The Shimian

Directed by James Peakman

2022

Bader Media Entertainment CIC

The Shimian is written and directed by James Peakman and after the success garnered from a recently made short film of the same name, the director and his production company have followed it up with an expanded horror feature.

The story this time follows a dysfunctional family who despite their struggles, decide to take a camping trip to the forest. Blake Hutchings plays Tony, a father who hopes the break could be a positive bonding experience. Along for the holiday is his wife-to-be Sarah (Ashlea Winfield) who is attempting to forge a closer relationship with Tony’s daughter.

She is played by Sophie Simmons (as Emma) and together with her schoolfriend Claire (Margot Lin), the foursome jump in a car together to leave suburbia and experience the mysteries of a countryside wood.

The film shows the young girls as friendly and jovial but during their road trip the car gets stuck in traffic and the group encourage each other to tell spooky stories.

From the outset, the film has great technical attributes in the cinematography. The wide-screen ratio adds a cinematic sheen whilst the use of high-quality drone shots serve both as a nod to The Shining as well as capture the family’s isolation as the group heads into the remote landscape.

The family eventually come to a hotel where they rest for the night before continuing their journey into the “Sleepless Forest” early the following day. With birds tweeting and bright sunlight on their backpacks, the family stroll into the woods hoping to find adventure. But will something find them first?

The acting in The Shimian is delivered excellently, with each cast member settling into their well-written roles easily. The father is a sceptic, arguing away the less believable aspects as normal conditions, whilst Sarah has a more mystical nature, open to more spiritual hobbies and the two girls have a believable and heartfelt bond.

But after telling more haunting tales around a campfire on their first evening, the family awake to find their belongings have moved around Blair Witch-style during the night. And with the appearance of a sinister gruff man in dishevelled clothes (Alex Butler as Mr Harding) the eeriness soon begins to increase. The addition of thunder and lightning provides the perfect backdrop for further girl-scares and creepy shenanigans.

The film tries to add chills with a number of horror tropes but its best attributes are the characters. Adding some depth with a father wanting to spend more time with his daughter and dealing with their fractured lives was actually more interesting to me than the monstrous actions that come in the final third.

We get jump scares with the mandatory musical sting (get used to that, you’ll hear it a lot), shaky cam, a boarded-up house for “safety”, a piano playing itself and a hooded fiend – most of which were solid horror staples but didn’t particularly build the tension an audience might expect. Slowly these by-the-numbers aspects wear off and a bit of measured silence could have gone a long way.

And although we get the obligatory flashlights (Blair Witch again), some of the end scenes seemed dark and we lose a sense of geography. This can make an audience unsure of who is where (and more importantly) who is near who – are they alone or just round the corner from each other?

That said, although the over-bearing score doesn’t always fit, I enjoyed the songs used on the soundtrack and again, the more restraint used in scenes, the better they seem to be.

The film has a good length – maybe a strange comment – but it neither feels too stretched in its story or beyond the budget for filming and maintaining overall cinematic quality.

By its conclusion, The Shimian’s horror elements run out of steam a little. However, the more we are shown of characters turning on each other and airing their personal problems and frustrations, the more intriguing I found it. What it does deliver though is a tightly edited script and narrative, shot very well on location with a hard-working ensemble cast.

It’s always a huge achievement to get a feature finished locally, and in the end the director uses The Shimian to serve up lots of great soulful character drama and some familiar frightful beats for horror genre fans.

★★★½

3.5/5

Michael Sales