Editor’s Note: Be sure to check out our Independent Film Festival Boston coverage, from this year to past festivals.
I’m cognizant of the fact that “it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey” is an absurdly overused cliche, but there are few other concise ways to describe why exactly I enjoyed Ted Geoghegan’s Brooklyn 45 so much. There’s an extensive list of quibbles one could have with the film — period horror and low budgets often fight each other to the death, and the single-room nature of the haunting in question can give it a stage-like quality at times — but they’re vastly outweighed by the sum of its best parts: A well-written story with solid fundamentals in pacing and dialogue and a strong ensemble. Add them together, and you get a compelling little chamber drama about survivor’s guilt and the long-lasting stains of wartime transgressions on one’s conscience, with some fun paranormal trappings acting as the icing.
It’s a winter night in New York, snow peppering the windshields of Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs as families make their way to freshly-resumed holiday gatherings, made doubly meaningful by the fact that the War’s finally over. As you might have guessed from the title, this is Brooklyn, 1945, and a group of old war buddies are coming together to comfort their old pal Hawk (Larry Fessenden, reminding us why he’s the most underrated genre asset in the business) in a time of crisis: his wife has recently died under suspicious circumstances. There’s Paul (Ezra Buzzington), a tough-talking major who served as Hawk’s right-hand man, Archie (Jeremy Holm), who is sunny despite a pending trial for war crimes, and Marla (Anne Ramsey), who was one of the OSS’s best interrogators before a bombing took her out of the field and put her behind a desk at the Pentagon. That’s where she met her husband, Bob (Ron E. Rains), who rode out the war in Washington as a paper-pusher, and who draws the ire of almost every single person in the room for his “cowardice.” Hawk’s not as despondent as it might seem — it helps that he’s practically pickled in scotch – but he wants his friends to help him in one major way.
See, after his wife’s death, Hawk rejected the Christian faith of his childhood (there’s no way his wife could be headed for eternal damnation) and atheism (there’s no way she’s just worm food), and began a long journey into the occult and magical realms. So, he wants these grizzled veterans (and Bob) to help him contact his wife’s spirit through a seance. Everyone thinks it’s hooey, and a few outright tell him so, but he manages to wring enough pity out of the group that they just decide to do it to shut him up. What’s the worst that could happen? Well, making contact with the other side, that’s what. I’d say more, but it’s funner for you to have as many of the surprises unspoiled, much like I did.
As much as I would have loved for Geogheghan to go full Good German, with its absurd levels of technological and aesthetic fidelity to the era’s style, what’s here isn’t bad. As a modern riff on Lewis Allen and Jacques Tourneur, (who dealt with similar limitations while making films that were, of course, set in their contemporary times) Brooklyn 45 retains as much of their essence as possible while taking advantage of technological innovation (say, cameras that are significantly easier to move) and the loosening of on-screen censorship. In fact, that atmosphere is so well-preserved that the first glimpses of gore come as a visceral shock, given how conditioned we are to the comparative mildness of Hays-era horror. But Geoheghan never loses himself in the weeds of deconstruction and holds the film together tonally up until he writes himself into a corner in the final minutes. The ending is unsatisfying and abrupt, but it doesn’t dishonor all of the good work that comes before, even if it keeps it from, perhaps, shining as brightly as it might have otherwise.
Brooklyn 45 will exist as the kind of late-night delight that folks will stumble across on Shudder, and most will have a fabulous time with it. And perhaps they’ll resort to a similar cliche in recommending it to pals, because sometimes those axioms are right.