The Halloween season has just come to an end, and the Christmas season is just around the corner, so what should people be watching in the meantime? Well, why not bridge the gap with some Christmastime horror in the form of the new movie Advent?
Advent, told in a documentary/YouTube footage combination, tells the story of Hayley (Rasina Alexander), a young woman who's recently lost her mother to a tragic and gruesome suicide, and is trying her best to find some stability in life alongside her alcoholic father. Thanks to her love of urban legends and the paranormal, Hayley has been using her YouTube as an outlet, something where she can share her passions with other like-minded people. Unfortunately, she's somewhat obsessive, checking every comment instantly, tracking her views, and uploading more videos than she can likely manage.
As Christmas is approaching, Hayley tracks down something truly special via an internet seller, a Krampus Calendar. According to legend, this old wooden advent calendar is a way of access the world of the paranormal, and will allow the user to give their soul over to Krampus. Believing that this will help to make her internet famous, she buys the calendar and plans to use it; much to the dismay of her best friend, Charlie (Cian Lorcan). The calendar has some strict rules, each door must be opened at midnight, and the challenge within must be completed within twenty-four hours. Whilst some of the challenges seem simple and innocuous at first, such as circling your Christmas tree three times, or knocking on a window, they soon take on a darker tone, and it's clear that something is having a strange effect on Hayley.
Found footage movies are a common choice amongst low budget horror directors. You don't need much equipment, you don't need a big crew on set, if things look a little janky and unprofessional it adds to the amateur footage quality, and thanks to the advent of everyone having a camera on them it's incredibly believable that people would record strange events happening to them. Whilst there have been some truly great entries into the genre over the years there have been a lot that have left a lot to be desired thanks to how much easier they are to make, and people with little to no experience giving making a horror film a try. And whilst Advent will not be remembered amongst the ranks of films like The Blair Witch Project, Goniam Haunted Asylum, or Paranormal Activity, it manages to be entertaining enough that I never once felt truly bored; which is something I'd class as a big achievement in the found footage genre.
Writer and director Airell Anthony Hayles has managed to craft an interesting narrative in Advent, a film that blends together a sit down interview with Richard Hill (Nicholas Vince), someone who knew Hayley and has expertise on urban legends, and footage from Hayley's YouTube. The choice to blend together what's essentially the regular kind of found footage scenes with a more documentary style helps the movie quite a bit. It breaks up the scenes, allows a narrator to add context and background detail that would be hard to fit in naturally, such as the origin of the evil calendar and the fate of Hayley's mother, and it gives the movie an air of legitimacy. Many found footage films try set themselves up as evidence footage or lost tapes suddenly found, but Advent plays more like a low budget documentary show you might find on a small channel at 11pm, and it kind of really works that way.
Hayley's story, the main thrust of the film, is also very interesting as not a huge amount actually happens in terms of jump scares or frights. I had something of an expectation that as each door on the calendar opened we'd get mounting supernatural experiences, such as the ramping ghost activity in Paranormal Activity, but instead most of the film was a collection of videos where Hayley was showing each challenge and performing them with no apparent result. Instead, it's the overall event that generates the tension. Each challenge seems banal, even silly, but as they go on you start to see a physical and mental decline in Hayley that unnerves more than any shadow figures or loud bangs in the night would manage.
Hayley is a character that suffers, a lot. Her journey over the course of the film feels mostly normal at times, though there are enough weird things that happen that you question if there might be something supernatural at play. Because of this it feels eerily grounded, and the movie takes on this horrible voyeuristic feel where it's like we're watching someone have a terrible mental health crisis. You feel intrusive being there, that we shouldn't be seeing this, and the sense of realism that is brought to things gets under your skin.
Because of this, the film is a slow burn, and so may not be to everyone's tastes, but where most found footage films go for jumps and characters we're waiting to see killed off Advent feels like it's trying to be more of a character study, and so it offers something that will scratch a very different itch. That being said, there is a scene in the film that does a couple of supernatural switcheroo's that lead to a moment that I absolutely adored, and I feel was worth the price of admission alone.
Advent is an unusual film. It's sitting in a genre that has some very tried and true formulas but instead of going along with them is having a go at crafting something a little bit different. The performances from the cast are decent, with Rasina Alexander being of particular note thanks to how well she portrays her characters slow descent into horror. If you're not quite ready for the spooky season to be over and need something to get you ready for the incoming holiday season then Advent is definitely worth considering.
Advent is released on UK digital streaming platforms on 25th November.
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