Maverick film making as shown in the work of Norman J. Warren, the brilliant burned-out Michael Reeves and others is hard to come by. The French based an entire now-classic group of films known as The New Wave of the sixties. Scripts were often not complete, or bare ideas, ad hoc sets, lack of money, filming on the run with camera angles, cut and in some cases non-professional actors. This can yield some fascinating results on screen giving new talent in from and before the camera a chance to shine. It is unfair to compare a film like Gav Chuckie Steele’s The Shadow of Death with something iconic nor will I do that, yet the film is about telling a story making this appear to be ‘slapped together.’
This film tries very hard to tell not one but two stories that are only one story leading up to the practical effects of the blood bath, neither of them satisfying. You get hands, tables, and friends and roommates’ arguments over buying some weed in the opening moments where you don’t see any faces.
Taking cues from Friday The 13th, The Evil Dead series, Scream series, and using a martial arts-sounding title you have The Shadow Of Death. Essentially the story is about Debra and her best friends Jamie and Nancy picking up Dan, Nancy’s ex, to go out to the English woodland countryside to score some weed. Somehow, they get marooned in a cabin facing a hooded machete-wielding killer who resembles death is ravaging the territory.
The film is a patchwork of situations and the appearance of a bunch of friends making a film, so I better write a moment where you are killed such as a random jogger or a bearded biker person in the woods. Two females at the beginning of the film one gets beheaded used as a showcase for effects.
The mechanics of the film with its huge use of close-ups, mouths, faces, and noses is only in the last part of the film that it changes to wide shots, using a background almost like it was directed by two different people. One uses close-ups when you don’t have much to show so you confine the audience to what you want to show, perhaps this is the case.
The script feels like improv, which is wonderful to do, and the actors do this extremely well. All of them show some personality from the studious, panicky Debra, and the rebellious Nancy to the woman who will become the final girl, Jamie. Rounding out the film you have the obnoxious Craven, with his boozing, party animal life and ‘super cop’, ‘nutter’ Marley. The ‘Supercop’ prowls the roads, dressed in mirror glasses, uniform, pants, sweater etc. and listens to the police radio band, unofficially assisting on calls.
In a poignant moment, the ‘Supercop’ comes upon the trapped women in the cabin. Debra questions if he is a real policeman and recalls the distrust some have in some police and the real horror of ‘rogue policemen’ or those that impersonate officers in the real life murder case of Sarah Everard.
The film goes for laughs, dick jokes with sexual references, insults like ‘four eyed lesbian freak’ lines to a character who wears glasses and has birds’ poop on police pseudo policeman’s face.
The filmmakers are in the skate culture which shows in the moments in the park and some of the lingo tossed around. Lacks focus and wastes some good onscreen relationships, particularly the female leads.
The Shadow Of Death has the look of a student film with I will say probably one of the most irritating soundtracks of mumble raspy songs, attempts at a John Carpenter ‘Halloween’ theme with electronics and even including a trumpet solo for no apparent reason over one moment. What a shame because when the film gets rolling towards the end of its predictable pseudo-religious conclusion, it overshadows some solid screen presence by the cast and the practical effects. View with eyebrows raised and a wonderous expression on one’s face.
The Shadow Of Death is available now from VIPCO and BayView Entertainment to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and USA. Also available on other streaming platforms worldwide.
