Free Country and The Oak Room offer up cold seasonal suspense.
What’s a good Fantasia Fest without some crackling mysteries set during the wintry months available for festival attendees to solve? Well, it’s just not Fantasia Fest! While nothing tops the likes of H. or Better Watch Out, this year, I was privileged enough to check out two incredibly different mysteries screening at the festival, both featuring captivating mysteries set during the dead of winter in lands far from the safety of my sun-drenched Austin.
I don’t know why, but there’s something about the chilliness of the wind and the air which lends itself well to the genre. The coldness of the landscape instantly bring out feelings of isolation and desperation, which prove to be key ingredients for the thriller genre. Thankfully, Free Country and The Oak Room fit that very specific bill. While one is straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, and the other from a Stieg Larsson-type of novel, both movies use their locales and climates to tell stories which can’t help but come across as perfectly eerie.
Free Country
Set in Germany during the early 90s, Free Country follows Patrick (Trystan Putter), a police detective who has travelled over the border to meet his new temporary partner named Markus (Felix Kramer). The two have been paired together and brought to a small town in East Germany to investigate the disappearance of two local teenage girls. When the girls turn up dead, Patrick and Markus begin to uncover a much darker and sinister mystery involving certain members of the town.
Directed by Christian Alvart, Free Country is understandably stark and somber, as one would very much expect given the dark subject matter. But there’s so much here which elevates the film far beyond the traditional genre piece. From a technical standpoint, the editing, music and acting all very much deliver in ways which give Free Country more of a depth than one would first assume, while the cinematography paints a very specific view of a Germany which is somewhat lost in time and is slowly, but surely decaying. The way Alvart keeps his mystery unfolding as turn after turn comes to light is done through a deeply committed energy and curiosity which saves the whole piece from ever feeling plodding or deliberate. Perhaps the film’s most telling aspect is its view of a post-Berlin wall state where the divided, weary country is sensitively and honestly explored so thoroughly, it even manages to cleverly make its way into the mystery itself. Alvart’s projects (at least his stateside ones) have always maintained a style and panache, yet haven’t quite afforded him his rightful due as an exceptional filmmaker. There’s no question that Free Country is superb enough to change this sad fact.
The Oak Room
In The Oak Room, a drifter named Steve (R.J. Mitte) returns to his small snow-covered Canadian hometown and stops in the bar he and his deceased father Kenneth (David Ferry) used to frequent. However Paul (Peter Outerbridge) isn’t happy to see this familiar stranger return and all but throws him out of his deserted bar, calling him out for how ungrateful of a son he was to his father. Yet Steve refuses to leave until name agrees to hear a story he knows concerning another man who entered a bar on a snowy night.
The Oak Room has the kind of classic setup that I just crave. Its premise is simply ripe for layer upon layer of deceit, betrayal and almost any other key ingredient which makes the genre so enticing. Writer Peter Genoway and director Cody Calahan both know this and don’t waste the opportunity to create a scenario that’s rich in both plot and character. The two invest their audience so much into the world they’ve created almost instantly before plunging them into another setup which bears enough similarities and features its own level of mystery, that it cannot help but make The Oak Room even more intriguing. As the film plays with themes of the past and running away from the world, it does so in plenty of long, drawn out scenes which manage to weave plot and character together skillfully. The result makes it almost impossible to know exactly where the story is going. This is also sadly a bit too true for the ending of The Oak Room where all the building of character and suspense are all but forgotten in favor of a conclusion which tries to link together everything that’s come before, but in a way that feels sloppy and mediocre at best. It’s a sad conclusion to an otherwise well-made thriller.
Fantasia Fest 2020 runs August 20th- September 2nd.