An atmospheric slow burn that has no qualms really stretching out the burn, the first feature film from director Romola Garai is a deliberately-paced, well-acted and artful horror chamber piece fastened to a real whopper of an ending. Movies live and die by their ending; a great ending can make an otherwise okay movie great and a terrible ending can make an otherwise great movie terrible. This, fortunately, is a case of the former. To Garai’s credit, she absolutely nails the ending, delivering the kind of capstone that makes you go back and reconsider the rest of the film through new eyes and newly discovered context. My mind was racing trying to piece together things as the credits began to roll, certain things not snapping into place until my drive home. (You’ll have to excuse the slower processing power of my brain at the time. It was 2AM after all.) 

Tomaz (Alec Secareanu) is homeless, riddled by some unknown trauma that wracks his sleep. Before bed each night, he duct tapes his hands together. Forcing himself into a kind of worshipper’s stance. We’re provided glimpses into Tomaz’s past as a solider, manning a border station in the middle of a forest. His past and present both feature Tomaz’s relationship to two young women, Mirriam (played by Dogtooth’s Angeliki Papoulia) and Magda (Carla Juri of Wetlands). 

Garai, who wrote the script in addition to directing, peels back the layers glacially, never allowing us to know the context of Tomaz’s brokenness until precisely she wants us too. It’s not so much that’s she pumps the momentum brakes as much as she controls what we know and when. In keeping with the underlying moral center of the story, her having that power is essential. 

Tomaz comes to live with Magda through an interfering nun, who you can assume is up to no good by virtue of the fact she’s played by Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton). In exchange for fixing up Magda’s dump of an abode, Tomaz earns room and board. Taking to Magda’s cooking and sweet personality, Tomaz realizes that everything is not right in their residence. A large part of this has to do with Magda’s controlling mother, dying slowly upstairs and known to give Madga all sorts of welts and bite marks. 

Garai plays around with the idea of more going on than meets the eye and spoon-feeding just enough hits of suspicious goings-on – like albino vampire bats in the toilet – to keep audiences engaged but, at times, it does feel like she overdoes it with the patience-testing. At 99 minutes, Amulet can feel conceptually slight, a relatively meager plot stretched to within breaking point. Secareanu and Juri do a lot to make the low-broiling romantic subplot work, their old-fashion chemistry overwhelming need for too much plot-propellant.

Despite its length in the tooth, Amulet still manages to be both memorable and more than worthwhile. Consider me not surprised that a female director could devote the kind of patience it takes to pull something like this off so discretely and so confidently. As a morality play, Amulet does not hold back on what it wants to say, exchanging the subtlety that defines the majority of its screen time to speak to the futility of rebuilding broken souls and the virtue of forgiveness withholding.  Garai’s final statement is unmistakable and radical, having secretly championed women seizing power all along. 

CONCLUSION: ‘Amulet’ can prove a challenging watch – both for its measured pace and strange flourishes -but those willing to give it time to bloom will be rewarded with a thoughtful and decadently horrifying morality play. Director Romola Garai declares herself one to watch.

B-

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