Next of Kin

Tony Williams, Australia/New Zealand 1981

In New Zealand-born commercial director Tony Williams’ only foray into the genre, Jacki Kerin stars as Linda, a young woman who comes back to smalltown Australia to inherit the sprawling retirement home ‘Montclare’ that her now-deceased mother had operated for more than 30 years. Still deliberating whether or not to sell the property, she takes over as directress. The shadow of her mother looms over the house – Linda describes her as “unreliable, unpredictable, crazy”, and an expert keeper of secrets. Now that her mother is dead, those secrets can all be found in the wealth of personal diaries she left behind, and Linda spends nights poring over them. They describe a woman terrorized by strange noises in the house, unable to sleep, lights going on and off, taps left running in the bathrooms. The delusions plaguing her mother start to affect her as well – she is convinced that someone is watching her, that people are dying around her, and that a macabre conspiracy is afoot. The camerawork (by award-winning DP Gary Hansen) and the pounding, anarchic score (by krautrock wunderkind Klaus Schulze) frame Linda as mentally disturbed, with slow-motion and alternately low- and high-angle shots that show her as a body out of control, engulfed by the threatening space of the house.

Kier-La Janisse is a writer and film programmer based in Montreal, Canada. She a film programmer for Fantastic Fest and SF Indie, founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies and Editor-in-Chief of Spectacular Optical. She has been a programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas, co-founded Montreal microcinema Blue Sunshine, founded the CineMuerte Horror Film Festival in Vancouver and was the subject of the documentary Celluloid Horror. She has written for Filmmaker, Rue Morgue and Fangoria magazines, has contributed to The Scarecrow Movie Guide (Sasquatch Books, 2004) and Destroy All Movies!! A Complete Guide to Punk on Film (Fantagraphics, 2011), and is the author of A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (FAB Press, 2007) and House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (FAB Press, 2012).

What is Horrormathèque?

Horrormathèque is a screening series hosted by Stranger WIth My Face Horror Film Festival, which is based in Hobart, Tasmania, but sometimes holds events in other cities. Unlike the main festival, it has a broader focus and includes horror films of all kinds, including ones directed by men. It’s about promoting the idea of seeing horror/thriller films communally… with an appreciative crowd, the way they are best seen!