BEYOND MAMUSHI (2025)

4 stars

Independent production. Playing Festivals

The film opens on what you assume is a happy scene – a woman, Kate (Corina Jayne), is flying a colourful kite in the park. It is soon obvious all is not as it seems – returning home, she looks apprehensive as she enters her house.

Cut to a flashback – arriving at the house excited to move in. Looking around she finds the business card of adult psychiatrist/medical psychotherapist Ama Mamushi. Her boyfriend Chris (Gary Cross) tells her to bin it and the books that were with it. Back in the present we see she still has the crumpled and creased card.

We soon learn the reason for her anxiety, as her controlling boyfriend angrily rips up her kite as she ignored him. She tries to make amends but he’s not interested, which upsets her and she needs her pill to calm down. But he teases her with it as he controls the dispensing of her medicine. It is clear she has some mental issues – no doubt brought on by the abuse she gets from her dickhead of a partner.

The next day – Kate has invited Mamushi, who used to live in the house, to come and talk to her. The distraught Kate begins to tell her about her relationship with Chris which has deteriorated since they moved into the house and she had to give up work.

Ama tells her she needs to remove the cause permanently – or he will emotionally destroy her. With that in mind she takes a large knife from her bag and tells Kate she should kill him on his birthday!

This a well acted and effective small scale psychological horror exploring domestic abuse. Director M W Daniels builds a sense of mood and tension as his script explores the possible fall out from having another half who mistreats you. There is a good twist and the ending is rather sad. Daniels also produced and created the music – and probably made the sandwiches as this a low budgeter. At just under 50 minutes it’s more like a TV episode in one of those anthology shows like ‘Thriller’ than a full fledged feature – one assumes this is a calling card to the industry.

Steve Kirkham