The Caretaker

A mute man with a troubled past takes a job as a caretaker at an out of the way private school, where ghosts roam the halls and the history of the family owners haunts the school grounds.

Eddie (Probert) has just lost his mum to cancer. He was devoted to her all the way through to the end, despite her being the most horrifically evil witch, but now he’s lost everything including the family home, and he has nowhere to live. Luckily, he gets offered some work at a coastal private school, where he will be The Caretaker, a job that comes with room and board, and therefore seems like the perfect answer to all of his problems. It doesn’t take too long, however, for the skeletons to start emerging from the closets of the Aberdeen family, the generational dynasty who own and run the school.

Charles Aberdeen II (Pearson) is the elder statesman Principal who rules with an iron fist, but it is his son and presumed heir, Charles Aberdeen III (Hume), who really runs the show from the Deputy Head position, imposing his smarmy, class-entitled, condescending manner on those whom he oversees. Together they lord it over Lockbridge Academy, sitting in suitably mahoganied offices with pictures and family trees of their ancestors adorning the walls. Along with these two paragons of pedagogy, there is also the half-crazed black-sheep daughter, Lisa (Shotton), knocking around posing as an art teacher, as well as American incomer, Marie (Larsen), who has been hired as a cleaner and who also lives on-site.

Mute Eddie and Marie strike up an unlikely friendship in the empty hallways and classrooms of the Academy, as school is out for the summer. Mostly working in separate parts of the grounds, they come together out of hours, at lunchbreaks and later on at night, as they both search for solace amongst their privileged surroundings. As their relationship develops, strange events keep happening around them, with the Aberdeens haunting their every move alongside other, more supernatural residents. The case of missing pupil, Holly Mansford, keeps rearing its ugly head, as does the mysterious end of Eddie’s predecessor, who was found drowned in the pool after a particularly frightening night.

All of these events keep circling around the already traumatised Eddie, as he carries out his duties as The Caretaker of Lockbridge Academy, and despite his quiet, timid demeanour he settles his resolve on getting to the bottom of some of the things he’s been seeing in the darkened corners of the building and its grounds. This obviously affords writer/director/cinematographer Luke Tedder with plenty of opportunity for flickering lights, enigmatic figures at the end of long hallways, and jump scares from emerging ghosts, but mostly he eschews the regular hum-drum of horror for a long slow burn that gradually builds towards its raging climax. The obvious horror tropes are there to lay the groundwork, but there’s a much deeper, personal characterisation of fear at work underneath, which helps Tedder to build a far more nuanced and affecting level to his story.

This is all helped, too, by an outstanding performance from lead, Ben Probert as Eddie. He is supported greatly by all those whom he shares the screen with, as they inhabit and breathe life into their characters in a believable way, but it is Probert’s quiet strength and subtlety in his performance that really imbues The Caretaker with the heart and humanity it needs to carry its deep and affecting themes. With a raise of an eyebrow, or a scared, searching look, Probert communicates more than any words could have allowed, as he invites us to search his face for meaning and past trauma while Eddie traverses his troubles. His heartfelt scribblings, emotional signings, and charged statement cards, are all used sparingly enough to imbue them with real significance, and when paired with Probert’s understated characterisation, everything takes on a deep level of engagement which encourages the audience to pay even more close attention.

The narrative is carefully constructed by Tedder, from start to finish, to take the time to unravel all of the threads of the story that surround Eddie and the school. Each piece is given its time to emerge, be followed, and come to fruition, whilst the other narrative strands work their way around each other. In this way Tedder creates the long, slow, build of tension needed to keep the audience engaged all the way through the one-hundred and ten minutes, and allows the slower parts of the movie to exist without throwing off the pace of the entire production. The fact that Tedder has written, filmed, and edited this film mostly off his own back is a testament to the vision he has had for The Caretaker and the care he wished to instil in its creation. His commitment to that vision is one that has paid off immensely, as each little detail, and perfectly fit piece of the puzzle, adds to the overall completeness of the film.

While there are obvious comparisons to be made between The Caretaker and The Shining (1980), Tedder is careful not to make that all there is to the film. In fact, there are far more references to many other films in there, such as Hereditary (2018), Inland Empire (2006), Spider (2002), and even Denethor’s relationship to Faramir in The Return Of The King (2003), that impact the story to a greater degree, that it would be churlish to use The Shining as the main marker. What Tedder has created is one-hundred percent its own film and should be approached with fresh eyes as well as an open mind in order to appreciate it fully. The Caretaker is that rare thing: an independent movie which never feels limited by its budget or its production, as it transcends all considerations to become something true and original in its own right.