Director: Will Gorski & Andre Vysotskiy
Writer: Taylor DeSantis, Will Gorski & Andre Vysotskiy
Cast: Angelo Visser, Amelia Cook, Tommy Cope
Running time: 7mins
Over the last year, Will Gorski has sent three movies from the beginning of his time as a film student in California. Each one has had rough edges, but also featured certain technical accomplishments, or one or two really neat ideas, that give Gorski plenty to build on as he advances in his development as an artist.
This third project, Liminal, is definitely within that vein. There are many moments in this short horror, where Gorski and his team of fellow student filmmakers produce well-realised practical effect sequences, haunting imagery by simply framing everyday sights, and successful editorial montages that present shocking scenes through visual short-hand. But for every moment of innovative and vibrant creativity, Liminal is padded out with several more hackneyed, load-bearing clichés, which mean it feels less than the sum of its parts.
Co-writer Taylor DeSantis’s photography in particular stands out as the film’s key strength. His lens manages to convey the kind of distress experienced by the main character (more on that soon) by flipping and inverting environments we are used to, to create alien environments. Most notably, the lecture hall – a tired staple of the student film, here given a new lease of a life for a split second, transformed into an ominous sci-fi facility by shooting it from above as we arrive. As we scramble to get our bearings, our world has been turned on its head, leaving us vulnerable to another chilling moment, in which an out-of-focus woman starts to address our main character over his shoulder.
Other surprisingly effective moments include the drain in a shower, which suddenly vomits a torrent of blood into someone’s face; and a groggy waking scene with lead actor Angelo Visser, who is shot from a low angle, before the image was flipped on its head – to give us the same level of distressing confusion his character is encountering. But these moments are not given long enough to breathe before another moment tries to emulate the tired horror imagery of the Hollywood mainstream for the sake of it. A desperately bland cereal-eating segment here; a deplorably predictable jump-scare with a woman in scary makeup (which is 100% less disturbing than the quiet, blurry figure following Visser moments before) there. And all to a sound-mix so oversaturated with stock-library stings that it could come from an episode of The Dead Files.
In so many ways, then, Liminal falls short in the way other Gorski-directed films have. This is another exercise in experimentation. A fledgling killer’s first attempt at transformation. It doesn’t really matter if I don’t like it on the whole in that case, as long as there are moments where something sticks, which the artists involved can build upon.
The problem – and it’s a big one – is that here, the subject chosen for this slapdash experimentation is so recklessly inappropriate. I have noted before that mental health is an extremely sensitive topic, which popular culture has historically mishandled – particularly in the horror genre. Gorski, De Santis and co-director-and-writer Andre Vysotskiy have done themselves a gigantic disservice by not taking that into account with their central plot here.
As I get into that, there will be spoilers – so if you would like to see the film for yourself, it is publicly available for free on De Santis’ YouTube account.
The lead character Kian (played by Visser) is suffering from schizophrenia. This is something which the film hammily foreshadows in the early cereal scene, where Kian’s hand hovers shakily over an orange bottle of prescription pills in his cutlery draw, before picking up a spoon to jab mechanically at his Cheerios instead.
As the film progresses, Kian struggles to separate horrific hallucinations from reality – something not helped by a traumatic event in his recent history. The torrent of blood gushing into his face from the drains, the soft-focus figure following him in his periphery, the taunting voice of a woman belittling his condition over a car radio he proceeds to dismantle all point to the film’s grim conclusion – a flashback, set in a vibrant, green woodland clearing.
Kian’s partner Adi (Amelia Cook) sits next to him on a blanket, and tries to cosy up to him. But Kian has previously made it clear to her that he does not like physical contact. An argument ensues, during which the pair air their frustrations; Adi expects a ‘conventional’ relationship that Kian’s present condition means he is not in a place to provide. But things escalate out of control when that leads Adi to brand Kian a “freak” – triggering an eruption of violence.
You will notice that I have not given this film the lowest score possible here, of Unrated. That was a fate that Jay Ramharakh’s Isolation did not escape, the difference being that while both films feature mishandled representations of Schizophrenia, one is significantly cheaper and more dangerous than the other.
In the case of Isolation, schizophrenia was “a punchline; a lazy, tacked-on afterthought masquerading as a twist, to distract from how utterly uninspired and pedestrian the rest of this alleged survival horror was.” In the case of Liminal, though, the subject is primed gradually throughout the film. It is not a bolt-on to solve plot-holes, and it is not entirely exploitative.
In particular, the cinematography works to put you in the shoes of Kian, to have you empathise with the chaotic and crumbling reality he is enduring, however terrible his actions are. At the same time, there is a suggestion that he is doing his best to live with his condition, and without hurting others, but that a world which is broadly hostile to his mental health needs eventually catches up with him through someone he has been trusting and vulnerable around. It bothers to ask some questions about what it is like to live with Schizophrenia, and why someone in that situation might lash out (though those living with the condition are more likely to be victims of abuse than to perpetrate it).
That makes the difference, in my opinion, between something actively harmful, and something poorly judged. And this is still poorly judged. A slightly improved intention does not get Liminal off the hook for the way it has still perpetuated the tired cinematic tendency to pigeonhole mental health as a trope for the horror genre (and this film would probably have scored higher if it were just a conventional ‘possession’ or ‘curse’ film instead – offering all the opportunities for working with horror tropes, with less risk). An attempt to explore the underlying issues around Schizophrenia still culminates in the film living up to normative expectations of violence and terror.
This film just isn’t the appropriate arena to address any of this. It is a slightly rushed, experiment in filmmaking, in which the creators have clearly committed to ‘failing fast’ for the sake of learning tricks of the trade – possibly for a project which emphasised cinematography or lighting, but for which the tutor did not really care about the plot (but really should). In any case, all of this could be avoided if the creators of this film just opted to tell a story which was not grounded in a real-life condition.
Whatever the intents behind the plot that eventually transpired, Schizophrenia deserves more than Liminal provides. This isn’t a topic you should be using to test out Dutch angles, or the shot composition, it’s literally life or death for some people. To that end, Schizophrenia is crying out for stories which can give it time and space for nuanced and empathetic discussions, and which move away from the stereotyping of it as a horror trope. Most importantly of all, it deserves to be talked about by productions engaging with and including those who have lived experience of its impacts.