By Terry Sherwood
Family love, secrets, and the birth of the Devil beat the adage that home is where the heart is only if it is on a plate. Writer-Director Brodi-Jo Scalise offers up a Canadian film regarding a family filled with a mission of terror and secrets in the short picture Family Descent. In the story, a young man John (Sean Depner) who turns out to be his lover Ari (Praneet Akilla) returns to John’s childhood home after the passing of his father to find themselves mixed up in magic and devilry in a sinister family plot
In the rollicking well-paced short homage to Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, John finds his spectral father (Jai Braithwaite) still hanging around with glowing eyes. His Mother (Gabriella Miller) and a collection of older childhood acquaintances all look like the Coven from Rosemary Baby headed by Dr. Saperstein (Ralph Bellamy) and the delightful Minnie (Ruth Gordon). Homage ye sin concept but with enough savvy to make it a style of their own with snappy dialogue, and asides about extracting something from John bringing something into the world during a rare Blood Moon.
Family Descent is paced well with some very committed actors saying plausible dialogue that would be said in a situation. Cheeky stuff like getting the Stuff out of John to bring him into the world via a rather awkward courtesan Vivian (Ariel Hansen) who was chosen to give birth. The only wrench in the works is that John is gay. John and Ari enjoyed a forbidden moment of lust in John’s former room before finding out that his relatives and friends were all waiting for him downstairs. John was also going to ‘come out of the closet’ which to his surprise they already knew. The gore-filled climax (no pun) involved Ari bursting with a devil-me-care attitude that satisfies the coven.
This is a short film that opens new areas for a Gay or bi-sexual Devil child in a non-cheap exploitation setting which would be truly interesting with a coven of odd people to the point that the late Ken Russell would do it justice.
Family Descent moves along well, engaging people on screen and the right amount of blood and semen references which do go together in folklore studies along with the male horror fantasy of Vagina Denta. A good little film with some novel characters with more flesh on them than recent coven films without resorting to the teenagers with the spell book or the retreat in the forest idea.
Bloody Flicks 