Underscore is a genre busting feature, an experimental film, part poem, part guided meditation, and part cautionary tale about the state of the Earth. Real and special effects landscapes and creatures are fused together. It’s ages before the back of a man appears on screen, and local audiences will immediately recognise Granda Joe
One of the film’s concepts will be familiar to fans of Star Trek: Discovery with its ‘spore drive’ taking advantage of the ‘mycelial network’. In Underscore, Laoise (Jessica Reynolds) must educate her grandfather about the mushroom network that allows fungi talk to each other. The film is a cry for people to better connect themselves with the Earth before it’s too late.
Shots jump from macro to micro. What feel like a solid animated structures morph into other forms and then back again. It’s like weaving through a three-dimensional fractal. One of the most sophisticated scenes comes in the shape of feathery fish. The biggest wow moment comes when the fish dissolve into a pastoral scene shot from above. By that stage of the film, the trancelike music and visuals have worked their magic and you barely notice the transition until it’s happened.
Reading that last paragraph without having seen the film may make it sound like a cinema full of people willing took a particularly vivid trip courtesy of some magic mushrooms. No mushrooms were harmed in the viewing of the film. But coming just a couple of hours after attending a heartbreaking funeral, attending the screening of Underscore did prove to be a calming and therapeutic intervention.
It will be interesting to see where Underscore goes. It would be perfect to watch wearing a virtual reality headset, although you need the big bass subs and surround sound of a proper cinema to do Kieran’s music justice and become absorbed in the mood. It might also work projected onto a curved screen that you could walk into the middle of and become consumed by Glenn Marshall’s visuals and the soundtrack. Watch this space to see how Hugh McGrory’s masterpiece develops.
The second premiere had to be switched to a larger screen to accommodate the strong interest. Housejackers watches the chaos wreaked on a student flat as Jerdy invites himself to stay with his foster brother.
While the flat is populated with some predictable stereotypes, the characters are (mostly) sympathetically written. Shauna is ditzy and has her own line in ukelele electronic music (played by Saorlaoith Brady). Raymond (Finnian Garbutt) works in the local filling station shop and is secretly studying for his GCSE Maths exam. Lucy (Eubha Akilade) is a hard-working and kind-hearted medical student who mostly has Raymond’s back. Bobby (Ryan Dylan) is the unlikeable posh fun-sponge who looks down his nose at Raymond’s less refined background.
Actor John Travers regularly wows audiences on the stage with his brash delivery of one-person theatre shows that are full of energy. He’s perfectly cast as Jerdy, the driving force of the film. Jerdy could start a party in an empty room. But one glare could also kill the mood at any celebration. He’s a tad younger than Raymond, but the pair were fostered around the same time by ‘Nan’. They’re good company for each other but might potentially lead each other astray. They may not be blood relatives, but in the past they were as close as brothers in criminal escapades for which Jerdy served time but Raymond escaped and took full advantage of his second chance. Now Jerdy is back and is winding Raymond back into his destructive orbit.
The cast turn in performances that match the intensity of the story arc. Director Rian Lennon and screenwriters David Kline and Brian McGleenon gently demonstrate Raymond’s insecurities to the audience in contrast to Jerdy’s extreme heart-on-sleeve unfiltered personality that bursts into all his scenes. The filling station is the location most steeped in humour, yet also the venue for the most brutal violence.
Housejackers certainly provoked lots of conversations on the way out of the screening. The wider fostering network may well recognise the pressures Nan is under and the issues she raises. Raymond’s innumeracy is very credible. The film doesn’t judge and never makes fun of Gerdy and Raymond’s circumstances. But is the depiction of looked after children in foster care growing up to lead a life of crime accurate even at one end of the spectrum? Those behaviours definitely exist across society, whether living with birth parents or not.
Confidently directed and beautifully filmed and edited, Housejackers is a quality product. Its future journey through distribution, release and marketing will be interesting to follow. My bet is that it’s more suited to a streaming platform than the cinema given its lack of mainstream appeal. Time will tell.
Two very different films that show off the talent and creativity of Northern Ireland cast and crew. And still three days to go in this year’s Belfast Film Festival.
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