Returning to the homeland is a perilous endeavour in Inrasothythep Neth and Sokyou Chea’s forbidding chiller, Tenement.
Using entwined notions of person and political history as a jumping-off point, this smart Cambodian horror creates a world in which time has not only failed to heal wounds but through which the spectres of those who have been wronged exact something like revenge on the living. The original Khmer title translates as The Heir to the Building, which gives some sense of the generational haunting at play, in a film that is less interesting in unravelling a mystery as it is in spinning a terrifying web.
Soriya (Thanet Thorn) is a manga artist who lives and works in Japan with her photographer boyfriend, Diachi (Hosoda Yoshihiko). After the death of Soriya’s mother, the pair find an old photograph with an inscription suggesting Soriya has relatives living in Phnom Penh, despite her mother having maintained that none of their family had survived the genocide of the Khmer Rouge period (1975-9). When they learn the apartment building in the photograph – the Metta building – still stands, they decide to travel to Cambodia – both to search for creative inspiration in Soriya’s ancestral home and to see if she still has relations in the area.
Through the aid of a helpful agent who lives in Metta, they manage to not only secure an apartment in the now somewhat derelict complex but also to be reunited with Soriya’s aunt, Mao (Socheata Sveng) who is thrilled to finally meet her niece and insists on taking care of them during their stay. All is not as it initially seems in Metta, however, and what begins as Soriya having unnerving dreams eventually gives way to a cult encompassing the residents of the housing block and a mysterious ritual as part of which they seem to have identified Soriya as the next vessel for some interminable, dark spirit.
For the audience, the writing is on the wall from early on, with the trope of an apparently unrelated pre-titles sequence introducing them to the idea of whispering and malevolent spirits inhabiting the building. Equally familiar is the pained expression of warning that crosses the face of the taxi driver when he realises that he is taking Soriya and Daichi to stay in Metta. He attempts to ask them if they’ve heard the rumours of strange goings on there but is abruptly cut off by the agent who manages to make his brief cameo sing with the grinning malevolence of the young men in Michael Haneke’s Funny Games. As he leads the young couple along the semi-ruined balconies of the tenement, the camera swings around to reveal the other residents all staring from outside their apartments in unsettling silence.
These elements serve the filmmakers incredibly well in allowing them to craft a palpable sense of unease without going too hard and fast into the typical beats of an out-an-out horror film. What is perhaps most interesting about this is that while the overt peril and panic absolutely ramp up during the film’s second half, they do so in a very matter-of-fact way that is less about a classic cycle of rising tension and release, and more about the gradual and unwavering ratcheting of the anxiety. A blow-by-blow account of what happens might suggest the film lurches very suddenly from slow-building dread to crazed horror, but Neth and Chea are interested in a very different type of sensation and it is one that heightens the impact.
This is perhaps partly a result of a fantastic setting for the film, the rundown apartment complex that ranges from shabby but inhabited apartments to crumbling corridors and ominous locked cupboards used for cruel punishments. It is a location through which ghosts seem destined to wander whether it was being used in a horror film or not. However, the directors – who also wrote the screenplay – were clearly keen to avoid leaning too heavily into specifics of Khmer Rouge history or even that of Soriya’s family. Instead, there are glimpses – supernatural and otherwise – that hint at things and have an eerie accumulating effect. For some, this might feel a bit woolly there are moments in which the lack of clarifying disclosure might be frustrating, but in fact, the ambiguity works utterly in the film’s favour. Instead of being beholden to factual revelations, instead, the film submits to the overwhelming horror of its atmosphere. Here a dark past has seeped into the bones of the structure and the souls of the people, and while a reckoning may be necessary, there is no guarantee that it offers catharsis.
Directors, screenplay: Inrasothythep Neth, Sokyou Chea
Cast: Thanet Thorn, Hosoda Yoshihiko, Socheata Sveng, Mony Rous, Maiguma Katsuya
Producer, editing: Loy Te
Cinematography: Jeremiah Overman
Music: Jean-Charles Bastion
Sound design: Vincent Villa
Production design: Jean-Sien Kin
Production company: Kongchak Pictures Ltd. (Cambodia)
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Big Screen Competition)
In Khmer, Japanese, English
88 minutes