In the spirit of the horror films I used check out on Super8 from the library for college dorm movie nights back in the 1980s, director Silvana Zancolo’s Italian-produced English-language thriller The Shadow Within provides small-scale creepiness and arthouse thoughtfulness with just enough off-kilter low-budget sloppiness to keep you wondering how much of what you’re seeing is intentional.  And that, I think, is by design.  This is not a film that aspires to impress as an auteur’s tour de force (like, say, Tom Tykwer’s Perfume).  Instead it seems to want to evoke the sense of an unearthed relic from the past.  And that’s kind of creepy in its own right, and a propos of the subject matter.

The story involves twin boys.  One dies at birth—under apparently spooky circumstances.  When the dead boy, Jacques, refuses to go entirely away—this is a ghost story of sorts—the mother, Marie, goes all recluse on us and tries to keep the surviving boy, Maurice, from becoming too integrated with the small (apparently European) village of which they are a part.  The locals being somewhat superstitious (and Maurice’s encounters with Jacques being, well, actual encounters), a metaphysical collision is bound to ensue—particularly given the insouciant and meddlesome concern of the “outsider” (and “enlightened”) couple who serve as the town’s male schoolteacher and female doctor (in an odd gender twist, considering the film’s setting).

Thematically, the subject is survivor’s guilt.  Both Marie and Maurice really can’t get over the fact that one boy had to die—in much the same way the whole town can’t get over the fact that most of the male populace won’t be coming home from some unspecified war.  As is the case with most films in the “horror” genre and its ilk, Maurice’s story is a social commentary, and the moral seems to be: if you can’t find a way to reconcile yourself with your past, and insist on reclaiming it, it’s like living with the dead… and it will kill you. What’s done is done, and trying to answer the question “Why?” is most often futile.

Stylistically, The Shadow Within is unlike just about anything else out there that you’re likely to see.  Again, the feel seems deliberately borrowed from low-budget arthouse thrillers from the 1960s and 1970s—such as The Innocents or The Omen, had they been remade with the aesthetic sense of Sergio Leone.  It feels like Joshua or The Others, with parts missing, low-tech solutions for high-tech problems, and screws deliberately left loose and rattly.

For performances, Zancolo calls upon relative newscomers Beth Winslet and Hayley J. Williams as Dr. Prevost and Marie, respectively, and both are surprisingly well-handled and appealing in their roles.  The other adult performers seem unwieldy and stiff—again, probably deliberately so—and young greenhorn Laurence Belcher is effective if not particular memorable as Maurice/Jacques.

I’ve no doubt that what Zancolo achieves here is almost exactly what he set out to accomplish; I’m just not sure to what extent it will appeal to audiences.  It’s not slick enough to titillate; its not gruesome enough to satisfy genre fans; it’s not schlocky enough to qualify as a guilty-pleasure hoot; and it’s not thoughtful enough to really qualify as high art. 

If I were more well-versed in the genre and its European precedents—and the politics of Italy or Europe proper—I’m sure I could write a review that does the film justice.  As it is, I just have to say… for genre fans only.

The Shadow Within is rated R for “some violent content and nudity.”  I think I missed the nudity.  But R is appropriate nonetheless.  Anytime the idea of children, even dead ones, out to kill their parents is on the table, it’s best to leave the little ones in a different room.

Courtesy of the film’s distributor, Greg screened a promotional DVD of The Shadow Within.