Grief can manifest in myriad different forms. For some, it feels like a weight that constantly threatens to pull us down. And just like with any weight, carrying it gets lighter with time. For others, grief can take the form of a phantom, a reminder of what was lost. It lurks around every corner of our lives, waiting for the right moment to pounce and completely ruin our day.
This is the form that grief takes in Haunters of the Silence, the new film by co-writer/directors Tatu Heikkinen and Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen. Clocking in at a tight seventy-two minutes, Haunters of the Silence is less a conventional narrative feature and more a feature-length tone poem illustrating how grief can turn the wee hours of the night into a kaleidoscopic nightmare factory.
As the film opens, we meet a man named K (Tatu Heikkinen), who has just scattered his wife’s ashes along the seashore. He returns to an empty home, a quiet little cottage filled with reminders of her. With nothing else to do, he slides into his half of the bed, pops a pill labeled ‘sedative-hypnotic’, and drifts off to sleep. He’s woken a time or two by raccoons triggering the porch camera outside, but as the clock strikes midnight—and on Halloween, no less—the spirits begin doing what they do best. K soon finds himself tormented by memories of his lost love (Veleda Thorsson-Heikkinen), by the voice of his father, and by a shadowy figure the film refers to as The Hat Man (John Haughm).
That’s really all the narrative we’re given here, as K’s dark night of the soul ebbs and flows from one setpiece to the next. But within that framework, Heikkinen uses every trick up his sleeve to squeeze every last ounce of magic that he can from the tools at his disposal. Slow motion photography, digital static, stop-motion animation; the film is never at a loss for how to present us with haunting imagery. The muted colors of a cold October evening give way to the stark black and white of K’s nightmares, as we watch him flee the Hat Man through barren forests and dank spillways.
The meaning behind these visions is, of course, all subjective. The Hat Man could be the manifestation of K’s grief, beckoning him down the sorts of dark paths that grief often leads. It’s tempting to let yourself be consumed by grief; briefly it may even be the best medicine. K’s grief, in particular, leads him to reminiscing about his own childhood, as we soon find him escaping to the attic and encountering family photos, drawings, and reminders of a past life.
The film is at its best when it takes its time, letting these vignettes play out as Heikkinen & Co. stretch their imaginations and hone their craft. There’s a dazzling bit of stop-motion animation late in the film that involves a goat skeleton; on the one hand a haunting memento mori, but also just a fun bit of artistry that makes this writer curious to see what Heikkinen cooks up next. As a debut feature, Haunters of the Silence can’t help but feel a little bit slight. As a calling card for a new filmmaker, though? It’s a confident piece of work.
FINAL RATING:
3.5 stars (out of five).
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