 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Glasshouse • Year: 2021 • Country: South Africa • Director: Kelsey Egan • Main cast: Jessica Alexander, Hilton Pelser, Anja Taljaard, Adrienne Pearce, Brent Vermeulen, Kitty Harris • Runtime: 94 minutes • Production company: Local Motion Pictures, Crave Pictures, Showmax • TRAILER
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This year, the Fantasia Film Festival has seen the debut of a few filmmakers whose careers must be followed after their presentation feature, and Kelsey Egan joins the group thanks to her work Glasshouse (2021). This might look like a sensitive movie but it is dealing with quite violent facts, flirting with folk-horror in an apocalyptic environment.
The world is threatened by a virus that erases the memory of whoever breaths it in the open air. Everything we are, everything we’ve learned, everyone we’ve loved. Then, the sense of family and community doesn’t exist anymore, and people are turned into violent useless beings. And in a world where supplies are scarce, if you want to survive, the lost family members must be replaced by active new ones to keep the equilibrium.
This sense of family, so ritualistic, so functional but at the same time cold and cruel, is floating around the entire running time of the movie. The family formed by the dictatorial Mother and her three daughters, romantic Bee, sensible Evie, and child of nature Daisy, is functioning almost a military severity, but that is the only way that they can keep alive. Survival at any price.
Love leads to procreation in order to generate new workforce, so although the movie seems to have a romantic shade it is only a side effect to sustain this dystopic reality. After all, despite the tender tone of the movie, Glasshouse (2021) hosts an atmosphere of horror and mystery. And that sense of fear and danger that the director and co-writer Kelsey Egan wanted to imprint on the film is what makes it special.
Don’t expect elaborated science-fiction plots and horrifying images on the screen, because the power of Glasshouse (2021) resides in the hearts of the characters and not so much on their actions. Like any creature that wants to last in a hostile environment, you gotta wait for the right moment to make your moves if you want to stay alive.
RATE: 6/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt13724054
