Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Amulet’ on VOD, a Creeping Horror Flick Rife with Squidgy FX and Devilish Vibes

Horror fans may not want to miss Amulet, a slightly below-the-radar VOD creeper that surely oozed into viewers’ psyches at midnight Sundance screenings this year. The film is from writer/director Romola Garai, a two-time Golden Globe nominee for acting in Emma and The Hour, who conjures up some weighty, creepy vibes for her first feature.

AMULET: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Deep in the godforsakenly lonely and beautiful woods, Tomaz (Alec Secareanu) mans a one-man guardshack. There he sits all day, reading a book next to a rough road few travel. Then he retires to a can of beans and a cot in a cabin. One day he digs in the moist, clotted earth and finds an amulet, a feminine figure. It appears to be pagan as all hell. He bolts awake months, maybe years, later, in a London homeless squat. His hands are wrapped with tape so he doesn’t self-harm during haunted dreams about his time as a soldier alone in the woods, when the tranquility of the day was shattered by Miriam (Angeliki Papoulia) running up the road, so desperate to reach her daughter, she doesn’t seem to care that Tomaz is pointing a machine gun at her.

Anyway. Present day. Tomaz works at a construction site for a bit of cash before heading back to the squat. He jolts awake, not from a dream — there’s a fire. It’s a chaotic scene. He’s treated in the hospital and put in the care of Sister Claire (Imelda Staunton), who introduces him to Magda (Carla Juri), young caretaker of her ailing mother. Her ailing mother, who’s locked in the attic of a crumbling house, moaning and thumping as the score makes gurgling noises like a large intestine in distress, you know, NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG. Magda has an open room and the rent’s free if Tomaz fixes up the place, since it looks like it smells like it has some mold issues, and the gnarly plumbing, just don’t even ask about the gnarly plumbing.

Magda doesn’t quite take kindly to Tomaz poking around too much in holes in the wall because, maybe, you know, symbolism and metaphors, but also, there’s this vibe that he shouldn’t ask too many questions about Mother up there, and what is she, some kind of Lovecraftian-style Zulawski’s Possession beast or something? Magda seems lonely and isolated, though, and maybe there’s a romantic spark since she had to tear all the wiring out of the walls so Mother won’t try to electrocute herself and the place is chock with mood candles? Meanwhile, the flashbacks to the forest scene with Miriam winds through all this, and we get the sense the two plots are about to collide in a rather unsettling fashion.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Garai has all the right influences: I’ve already mentioned Possession, but also Argento’s Suspiria, The Exorcist, Alien, The Neon Demon, Psycho, The Witch and that Treehouse of Horror episode where Bart Simpson’s evil twin is locked in the attic even though there was a mixup and he’s the actual evil twin and the good one has been has been the one in the attic for a decade.

Performance Worth Watching: Sure, the feisty Staunton-nun, firing up cigarettes and dropping a little vodka in Tomaz’s coffee, is a rich supporting character. But Juri — who we saw designing Replicant memories in Blade Runner 2049 — anchors the film with a strong, layered performance.

Memorable Dialogue: Decontextualized Magda, No. 1: “You’ve got to take pleasure where you can.”

Decontextualized Magda, No. 2: “I have to. They’re born with teeth.”

Sex and Skin: An instance of very oogy graphic frontal nudity.

Our Take: Amulet engages our curiosity with a couple solid hooks, slow-burns through the first two acts, then locks in the WTF hypnosis for the final third. It’s marvelously paced, teasing its reveals without frustrating us, patiently bringing its bevy of hinty psychosexual metaphors into focus. (What is that amulet anyway? A fertility symbol? A gorgon? A goddess?) Sarah Arliss’ score is extraordinary, provoking a chill with wailing sirens — think mythology, not emergency vehicles — as if the collective cries of ages and ages of angry women are simultaneously luring us in and warning us, and weaves in some good old-fashioned backward masking to give us some right queasy devil vibes.

In short, Garai, confident in her ability to manipulate, waits until the perfect moment to reveal her hand, and it’s not a bluff. She indulges gruesome and effective creature effects and body-horror in exquisitely measured quantities, making sure the imagery bivouacs in our brains for a few nights. Visually, it’s unsettling and ’70s fetishy, the way blade carves through gore, the way Magda guts a fish with her finger. Plot and character intertwine nicely into a braided lash of feminist righteousness, tropes inverted like the pentagrams in Crowley’s lair. It concludes with a coda that’s a little overexplanatory, but it’s nonetheless a satisfying moment, and absolutely forgivable considering the WHOA THERE we just saw, all vermin hearts and beasts within. I loved this film; it made my eyes narrow and widen; it grossed me out.

Our Call: STREAM IT. So what’s Garai’s next movie?

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Where to stream Amulet on Demand