The Disappeared (in person: Johnny Kevorkian, Neil Murphy)

Johnny Kevorkian: The Disappeared (GB 2008).

GB © 2008 Lost Tribe Productions / Minds Eye Productions. 

    D: Johnny Kevorkian. SC: Johnny Kevorkian, Neil Murphy. DP: Diego Rodriguez. M: Christoph Bauschinger. DP: Diego Rodriguez - digital intermediate - 35 mm print 1:1,85. 

    Starring Harry Treadaway (Matthew Ryan), Greg Wise (Jake Ryan), Alex Jennings (Adrian Ballan), Finlay Robertson (Jason Saks), Nikki Amuka-Bird (Shelley Cartwright), Ros Leeming (Amy Tyler). 

    96 min

    A Jinga Films print without subtitles. 

    In person: Kevorkian and Murphy.

    Viewed at Espoo Ciné, Prix Méliès series, Cinema Andorra, Helsinki, 20 August 2008.

Naturalistic, bleak, cold visual look.

    A realistic-looking supernatural horror film, where the ghosts are guides to a true crime (serial child abuse and murder by the man supposedly working for the church).

    Most importantly, this is a film about losing one's mental balance. Matthew's psychic health is threatened as he receives strange, ghostly signs of his disappeared little brother.

    The London milieu is naturalistically portrayed.

    The film treads on the line between reality and nightmare.

    The main guides (Amy, Shelley) turn out to be ghosts of the dead.

    The nightmare of being buried alive.

    The man working for the church talks about lost beliefs, lost faith.

    The final vault of the abused and dead children brings to mind the cases in Belgium and Austria. And the scandals of the Catholic church.