By Simon Thompson
Director/ co-writer Erich Cannon’s His Monster is a hauntingly atmospheric horror movie that plays on the understanding that sometimes our own personal demons are greater than any external threat. While it goes a little lighter on the horror than the best exemplars of this story type such as Jacob’s Ladder or The Shining , this is a film which still burrows right under your skin and stays there.
Set in a small Pacific Northwestern coastal town, the story of His Monster follows James (Gabriel Casdorph), an alcoholic whose personal struggles are straining his relationship with his family. When his daughter Hanna (Miette Blanche) ends up being swept out to sea, James believes it to be some kind of creature that attacked her.
The narrative subsequently jumps a few years later, where we are re-introduced to a traumatised James struggling to confront his grief and understand what happened to his child, inevitably turning back to the most poisonous coping method of them all.
From a subjective point of view, I am a complete sucker for works of fiction that are set in the Pacific Northwest (for reference Twin Peaks and The X Files are some of my favourite shows of all time, and two of my favourite books are Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion), with its overcast skies, forests, and overall picturesque beauty lending itself nicely to being a compelling fictional setting. Cinematographer Neil Larson fully understands this and with a muted, washed colour palette fully brings out the beauty of the region to the extent that it’s almost a character in itself.
Gabriel Casdorph gives a fantastic central performance as James, compassionately rendering both his grief and self-destructive tendencies with equal dexterity. Casdorph excels at portraying the tense body language of an alcoholic constantly in danger of drinking again, particularly in a scene where he’s contemplating his sobriety the day after falling off the wagon, a superb piece of acting.
As a director Erich Cannon switches between a still and intimate style of shooting during the interior scenes, but when the action moves to the exterior locations of the Oregon woods, moves to a twitchier and more foreboding approach in keeping with the dark limitless expanse of the woods.
Overall, if you enjoy a more psychological approach to horror His Monster is the movie for you. While the title might fool you into thinking that this is some run of the mill creature feature, if you give it a chance you will find that it is in fact the complete opposite of that.
