Lord of TearsYou can forget about the past, but the past will make you remember. Lord of Tears is a psychological horror movie about an English teacher named James Findlay (Euan Douglas), who inherits a manor in the Scottish highlands from his mother, Flora (Nancy Joy Page), after she hangs herself. Paradoxically, Flora warns her son against returning to his childhood home, stating that it was responsible for causing a psychological break that gave him amnesia. Despite this, James (a.k.a. "Jamie") comes home and begins a quest to remember his past, only to rediscover horrors best left buried.
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James' stay at the manor occupies the majority of Lord of Tears, save for moments when he visits with--and experiences terrifying dreams about--his childhood friend, Allen (Jamie Scott Gordon), whose father, Michael (Neil Cooper), is hospitalized with an unspecified terminal condition. Upon arriving at the empty--yet surprisingly well maintained--estate, he meets a beautiful American woman named Eve "Evie" Turner (Lexy Hulme), who is reading a book on his front porch. James almost doesn't notice her at first, but is visibly smitten from the start. She tells him that she's been staying in the converted stables on the property, although James doesn't press the point as to how or why this is the case. In fact, James seems overly accepting of the rampant weirdness that has made its home in his house. Pictures fall revealing keys to basements long sequestered away. He finds oblique clues comprised of numbers that resemble times of day recorded in hours and minutes, but struggles to truly understand what it is without Evie's help. There is a stilted yet inescapable connection between Evie and James--not wholly romantic, but charged with eroticism. Consider when she joins him in the manor's indoor pool for a swim, or performs a slow-motion dance for him with a lampshade. But the most overt weirdness is the manifestation of a creature with elongated talons and an owl's head--dubbed "Owlman" (David Schofield)--who lurks in Jamie visions, offering proclamations of ominous portent. Of course this creature resembles some childhood drawings Jamie once made before his amnesia, so some viewers might ask if the Owlman is merely another hallucination. Jamie doesn't doubt his sanity once the Owlman shows up, but rather accepts that the house is haunted and that it is his responsibility to discover just what secrets were kept from him implied by this supernatural being. Strange details foreshadow future revelations, like Evie's fear of being submerged after she and Jamie play in the pool, or how she deflects questions about why she is even staying at the house in the first place. In a similar movie, the Owlman would be a figure who was trying to lead the protagonist to some kind of understanding or knowledge about his circumstances, but in Lord of Tears, he is mostly a figure that taunts Jamie during his stay.
Jaime himself is a largely ineffectual and even helpless main character, operating in a mostly passive way from moment to moment. When the will is read to him by the solicitor (Alan Ireby), he has nary a thing to say or any kind of strong response to being informed of his mother's death or of being made the executor of her estate. His teaching of John Keats in school isn't terribly inspired, and he fails to meaningfully address a question one of his students makes about whether it would be better to be immortal or not. As Jamie uncovers the terrible secrets of his home, he continuously crumples into a tearful mess, struggling to maintain his composure when faced with the truth. Even compared to Evie, who exudes charisma and charm, he seems to fade into the background when they are together. Jaime may be a realistic protagonist, but he is a deliberately uninteresting one, like a child or a blank slate, not yet fully formed or stuck in a state of arrested development. Lord of Tears resembles a vintage Seventies psychological horror movie in its lo-fi horror aesthetic, but the film doesn't fully commit to any one distinct era, with noticeable anachronisms like an HDTV in his room. This makes questions about the absence of other contemporary technology--like cell phones--more evident, and invites questions about why Jamie wouldn't take advantage of these modern conveniences before moving into a creepy old house that is quickly revealed to be haunted. The only potential answer that springs to mind is that Jamie accepts that whatever horrors may lay dormant within his subconscious, reaching out to others for guidance will not serve him as well as just facing his own demons head on. Regrettably, Jamie isn't ready for such a responsibility.
Recommended for: Fans of a low budget horror movie from Scotland that plays with a full batch of familiar genre cliches--from ghosts and pagan rituals, to mysterious happenings in a haunted manor in the middle of nowhere. Despite terrifying content like bloody sacrifices and uninvited specters, Lord of Tears is a largely inoffensive horror movie, with little to no objectionable content for audiences concerned with such things.
Jaime himself is a largely ineffectual and even helpless main character, operating in a mostly passive way from moment to moment. When the will is read to him by the solicitor (Alan Ireby), he has nary a thing to say or any kind of strong response to being informed of his mother's death or of being made the executor of her estate. His teaching of John Keats in school isn't terribly inspired, and he fails to meaningfully address a question one of his students makes about whether it would be better to be immortal or not. As Jamie uncovers the terrible secrets of his home, he continuously crumples into a tearful mess, struggling to maintain his composure when faced with the truth. Even compared to Evie, who exudes charisma and charm, he seems to fade into the background when they are together. Jaime may be a realistic protagonist, but he is a deliberately uninteresting one, like a child or a blank slate, not yet fully formed or stuck in a state of arrested development. Lord of Tears resembles a vintage Seventies psychological horror movie in its lo-fi horror aesthetic, but the film doesn't fully commit to any one distinct era, with noticeable anachronisms like an HDTV in his room. This makes questions about the absence of other contemporary technology--like cell phones--more evident, and invites questions about why Jamie wouldn't take advantage of these modern conveniences before moving into a creepy old house that is quickly revealed to be haunted. The only potential answer that springs to mind is that Jamie accepts that whatever horrors may lay dormant within his subconscious, reaching out to others for guidance will not serve him as well as just facing his own demons head on. Regrettably, Jamie isn't ready for such a responsibility.
Recommended for: Fans of a low budget horror movie from Scotland that plays with a full batch of familiar genre cliches--from ghosts and pagan rituals, to mysterious happenings in a haunted manor in the middle of nowhere. Despite terrifying content like bloody sacrifices and uninvited specters, Lord of Tears is a largely inoffensive horror movie, with little to no objectionable content for audiences concerned with such things.