The Dreadful Place Does So Much on a Micro Budget
A dream within a dream
4/5 stars
Films about dreams are always a difficult challenge. Dreams are often chaotic and incomprehensible, so films about them should match that tone while still maintaining enough plot and character to hold audience interest. This is exactly the task that befell local filmmaker Cole Daniel Hills with his psychological horror film The Dreadful Place, which was screened at 1020 Collective on Oct. 15. Hills has crafted a film that is surreal and unnerving while carrying the horror with a compelling story and characters. The result combines the best of David Lynch and Charlie Kaufman, and the fact that it was achieved with such a low budget is doubly impressive.
On the anniversary of her father's tragic death, 22-year-old Willow (Keaton McLachlan) finds herself lost in her own life. While her best friend is about to be married, Willow feels stuck in a kind of purgatory. These feelings manifest themselves literally when Willow becomes trapped in a nightmarish version of her own life, filled with monstrous caricatures of her friends and family who seem to want to take over her body. Willow must now put the pieces together to find a way out before this nightmare consumes her mind.
Filmed entirely in Erie, Hills takes familiar places like dinors and theaters and turns them into twisted inversions. He does this with creepy camerawork, ingenious use of sound, and committed performances from his actors. McLachlan does particularly great work as the lone voice of sanity in this insane world. Like many surrealist films, the story slips a little the more it tries to explain itself, but The Dreadful Place contains enough scares and drama to keep audiences intrigued. The Dreadful Place is currently available on Amazon Prime and Tubi.
Written and directed by Cole Daniel Hills // Starring Keaton McLachlan, Matt Fling, Abigail Fawn, David Olivencia, James Scott Charles Howells, Brittany Hills, Cole Daniel Hills, Ash Carr, Kalli Oberlander, and Erik Brown // 96 Minutes // Unrated
