Grace returns to the small town she grew up in to settle her father’s estate. She learns that her brother, David, has gone missing. In fact, a lot of people from this small town are also missing. There is rumour that David was going to a commune deep into the mountains. No one knows exactly where it is, but one of Grace’s former teachers Mr. Green might. She follows this lead which takes them deep into the Australian wilderness. Together they venture out into the forest, unsure of what they will find out there.
UK ex-pat and Australian transplant Joseph Sims-Dennett (Bad Behaviour, Observance) is back with their third film, Baal, a mystery horror flick shot in and around the Blue Mountains in the state of New South Wales, Australia. The lush, green foliage of the forest is a definite contradiction to what anyone outside of the country thinks it's like. We can pretty much guarantee that if you ask anyone who has never been to the country what they think of when you say ‘Australian wilderness’ their thoughts will be of the harsh, desert landscape that is the outback. Hey, don’t blame us. This is what we’ve been fed by popular media over the years - the entire middle of the country is sand and rock, and hosts any number of animals and deranged characters that want to murder you.
So, the wide open expanse of the outback is replaced by the confined spacing of mountains, trees and other flora. This greatly lends to the sense of mystery, where you cannot tell where each and every sound has come from and direct line of sight is obscured by trunks of trees. The absence of light - a flashlight beam piercing pitch darkness - and the presence of sound - twigs snapping underfoot - heighten the fear factor. Sound is expertly used again towards the end in a particularly gnarly moment.
No sooner is Grace left alone to fend for herself and the mystery deepens when she connects by radio to another lost person in the wilderness. Is it another hiker? Is it a park ranger? Are they both searching for the same place? There is safety in numbers though so she sets out to find this other person. Then it's off to find her brother.
Baal is pretty good. It’s genuinely creepy and we could feel the tension brewing in our chests at times, specifically during scenes set in the pitch black of night, waiting for stunt scares that thankfully didn’t come. See what populist horror cinema has done to us? To Sims-Dennett’s credit they do not rely on those to give their film that scary edge. Movies like Trevor Juras’ The Interior or Bobcat Goldthwait’s Willow Creek came to mind when reflecting on Baal’s lost in the woods creep factor.
Creepiness gives way to escalation as Grace nears her objective. Will she find her brother? If so, what kind of state will he be in? Questions are answered, it would be rude to give them away. We will say that the mystery and creepiness give way to more horrific elements. Throughout history and world religions Baal has been a … diverse… maybe complicated figure. Through Western religion now we would come to know the deity as a demon, honoured with human sacrifices and barbecue (read actually as ‘fragrant meal offerings’). Baal was a bad, bad guy. We figure that it's under this worldview that the title draws its intentions. Not the barbecue, the other part.
The journey was great. The destination? It’s just (sigh) we have to address that ending. What was that? It felt like Sims-Dennett didn’t have enough confidence that they were going to pull it off so they went for broke, and kind of broke their own film. Any emotional effect that’s been made towards the end of the story was ruined when everything went off the rails. For no reason at all either.
Out of nowhere Sims-Dennett concludes their story with something we can only describe as an experimental exclamation mark. It’s a cacophony of images, of everything related to Grace, David, their family and friends. Some of it was horrific. Some of it was, ethereal? There didn’t appear to be enough emotional toil in Grace’s journey for this to be some kind of psychological break. Whatever it was it really came out of left field and was disruptive to the whole vibe that the film has set from the start.
It’s too bad. Baal was good up to that point, then just a wack of, ‘What the hell?’.