I wrote a capsule review for this film
during the 2011 edition of Fantasia, but after picking up a DVD copy in a
bargain bin, I decided to write something more substantial on the topic. The
film was given such an enthusiastic review by the programmers at the festival
that I felt the need to revisit its darkly mundane universe in order to find
the elusive brilliance I had missed the first time around. Same as before, I
found that Absentia was a clever film
with great ambitions, but a lack of means to achieve those ambitions. Its
reliance on mundane events to generate affect amongst spectators actually
impairs its departure into the realm of fantasy, especially near the end, when
the screenplay overreaches itself by trying to explain every single
disappearance since the beginning of time.
Absentia is an ambitious film, but it fails to
really deliver on its intriguing premise.
The narrative of the film focuses on a pair
of sisters, pregnant Tricia, whose husband Daniel has now been missing for
seven years, and Callie, a recovering drug addict who is just reuniting with
her estranged sister in L.A., near the mysterious tunnel where Daniel
vanished all those years ago. While in the process of declaring her husband
“dead in absentia”, Tricia starts being plagued by the usual apparitions of
black-eyed ghosts shrieking at the screen. She feels guilty, you see, for
having gotten knocked up by the police detective assigned to Daniel’s
case. After much trial and tribulation,
during which the visions become increasingly frequent and Callie starts
witnessing weird goings-on in the tunnel, Daniel suddenly returns. But he is in
bad shape, exhibiting marks of violence all over his body and suffering from a
serious case of sun depravation. Seemingly unwilling to reveal the exact
conditions in which he has lived for the past seven years, Daniel is pushed to
confess, just before disappearing once more for good. And as Callie starts
investigating, we find that his disappearance was one of many, and that they
all pertain to mythical insect creatures living just beyond the veil of our
dimension. So, be ready to suspend your disbelief.
Everything in the film, from the nearly
TV-level aesthetics to the lowbrow script, even the cyclical nature of the
narrative and the sheer ugliness of the locales are meant to create a certain
sense of familiarity, one could say “proximity” to the material onscreen. The
focus put on the paperwork necessary to obtain the death certificate is another
means to achieve this goal, and so are the incredibly mundane dialogues,
delivered sometimes awkwardly, by a willing cast of no-namers. All of this
contributes to create a really earnest drama that involves the spectator right
away. The opening sequence is quite powerful in that regard. It shows
protagonist Tricia walking through her neighborhood, removing withered missing
person posters and stapling new ones on various telephone posts. She does so in
a mechanical, resigned way that nicely sums up her current situation and the
angst building up inside her. Time has obviously taken a toll on her, same as
on the posters, who have long braved the elements, but to no avail. The whole
ordeal of having a death certificate issued for a person in absentia also helps
make her ordeal appear intelligible to us, who have all had to deal with
paperwork in one way or another. That said, the legally-determined time lapse
of seven years necessary to declare a person “dead in absentia”, hence allowing
relatives to sever painful ties with the deceased, might appear perfectly sound
from a bureaucratic standpoint , but they must be excruciating for anybody
living in doubt as to their relative’s whereabouts. Thus, horror remains in the
mundane reality of bureaucracy, as it is in the guilt of “betraying” a lost
husband with another man. But horror also comes from without, and that is
perhaps where the film starts to falter.
Mundane imagery is a perfect gateway
into the world of the film.
You see, when Daniel reappears, looking
pale as a ghost, malnourished and wearing the very same clothes he wore the day
of his disappearance, we obviously suspect supernatural intervention. And at
this point, the mystery remains tantalizing. Who, or what could’ve bruised the
man to such an extent? Who, or what would’ve wanted to keep him alive for
nearly a decade without stealing any of his money? Maybe we could’ve shared
some of Daniel’s memories at this point, but the film prefers engaging in iffy,
mythological speculation. Despite an embryonic explanation provided by Daniel
as to the shape of his tormentors, we are soon deprived of his hands-on
memories when he is kidnapped once more under Callie’s glassy eyes. Wrought
with guilt for having lost Tricia’s husband to an ill-defined insect beast, she
conducts a hardy Google investigation*, and comes up with some certitudes that
immediately deflate any attempt at closing the film with an open ending. In a
particularly half-assed segway into the mythological aspects of the film, the
young woman uses high school science and the momentary gullibility of the
curious spectator to tell us how nothing on the planet can be totally solid,
hence impregnable. This opens up the ill-defined idea of a contiguous dimension
existing at the threshold of our own, a hidden dimension home to mythological
snatchers of people. The idea is quite horrific in itself, but it is less so
than the mystery that preceded. And so, the politic of intelligibility for all turns
out to be a trump card for we are soon asked to suspend our disbelief in a big
way.
All through the film, mystery is the name
of the game, with Tricia’s angst stemming directly from her lack of information
regarding the disappearance of her husband. One of the most intriguing plot
devices in the film actually concerns that very lack of information and the
stretch of imagination necessary to fill in the gaps. When asked for a tentative
explanation as to her husband’s disappearance, Tricia suggests a number of
scenarios, each one complemented by a short series of images. Hence, we get to
see Daniel as a government operative keeping a watchful eye on his former home,
or an amnesic with a new family and a new life. These images are pure forgery,
of course, but they perfectly delineate the reality of “loss” victims, forced
to make sense of their loved one’s disappearance with any sort of fantastic
story. When Daniel finally comes back to our side of reality, popping up on the
front lawn as Tricia and her new boyfriend are going out to celebrate their
newly recognized union, we are dumbstruck. The poor man is pale and weak,
crumbling down on the pavement even before he could reach the adulterous
couple. When we later discover bruises all over his body and chicken bones
inside his stomach, we can only struggle to explain them, unsure as to our
actual desire to learn the truth. At this point, the multi-scenario device
would’ve worked better to procure a tentative explanation rather than an
all-encompassing one, thus allowing our imagination to fill in the gaps left by
Daniel’s own partial understanding of his ordeal.
Psychological angst is more interesting
than supernatural events
In the end, Absentia works better as an earnest character study than as a true
horror film. The supernatural elements contained within are neither embodied
enough to create any sort of spectacle, nor mysterious enough to cultivate
ambiguity. They are left in a sort of expressive limbo that impairs the whole
efficiency of the narrative, the most interesting aspect thereof being the
human factor and its relationship to loss. With the crux of dramatic power
lying in Tricia’s guilt and the ability to cope with loss, the “monstrous”
aspects of the screenplay seem to have been merely an afterthought. And while
they provides a powerful ending, they also completely mar our sense of wonder and
excitement as to the aura of mystery permeating the film.
2,5/5
A very intriguing, but poorly produced film that turns out to be more
interesting in its depiction of mundane angst, than as a true monster film.
Callie looks great, but she hardly makes a convincing
argument for the existence of insectoid kidnappers.
