For Those In Peril
Director: Paul Wright
Actors: Michael Smiley, George Mckay, Kate Dickie
Release Date: Monday 30th November -0001
Genre(s): Drama
Running time: 92 minutes
After a tragic accident which resulted in a fishing boat going missing at sea, presumably sunk, with just one survivor found, the social misfit Aaron (George McKay). Clearly traumatised by the event, as his older brother was also on board the boat, Aaron has no memory of what happened, but is haunted by mysterious, scary visions. As a child, Aaron's mother told him a story of a mythical devil in the sea who would eat all the children, and in Aaron's broken mind, he has decided that this monster is real, and he must do everything he can to kill it and bring his brother back.
However, the local townsfolk, all of whom are in the fishing industry in one way or another, now see Aaron as a bad omen, and everyone but Aaron's brother's grieving girlfriend trying to avoid him completely.
So what we have here is a mish-mash of the kitchen-sink drama we'd usually see in a Ken Loach movie, mixed with the surrealist horror we'd normally get from Ben Wheatley. There is a constant hum of dread and threat in the town, be it the normal everyday kind from Aaron's neighbours who no longer want him around, or from Aaron himself who seems to be constantly fighting the urge to completely disintegrate from the inside out, or from the ever present sea, a constant source of life and death for the local population.
There is a fine movie to be made here, about the abstract lengths that one's mind can go to while suffering from grief, but For Those In Peril doesn't know how to play it's hand correctly, jumping from far too subtle to suddenly very heightened at a moment's notice.
A fantastic sense of atmosphere and a great performance from McKay can only carry the movie so far, and writer/director Paul Wright is a little too lackadaisical with his storytelling for the first half, and far too on the nose during the second, leading right up to a make-it-or-break-it point for the audience during its climax.
An interesting, if muddled oddity.
