By David Dent
Director James Smith and his creative partner Caroline Spence have a reputation for creating credible features from very little at all; Casting Kill, their 2023 movie, was an expansive (not expensive) mini giallo filmed in just a small handful of locations.
Daggers Inn bases its events in a cosy Essex village, passing as the fictional Haxanbury (geddit?). In the manner of all small village murder mysteries Haxanbury is a place you might want to visit but wouldn’t want to live in.
Central to Haxanbury’s problems is a ruthless local firm nominally run by Stanley Montagu-John (Martin Payne), but subject to internal feuding between company members Lauren (Terry Bamberger, a real American for once rather than a dubious UK actor adopting a bogus accent) and the supremely odious Toby Vass (James Hamer-Morton). Expansion is on their mind, and they’ll do anything in service of it – including murder.
But things are about to change. A stranger, Donna (Anna Danvers), arrives in the village on a quest to find out what happened to her twin sister Sibyl, and one suspects she knows more than she’s letting on. Donna weaves a spell around the villagers, drawing them under her influence, as she infiltrates the company in a quest to find the truth, teaming up with outsider Samron (Gavin Gordon) and put upon company employee Karen (Eve Kathryn Oliver) in the process.
There are so many ways in which Daggers Inn gets it right. Smith ensures that nothing is explained (in a good way). Is Donna a witch, or maybe even Sibyl in returned form? Certainly her arrival prompts some unusual behaviour; company employees become entranced, and Toby’s girlfriend Bethany (genre regular Charlie Bond), who may be central to the mystery, is determined to be rid of her. The director, who like previous projects also serves behind the camera, does some wonderful things capturing both the external landscape and the claustrophobic goings on in the medieval village’s board rooms and tea shops. Casting is spot on, with performances being as generally understated as the movie’s sound design (always a blessing in a genre where directors mistakenly feel that a histrionic score can make up for a project’s shortcomings). Excellent stuff.
Bloody Flicks 