What's Your Poison?

A short folk horror film written and directed by Alice Dieli and starring Rachel Harrison, Ronnie Vigh, Dina Gronbeck and Matthew Steven-James, created as a student project and in collaboration with the School of Film and Television at Falmouth University.

The screenplay alternates between present time and a few centuries in the past and the protagonist is a witch named Nimue (Harrison). The scenes that take place in the past are set in the countryside, where Nimue performs sinister activities involving witchcraft, along with a man (Vigh) and a confrontation arises between them. The present events find Nimue working at a Rock'n'Roll cocktail bar, where she appears to be living a double life, disguising herself as a bartender, while secretly practising her witchcraft.

A dark story about witchcraft. The intriguing plot is one of the film's biggest strengths, with the dark atmosphere being another great plus. Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of occurrences involving witchcraft, some of which are Nimue preparing potions, working on dark magic in the woods with the strange and sinister man and the mise-en-scene contains quite a few elements to establish a sinister environment, including gore, magic potions, severed body parts hanging here and there and chanting. And the clothing in the period scenes deserves recognition and so do the creative lighting techniques.

A bit regarding the character played by Vigh. His performance is great as a menacing man, who is probably some sort of evil wizard with bad intentions. The only downside is that not much is revealed about him, which does not damage the viewing as keeping his identity mysterious makes him an even darker character, nevertheless, some information regarding who he is and his past might have made him even more interesting.

With her portrayal of Nimue, Harrison creates a character who is a survivor and appears to be alone in the world, an outsider. As the centuries have passed by (Nimue is a witch and therefore probably immortal), she has built a life for herself, where she discreetly uses her supernatural powers to affect people.

Perhaps most evidently, this short explores the occult and it does that very vividly. In order to look into other themes, it should be explained that in the film Nimue uses her magic to make a customer (Gronbeck) stand up to her partner (Steven-James), taking this under consideration, self-esteem is acknowledged. To a certain degree, this short also examines masculinity and men appear to be represented in negative ways, with Steven-James' character being obnoxious, inconsiderate and controlling and Vigh playing a murderous and treacherous man.

A rather ominous film that takes its dark subject matter rather seriously. The sinister atmosphere, the frightful scenes and the characters portrayed by Harrison and Vigh make this project a worthy addition to the horror genre.