Canaries (FrightFest 2017)
Gareth Jones
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Starring Sheena Bhattessa, Craig Russell, Hannah Daniel, Marc Rhys, Richard Mylan
Directed by Peter Stray
You’d be forgiven if you started to feel rather lost during the opening few minutes of Peter Stray’s sci-fi/horror/comedy concoction Canaries. Before you can question just what the hell is going on, we’re jumping from the UK in 1980, to Vietnam in 1996 and then the USA in 2012 – where a man from Oslo (and also from the future) drops out of the sky.
Also acting as something of a head-pickle is a small team of US government types who are tracking what appears to be alien activity linking all of the occurrences – and for some reason, they’ve been sent a photo of a group of friends celebrating New Year’s Eve in Wales… a photo that was taken in the future, on a phone that doesn’t exist yet.
What?
Alright… don’t lose faith just yet. As the story gets under way, the action shifts to the tiny Welsh village of Lower Cwmtwrch, where the friends we previously saw in the photo are getting ready to kick off their ill-fated New Year’s Eve party. Seems aliens are indeed involved in some kind of grand scheme, here… and before you can say “little green men”, our Welsh friends find themselves stalked and attacked by a gang of mutants who wear yellow fisherman’s jackets and sport some of the most viciously long fingernails you’ll ever see.
Where Canaries works best is when its focused on the survival sequences, Stray putting his leading characters through hell as they drunkenly fight to survive against increasingly poor odds. Tackling such a large ensemble cast for a first feature is an intimidating prospect, but Stray manages to pull it off in both his script and on screen, giving each of the varied characters their own due time.
Plenty of great shots crop up, too – from an alien spaceship being hazily revealed by fireworks in the night sky, to the nasty-looking claws of an alien hunter silhouetted in the foreground as a would-be victim seeks a hiding place at the back of the shot. More fun shots, such as a claw-waggling alien POV sequence, recall the early days of Peter Jackson – in fact, tonally Canaries draws very close to Jackson’s Bad Taste (minus the abundance of gore), which is high praise indeed.
Stray’s humour doesn’t always hit the mark, but the inter-personal gags tend to come thick and fast when we’re spending time with the Welsh folks, so there’s rarely an opportunity to dwell on mistimed jokes before something else lands more successfully. Even as the investigation scenes try to inject a touch more serious gravitas to the situation, there’s a consistently playful feel to the whole affair.
Some may dwell on the lo-fi “creatures” (really just men with contact lenses and big fake claws, dressed in yellow raincoats), but to do so would be to unfairly ignore the grander mythology that Stray bravely tackles. As the story continues and threads cross with the American investigation, the scope of what’s going on here widens and widens – and Stray’s ambition becomes ever more impressive. From time-travelling aliens and doppelgangers, to international intrigue, it comes as no surprise that Canaries bows out with a promise of more to come and plenty of cards still on the table.
Fun characters and a sense of sheer heart help make Canaries stand out. By all rights, a film with a plot as crazy as this, from a first time feature director with a very low budget, should be an absolute disaster. Instead, Stray bucks expectations and delivers something that remains compelling even when it’s befuddling, and is rarely less than fun.
It isn’t perfect, but Canaries is packed full of admirable indie spunk. Let’s see where this story goes!
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
