01/02/2012

The British film When the Lights Went Out [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (pictured) is again proof that genre films are not necessarily an obstacle for a festival premiere. Directed by Pat Holden, the film dramatizes a famous ghost story ­– exorcism included – that actually happened in rural Yorkshire. The end credits describe it as the “most violent” exorcism that has occurred in European history.

The film is set in the 1970s and its most evident surface pleasure is the way it looks and approaches the period. It gets a lot of the details exactly right without ever feeling too art-directed and doesn’t play around with the period trappings in a post-modern way but simply keeps things straight.

The Maynard family moves into a new house in a small community in Yorkshire. Working-class father (Steven Waddington) and mother (Kate Ashfield) try to make their daughter, Sally (Tasha Connor, who looks like a working-class Lilly Cole), feel at home.

In that grey zone between childhood and early adolescence, Sally hears noises and sees things that don’t entirely make sense, though initially her parents dismiss these as the product of the overactive imagination of a child. But then they, too, start encountering what turns out to be the ghost of a murdered young girl.

A priest (veteran character actor Gary Lewis) is called upon to do an exorcism, but after consultation with the bishop, he seems unwilling to help, leading the father to unusual measures in order to save his family from damnation.

The acting and production design are the most noteworthy aspects of the film, which does rely on a good many clichés from the genre to elicit jump-in-the-dark moments from the audience.

The film was produced by Deepak Nayar and Bil Bungay for the appropriately named See No Evil Productions . SC Films International handles international sales.