Posted: 07/06/2010

The Shadow Within

by Sawyer J. Lahr

The Shadow Within stars Beth Winslet (Kate’s sister), a doting young doctor in a small French village during WWII. Every moment instills a fear that someone is lurking around every corner, behind the wall of the crickety old house where Maurice, a little boy possessed by the ghost of his angry twin brother, Jacque, who died in child birth. Maurice’s mother Marie Dumont played astutely by Hayley J. Williams wards off the only doctor in town who insists every child get vaccinated for Diptheria.

Lonely and superstitious women in the village join together under the presage of an experienced Christian medium. They use a seance-like event to reconnect with their children in the afterlife. Maurice is played by a stoic child actor, Laurence Belcher, who doesn’t show urgency or agony of being the only living son cursed by his mother for being the one who survived in place of Jacque. The mystery of Maurice’s dark eyes and the strange repulsion his mother has for him is introduced a little too soon, devoid of explanation until the last 20 minutes of the film.

Dark angular shadows shaped by cinematographer Pier Luigi Santi set a erie mood and zoom angles rush to emphasize suspenseful surprise. Distorted glass and crumbling walls of a home on the fringes of destitution and war poverty. The film’s strongest sequences are without dialogue.

The shadows that sprawl across walls and floors poised to attack the living are above-average low-budget special effects that look best in the darkest interiors but sometimes look cartoonish. The shadow monster that looks like an alien skeleton and kills the towns people is far from what one would think would come from a child strangled by his mother’s umbilical cord at birth. As grand finale, Marie is somehow strangled by her own umbilical cord so she can be with her son in death, a a sacrifice that fails to satisfy the demon disguised as her lost son.

The Shadow Within was released on DVD for purchase by MTI Home Video on May 25, 2010. See the trailer at http://www.mtivideo.com/TitleView.aspx?TITLE_ID=548

Sawyer J. Lahr is Chief Editor of the forthcoming online publication, Go Over the Rainbow. He also writes a monthly film column for Mindful Metropolis, a conscious living magazine in Chicago, IL.

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