Set Me Free: Vol. I

This brilliant and bizarre film from director Kris Smith is superbly acted and icily controlled – it grips from the very first scenes. Development does not get more arrested than this. I was reminded of Alan Bennett's maxim that all families have a secret: they are not like other families. But I can't imagine any family being quite as unlike others as this.

Set Me Free has a sense of pitch-black humour and even playfulness. Lauren not understanding certain things and getting words in the wrong order (due to her unusual upbringing) can't help make you feel like it's somewhat humorous. The humour is not entirely cruel, or alienated. At one stage, there's a scene between Lauren and Ethan and she starts to understand that life isn't so dangerous and there's more to life than being indoors all the time. On a serious note, I just love how the story leads to something bigger as the minute she leaves the lighthouse. It becomes more than just a strange movie and unfolds into a detective thriller - something I did not expect.

The film is superbly shot, with some deadpan, elegant compositions, and intentionally skewiff framings of the "headless" variety that Lucrecia Martel used in her film The Headless Woman, imbibing both the sociopathy of the characters and, at one remove, the reality-TV surveillance aesthetic of the Big Brother house. Smith holds your attention with wonderfully inscrutable images, such as the lingering opening drone shot.

It is a film about the essential strangeness of something society insists is the benchmark of normality: the family, a walled city state with its own autocratic rule and untellable secrets of what's truly outside.

Good film but don't know why it's split to two films. Too long!

This is a thought provoking film that leaves the watcher with many questions about how they would feel if they were in the shoes of Lauren (Nina Taylor). Kris has invoked a sense of menace and outrage from the very start in the way that Lauren's life is controlled and how her innocence is betrayed by her parents time and time again. The characters portrayed by most of the actors were utterly believable with particularly strong performances by Nina Taylor, Steve Carroll and Max Rudd. I enjoyed Ann Marie Doggett's role as the busy housewife and the two investigating Police Officers Mark Wells and Jo Lay in their dogged battle with the overbearing stupidity of their superior officer. As the story unfolds we are treated to an insight into the machinations of a baying press core which again leaves questions in the mind of the viewer about how they would react in similar circumstances. When a film leaves you thinking about it in the following days, then it has worked and this film has certainly done this. I hope it reaches a wide audience as it deserves to be out there in the public eye. Though the subject of the film is disturbing and the action tugs at your emotions in ways that you may not like, it is at the same time extremely engaging. An excellent film that I have no hesitation in recommending.

This is how to grab the audience's attention! I loved the build up, the characters, the story. I just want to watch the second one straight away. Very chilling ending.

Despite parallels with appalling real-life news stories, Set Me Free is neither a thriller nor a film about crime and/or captivity. If you've seen the trailer then you'll understand that there's more to this film than meets the eye anyway due to it's bizarre storytelling. Instead, it's a clever film about how the human spirit may transcend physical boundaries, and the disparity between external and internal freedom through the eyes of Lauren, our protagonist. Asche and Spencer's music for the film emphasises the gentle domesticity, rather than the shrieking claustrophobia, of Lauren's circumstances, later giving way to sustained ambient chimes that lend an unearthly edge to our own alien world. There's something very "Lovely Bones" about it as it is charming, eloquent and dark when it needs to be. As for the performances, only a couple of characters did not match the stronger actors during the scenes, but Nina Taylor is nothing short of perfect as the strange girl around whom this trembling universe revolves. Smith has the intelligence to trust his cast to show us the world in a different perspective.

This is something special. Don't ignore it. Especially the follow-up second chapter.