For the most part, when you hear about a low budget, direct-to-video horror film, expectations of either comic incompetence or extreme boredom fill your mind. However, here’s one that really isn’t too bad. While it isn’t exceptionally scary for the most part, it is an effective psychological thriller that keeps you interested, mostly due to the performances, which are far above average for the genre.
Directed by Johnny Kevorkian (Great name for a horror film director) the film traces the tormented emotional journey of a young man poisoned by guilt and tragedy. The script by Kevorkian and Neil Murphy works on two levels. We have the main plot about a missing child and we also have the psychological exploration of the angst ridden main character.
Matt Ryan (well played by Harry Treadaway) is a damaged 17-year-old. He is being eaten away by guilt ever since his eight-year-old brother Tom (Lewis Lemperuer Palmer) vanished. Matt was supposed to be watching Tom but Matt was having too much fun at his party so he allowed young Tom to wander away to the playground, never to be seen again. He’s so torn up with self loathing about his culpability that he had to do some time in a psychiatric ward.
Matt and Tom’s grief stricken father Jake (Greg Wise) not only has to deal with one son’s disappearance and the other’s mental instability, but also his simmering resentment towards Matt because he blames Matt for allowing Tom to wander off. He tries to be a patient father but the anger is clearly simmering just below the surface. Greg Wise does a great job portraying a father at the end of his tether who wants to forgive his son but just can’t.
The two of them live in a small flat within a crumbling, crime ridden council estate in London. The deterioration of their surroundings echoes the way their lives are falling to pieces.
Things get worse for Matt when he begins to hear Tom’s voice on a tape, accusing him from beyond the grave. Matt plays the tape for his dad but the voice is now gone. Dad thinks Matt is going crazy again, and Matt is wondering the same thing himself. Even his best friend Simon (Tom Felton, best known as Drago Malfoy from the Harry Potter series) thinks Matt might need another rest in the psycho ward.
Matt meets an enigmatic girl named Amy (Ros Leeming) who tells him she’s suffering from domestic abuse. The two form a bond and she becomes Matt’s confidant. It’s Amy who sends Matt to a local medium (Nikki Amuka Bird) who warns Matt that spirits are all around him. Her daughter draws a picture for Matt that looks strangely like Simon’s sister Sophie (Georgia Groome). The next day, Sophie vanishes, too.
Matt’s whole world becomes a surreal nightmare where he becomes unsure what’s real and what isn’t. People he meets aren’t what they seem and he doesn’t know if the reason is psychological or supernatural. The bullying street gangs stalk him like the inner demons which have been preying on his conscience ever since Tom vanished without a trace. Matt has dreams of being buried alive which will later prove to be something more than just simple nightmares.
The film borrows scenes from other, better horror films. The church scenes are reminiscent of Salem’s Lot and the sequences of the ghostly child tormenting Tom could be taken right out of Flatliners. But despite the frequent lack of originality on Kevorkian’s part, the mystery keeps us intrigued and the excellent performances keep us engrossed.
DVD Bonus Features
There are four extra features included: the trailer for the film; a production featurette where the director, writer and cast praise each other’s work and tell us how talented they all are; a post-production featurette where we’re clued in by the editors about why the final draft came out as it did; a segment called “Anatomy of Horror” where the director and cast talk about what makes a scary scene and how they filmed the buried alive sequences.
"The Disappeared" is on sale May 18, 2010 and is not rated. Horror. Directed by Johnny Kevorkian. Written by Johnny Kevorkian, Neil Murphy. Starring Greg Wise, Harry Treadaway, Tom Felton, Alex Jennings.
