South Yorkshire’s foremost cinemagoer and West Street Live Annual Short Film Competition runner-up (2008), Matt Karmode casts his critical eye on the month’s new and noteworthy films.
For many, Christmas is a time for the acquisition and consumption of pointless tat; a cynical exploitation of the credulous and cretinous; an excuse for the world’s supply of morally bereft marketing executives to defecate bowlfuls of garishly lit festive-themed shite onto the eagerly awaiting grin-taut faces of overenthusiastic money-burdened c****. But not Netflix! No, Netflix are selflessly gifting cinematic gold; filmographic frankincense; moviemaking myrrh.
Lindsay Lohan is back! Not back from the dead like soon-to-be birthday boy Jesus H. Christ, but back from the depths of alcoholism, like my father never was. Lohan shines in Falling for Christmas, a festive-themed Hitchcockian thriller featuring hotel-owning psychosexual sadists, amnesia-stricken missing persons, skiing, Santa Claus, poaching, anthropomorphic racoons (briefly), two dead wives, two grieving husbands, and two motherless barely literate maladjusted children.
Picture the scene: it’s Christmas and you’re lying in a hospital bed with no recollection of who you are. A mysterious hotel owner offers to take you in while you recover, and then, despite your objections, and for reasons beyond any basic form of logic or common sense, the local Sheriff instructs you to do so, adding there’s also no point in filing a missing persons report because no one will be looking for you, something that is neither true or anywhere close to official police protocol. This is the nightmarish scenario awaiting Sierra Belmont (Lindsay Lohan), soon to be enslaved and manipulated by her disturbed captor Jake Russell, played by the hitherto unknown and bizarrely named Chord Overstreet. (No, really, that’s the actor’s name.)
The most striking thing about Falling for Christmas is its intricate study of human psychology. Not only does it invite us into the tortured mind of Overstreet’s Norman Bates-esque antagonist, but it lets us scrupulously over-observe the effects of his sickness on those around him. Above all we watch a victim fall hopelessly for her abuser, and it’s clear writers Jeff Oliver and Ron Bonnett and director Jameem Daniam are all well-researched on the phenomenon of Stockport Syndrome, a theorised condition in which kidnap victims side and even defend their captors, so called not because of its place of origin, as many incorrectly assume, but because of the Swedish psychiatrist behind the theory, Nils Bejerot Stockport.
Needless to say, falling is a prominent theme in Falling for Christmas, as highlighted beautifully in the title. We not only witness the literal fall of a young woman (down a snowy hill), but the woman then proverbially falls again, in love with a psychopath, at Christmas. The title works on two whole levels, adding an additional dimension to an already one-dimensional film. The result? A Christmas film to rival any existing favourite; a masterclass in two-dimensional filmmaking.
5 popcorns roasting on an open fire out of 5
