In short: Rattlesnake (2019)

Driving away from never too clearly defined troubles towards her mother’s home, Katrina Ridgeway (Carmen Ejogo in a fine portrait of the kind of desperation that leads to terrible acts) and her little daughter Clara (Apollonia Pratt) make their way through the great state of Texas. Pausing in the desert, Clara is bitten by a rattlesnake. Very suddenly, a trailer seems to appear nearby, inhabited by a somewhat creepy woman (Debrianna Mansini) who apparently knows her way around rattlesnake bites. In her panic, Katrina doesn’t really register something the woman says about discussing payment later, and since she disappears more or less into thin air, as does Clara’s snakebite, surely, there’s nothing to be concerned about here at all.

Well, our heroine will soon enough learn that she has made an implicit pact with some kind of nasty supernatural power, and that she has only until sundown to deliver a soul for its saving of a soul to it. A bit of research suggests that this sort of thing happens rather often in the area, small as the desert town she ends up in is, but that’s not exactly helping her any; nor does the supernatural power appearing in the form of its former victims to mock her.

So eventually, Katrina decides to go through with the murder asked of her. On the plus side, she does encounter the kind of guy (Theo Rossi) even someone with a conscience might find rather easier to kill in cold blood than others.

I found myself pleasantly surprised by this Netflix production directed by Zak Hilditch. Sure, it’s a bit of a longer Twilight Zone episode with a somewhat harder edge of a very late 2010s kind of desperation, but to my mind, there’s nothing at all wrong with that. Particularly not since Hilditch has the plot well under control, never adding too many contrived additional hoops for Katrina to jump through yet still increasing the stakes and the suspense of the situation continuously. The script is also not quite as straightforward as it seems. So for example Rossi’s Billy is indeed a despicable human being, yet the film still plays him as a human being, not simply absolving Katrina nor cheering her on, despite clearly being on her side, and finding Billy pretty vile; one can’t help but think the supernatural force really trades two souls for the one it saves here.


The film also handles the supernatural elements of the film well, not falling into the trap of wanting to explain the whys and wherefores of the situation, just setting it up, suggesting a few things about it, and letting a viewer’s imagination do the rest of the work. There are a couple of really interestingly strange moments here too, scenes where Katrina interacts with supposedly normal people that are staged in a way that makes them feel just slightly off, as if she (and we the audience) were just one step away from reaching outside of the world we know, but never quite making that step. In contrast, Katrina’s encounters with the dead are short, simple, and effective exactly because they are that way.

In short: Holy Ghost People (2013)

I have been expecting the director duo of Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores aka The Butcher Brothers to one day make a really great movie. Holy Ghost People, the story of a guilt-laden young woman (Emma Greenwell) dragging an equally guilt-riddled alcoholic ex-marine (Brendan McCarthy) into helping her investigate the disappearance of her sister by sort of infiltrating the evangelical Christian snake-charmer cult of one Brother Billy (Joe Egender), and the rather horrible consequences that ensue, is that film for me.

Only Altieri is listed as director here, with Flores getting credit as one among four writers (also including Altieri and Egender), which, if you’re inclined that way, means that there still isn’t a really great Butcher Brothers movie. I don’t mind too much, though, and for all I care, this particular piece of trauma noir (this should be an official sub-genre) and Southern Gothic could be directed by the legendary John Smith, Esq. But I digress.

After a beginning that - as does the amount of voice-over narration –suggests a degree of post-production rejiggering I wouldn’t be surprised was meant to insert more distributor-pleasing exposition where it isn’t terribly needed (and therefore is the film’s weakest point) the story quickly gains its feet, and circles around themes of trauma, guilt, faith and the hope for redemption in not new, but convincing and highly interesting ways. There is a cloud of doom and threat hanging over the characters that finds expression in the film’s landscapes and often more subtle acting than I had expected.

Going by Altieri’s other films, I had also expected more direct and meaner violence, but am quite pleased to report the film never gets closer to torture porn than with two lashings (there are deaths though, if you can’t live without them). The more horrible things in Holy Ghost People really are happening in the protagonists’ minds, the things they did they can’t deny or escape from, and the insane religious bullshit they just might be willing to accept just to make the pain go away, or at least to give it outward meaning. To the dismay of New Atheists all around (as an old-style atheist, I’m made of sterner stuff myself), the film doesn’t point and laugh at the religious people, though, and while the connection between peoples’ religious convictions and their psychological damage is clear, this isn’t a film interested in making sweeping statements about religion and religious people at large. It’s about specific people in a specific situation, and any conclusions we might want to draw for the larger picture are our own. The film’s not here to convince us of anything beyond the pain of its characters. That it – and some fine performances by the actors – manage to do quite well.

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