Do you like gore? Specifically, do you like scenes of self mutilation sandwiched in between dreamlike sequences and toxic masculinity? If so, you’ll probably enjoy the 2016 Canadian indie “Let Her Out.” True, the film watches well, has amazingly detailed special effects, and won an award for ‘Best Special Make-up Effects’ at the Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival. There’s not much of a story here; but given the filmmakers want to shock and frighten their audience, there’s not much need. However, it’s just hard to get behind this movie. Your stomach may turn, but getting lost in this film is bigger chore.
I’ve read several reviews of the film, which speculate the underlying inspiration for this project in the works of Canadian director David Cronenberg, and maybe they’re right. I suppose in saying so they are revisiting Cronenberg’s earlier works, such as 1987’s “The Fly” and his preoccupation with a genre called ‘body horror.’ Sure, in 2005’s “A History of Violence” a man is shown with his face half blown off, but it’s part of an intricate story and character portrait rather than flat out gore.
“Let Her Out” positions itself with a couple of opening scenes. We see a woman (Brooke Henderson) engaged in prostitution before getting raped, and then fast forwards to this same woman, pregnant, who stabs herself in the stomach with a pair of scissors in an attempt to kill the baby. It then shifts to present day, and a young woman named Helen ( Alanna LeVierge), who we learn is this woman’s daughter, is struggling to let her death go. However, Helen is hit by a car in a parking lot, breaking her arm. But that’s not the worst of it. She soon begins having haunting visions, waking up in strange places, and engaged in disturbing activities.
The film attempts to explain these strange activities with a medical defense of “vanishing twin syndrome.” Yes, a quick google search reveals this is a real condition whereby a miscarried fetus can be absorbed by the mother and or other child, leaving no trace it was ever there. However, there’s certainly nothing psychological about it. “Let Her Out” wants to tug on our suspension of disbelief; and that’s fine. But where “Let Her Out” comes up short is in its skip and jerk pace that shuffles from one scene to the next, never pausing for exposition, but pausing, frequently, for more confusing scenes and/or protracted gore.
I feel like I’m failing to paint a portrait of what “Let Her Out” is. It’s psychological for sure, and, shot mostly in darkness and highlighted with an anxious score, the film definitely ramps up your nerves and makes you uncomfortable. I wasn’t overly scared, but, as a horror lover, this is common. It’s a credit that director Cody Calahan and Cinematographer Jeff Maher resist the urge to affront us with jump scares and loud nosies in the wrong places. You wont jump seeing this film, and overall it does make you think, which is a credit to the writing and camerawork.
The characters are a problem. A film like this, that wishes to impart horror on its other characters, would have served better in painting them as innocents. Instead, “Let Her Out” blurs this line, making you question whether the characters are really vile or if its in the protagonist’s head. Maybe it’s both. Helen’s friend Molly, played as her buffer to reality by Nina Kiri, is well meaning and, in the film’s most desperate sequence, sweet.
Aside the doctor who diagnoses Helen’s condition, there are only two other players in the film, a theatre director named Ed (Adam Christie) and a creepy painter named Roman (Michael Lipka). Neither are nice, both are perverse, and ooze their misogyny and rape culture over Helen throughout the film. I won’t spoil their roles in the film; but I have to wonder what the appeal is in displaying toxic masculinity in modern horror. This is the second horror based indie I’ve seen in as many weeks that reduces its male characters to caricatures, irreverence towards woman their driving force, words like “whore” and “bitch” their poetry. Do men call women a bitch in real life when they get turned down? I don’t know, but they sure like to do it in the movies.
You ought to judge a film by what it intends to do. “Let Her Out” intends to be psychologically troubling and visually disturbing. It does this very well. It doesn’t intend to be a genre buster or exceedingly smart, so you can’t really blame it for what it is. Its effects are great and its atmosphere adequately creepy. But at the end of the day its lack of narrative causes more distance from its story than the filmmakers probably intended.
Regrettably we just don’t like “Let Her Out’s” characters enough to care too much about what happens to them.
– by Mark Ziobro
