A Night of Etheria: Inner Demon
The highlight of Etheria — Ursula Dabrowsky’s Inner Demon puts us into the action and through the wringer.
I wrote last time about the final short film in Etheria’s 2015 line-up, Slut, which was both an audience favorite and a personal favorite among the shorts. It was actually the last thing I saw that day. The first and the main attraction was the feature film selected and it’s kind of a shame the crowds didn’t descend until before the shorts because I really think more people should see this film.
I’m a horror fan, but weirdly picky when it comes to graphic horror. I never met a slasher-kills-teens film I could get behind. I liked the first film in the Saw franchise, but found the rest to be formulaic and just… well, torture porn with increasingly ridiculous kills. I loved Hellraiser and Hellraiser 2 for their artful presentation of gore and the family dynamic, but found the sequels to be just an excuse to make increasingly ridiculous cenobites. Of course, that‘s not to say I’m against sequels. I will argue till my dying day that Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is the best of the series and even the fourth is a close second. They may have the (by then) trope of (you guessed it) increasingly ridiculous kills, but they both also have strong women, an emotional core, and relationships I cared about. If you get me emotionally invested, I’m a fan.
Inner Demon gives me a relationship to invest in with Sam (Sarah Jeavons) and her little sister, Maddy, from the start. They may only share a few minutes screentime together before being torn apart, but Sam’s desire to protect her silently informs the rest of the film and (in a huge way) the ending. This isn’t so much the story of a girl victimized by a serial killer couple or even of a girl struggling to survive. Everything that comes before is almost a prologue to the real struggle within her and it all comes back to that relationship. I can’t say much more than that without giving too much away. I definitely recommend this film if it gets wider distribution.
I met Ursula and her lovely sister outside before the film started and we had a short interview later (she was very in demand). I’ll stick with Ursula as it’s her professional name, but she also goes by Sue Brown. I had to ask which she prefers. “I answer to both,” she says. “The whole Ursula thing came about because I was a little bit nervous about making horror films.” I’d have to venture that she’s comfortable now. Inner Demon is the second in a trilogy — all connected by theme, though not directly by plot — that started with Family Demons and I’m eager for news on the third as it develops. Both have gained awards, with Inner Demon alone cleaning up A Night of Horror International Film Festival with Best Feature, Best Director, and Best Female performance. I agree with all three, but feel the need to single out that last one first…
This film is, for the most part, a one-woman show for Australian newcomer Sarah Jeavons as our resourceful heroine. Everything is so tightly, intensely focused on her and every move she makes, almost claustrophobically so, to the point of empathy rather than sympathy. This didn’t carry the frustration of other films, where the protagonists or soon-to-be-victims make choices that make you cringe. “I think horror fans are kind of past that now,” Ursula says. “They want intelligent characters. Well, there are all different kinds of horror fans, but for me, you want to see someone that’s smart.”
And we did. Any moment Sam takes to bemoan her situation or cry and curse fate is quickly overtaken by the “what now?” of surviving this ordeal, always struggling or planning her next move. It was gratifying, how clever and canny she was throughout. Sometimes, I felt almost like I was controlling her like a video game character (I’ve been watching too many “Let’s Plays”). Watching, I kept trying to go two steps ahead of what I was seeing. Is this a survivor story? Is this a tragedy? What am I hoping for or dreading? Then, in the end, I was just kind of along for the ride with Jeavons’ performance carrying me.
“Sarah was really amazing,” Ursula says and, when I ask how she found her, “Fluke. Massive fluke. I kind of discovered her. She’d never acted before.”
That’s surprising because the performance that Ursula pulled out of her was flawless. She never hammed it up or was too subtle to read. For a role that had at least three-quarters of the camera time and so little dialogue, she portrayed every second believably and with genuine emotion. I hope to see more of her.
It was an excellent film all over and most of my interview, if you can even call it that, was spent congratulating Ursula, which she tried to deflect whenever possible. “The sound and the camera worked together,” Ursula says, singling out her sound editor, Michael Taylor. “ He did a great job. In horror, eighty percent of it is sound.” And that never seemed more true. With so little dialogue in the forefront, the focus on each individual sound in the quiet tension, those subtle shufflings, grunts, and rips that make up the soundscape really draw you in.
The other performances are all perfectly pitched and there was at least one moment that made me glad I didn’t eat before viewing, but the heart of this film is in the emotional core, which I’m a sucker for, as I said above. I will find a way to own this one as soon as it becomes available and I recommend you do, too.
You can follow Inner Demon on its Facebook and Ursula herself on her official site and Twitter.
Etheria Film Night is accepting film submissions for 2016. Check their website for more info here. You can also follow them on Twitter and like them on Facebook.
Next up: I’m all done with the Etheria films, but come on over to my series-long coverage of The X-Files (and the journey of Dana Scully) in anticipation of the new miniseries coming our way in January!
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