Recluse, the debut feature from writer-director Henry Chaisson is a classically gothic horror mystery built on exceptional sound design and a delicate application of well worn tropes that feel properly preserved, not tired. It’s a slow-burn upstate American ghost story in the lineage of Burnt Offerings and Ghost Story, embroidered with a disturbing family mystery and themes that can run very dark.
Joan (Sasha Frolova), a sound recordist living in isolation, returns to her father’s estate in the wake of a devastating fire. Her father is a famous, enormously wealthy artist, now unwell after the traumatic accident and requiring around-the-clock care inside his gothic estate in the middle of nowhere. As Joan traces a series of ghostly audio fragments, she uncovers a buried family secret, and someone intent on keeping it that way. Chaisson plays with a set of aesthetics and tropes I happen to love, and shapes them into something genuinely chilling.
The sound is the obvious headliner, and it earns its billing. It’s impeccable, rivalling undertone, a film marketed on the back of its sound design. It’s important to note that this is produced, in part, by Steven Schneider who also had a hand in producing undertone and Hokum. What makes the sound work here is that it is not purely technical. It is thematic, woven into a story whose protagonist listens for a living. The opening scene is one of the strongest beats in the film. It does not represent everything that follows, but it announces a certain register of hardcore spookiness that I always love to see.
And that register is worth dwelling on. When you picture spooky cinema, it’s not always a picture of something hard-hitting, shocking, or difficult, and Recluse is a reminder that this kind of horror can also be tough to swallow at times. Damian McCarthy works in a similar realm, especially with Oddity, a film that shares some DNA around the edges with Recluse. There is also a strong streak of those nasty EC Comics from the fifties, the same well that the “Father’s Day” segment of Creepshow drew from. The set dressing is elegant, gothic, ghostly, but the skeleton underneath is grotesque, nightmarish, and a little B-rate, in the most complimentary sense.
The scariest thing in Recluse is the father himself, or rather what is left of him. Bedridden after the accident, his face is wrapped in hard gauze that, from across the room, reads as a standard full-face burn bandages. Up close it is something else, closer to a theatrical mask, which feels right for a man famous for his dark fine art. It folds into a larger idea about the role of art in the film. The estate is dressed with the patriarch’s work and pieces worth untold sums, and there are vultures circling to benefit from his success. The art is everywhere, frightening and fascinating at once, and it even tips the whole ship toward folk horror at times.
Beneath the surface pleasures of atmosphere and dread, there is a real family-drama mystery thriller here, and it pays off. At its core the film is about our desperate, almost biological need for a parent’s approval and familial belonging, the shocking depths we will sink to to earn it, and the madness that can fester when it is withheld at the moment it matters most. A mystery lives or dies on its conclusion, and the eeriness and patient buildup lead to success. The finale lands, which is much harder to pull off than it looks.
Still, some edges are rougher than others. While the sound is flawless, different technical elements do not quite meet the same bar. The lighting runs a little dark and the colors a little muted, surely by design, but without the same fine-tuned flourish the sound achieves. These are small notes against a small film that is punching well above its pay grade.
The performances are solid across the board. Frolova is strong in the lead, anchoring the film’s quieter, listening mood even if the role gives her a little less to play with than the house around her. But the standout is Toby Poser as the manager of the ailing patriarch’s home. Poser usually works inside her Adams Family filmmaking collective, a DIY grassroots dynasty responsible for some of the more innovative horror of recent years. On her own here, she shines. Magnetic and frightening, she lands somewhere near Mrs. Dudley from The Haunting of Hill House, only more ferocious. It’s a choice piece of casting.
Recluse is not reinventing the gothic ghost story, instead rendering one with care, conviction, and a soundscape that gets under your skin. Chaisson has made the rare debut that leans on the classics and still feels alive, and the result a must-watch for horror fans.
Recluse makes its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on June 4, as part of the Escape from Tribeca section.
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