October 29, 2007

A Warning To The Curious (Clark, 1972)


Lawrence Gordon Clark's A Warning to the Curious, an adaptation of M.R. James's ghost story, is a subtly effective, artfully rendered chiller that works on its audience slowly but surely. Clark has a wonderful eye and ear for the coastal town of Seaburgh (where the film's action takes place), allowing us to feel what it's like to be in a place where it's hard to discern where the beach ends and the sky and sea begin. The grainy, degraded video sourced images certainly help, evoking an ethereally creepy, old world atmosphere. There is hardly any gore and the film is resolutely un-explicit, but it is precisely because of these factors that Clark's film has aged as wonderfully as it has.

Film Rating: B
Scare Factor: B-

View Date: 10/28
Shocktober Horror Film Count: #25

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