THE DESERVING (2024)

3 stars

The Horror Collective. Digital Download worldwide. 1st October

A house. A knock at the door “I’m Hanna. 11 o’clock”. She is there for a photoshoot. Karter (Venkat Sai Ganda) is a photographer. But he doesn’t speak. She gets frustrated as she can’t understand him. He starts to caress her. But then he is also at the camera taking pictures. She realises he is being inappropriate – he stabs and kills her with a pencil he has in his pocket. Which is probably not the best approach to client relations!

Interesting opening to an enigmatic horror story.

He lives alone in what appears to be a large house. Going about his daily life and business – developing his photos in his darkroom. He showers and dresses smartly. In the attic he has a chair set up with a noose. He is going to kill himself. But there is a frantic knock at the door as he is hanging in mid air.

Managing to get out of his suicide attempt he opens the door to Lucy Hill (Simone Stadler). She doesn’t have an appointment but has come a long way and desperately needs new headshots. She pleads with him and is clearly a fan of his work. But as he is setting up strange things happen. He sees a ghostly apparition sitting in the chair. Lucy asks to be shown round. He sees another spooky figure. Arranging Lucy for the shoot he is shocked again when she suddenly has an old face.

She seems keen to get to know this silent photographer over a cup of tea. She jabbers on, asking questions. She knows a lot about him – about his father and a disturbing history. He is enraged … but she is not there.

What is in hidden in his past? Does he kill his models or is it in his imagination? Why is he being haunted by these visions of dead people? Part way through we get flashbacks to his childhood which might go some way to explain his trauma. Have his victims come back to haunt him?

Ganda is good in the lead – the fact that he plays a mute character is an interesting wrinkle though not sure it adds anything to the effectiveness of the piece – except the fact he can’t scream for help. Effectively set inside the house, director K.S. Arora, in his feature debut, has made a quite successful haunted horror with some creepy apparitions to add to the chill factor. However, despite being only 75 minutes long it feels a bit like an expanded short.

Steve Kirkham