on her and the relationship between Tricia and the detective guy straining under all of this.

Things continue to amp up and a series of scary events and nerve wrangling things twist and turn to bring what happened to Daniel and what is happening to all of them now to a head. I feel like none of this works without the fully realized relationships the characters have and the care we as the audience have for them. With those things in place, the suspense of the final act is greater because of the investment the viewer has and as everything falls into place and it all comes together, the tragedy of it is felt more honestly and fully. I cannot say enough how much the craft of this film and the work put into the ground level of it makes the whole of the rest of it that much better. With stereotype cardboard cut outs or standard fill in victims or any of that, none of the emotional and tragic turns the story takes would mean a whole lot. But on the whole, Mike Flanagan, Morgan Peter Brown and company have made what I consider to be a unique and wholly remarkable film that I appreciate even more now than I did the first time I saw it. My hope is that they will continue to build on their full success of Absentia and bring the same full circle storytelling and character development to their future projects because in my mind, it is how it's done.