The First: Debut Work Mixing Atmospheric and Body Horror

Debut filmmaker Susan Ruth’s The First is a 15-minute sensuous horror where being turned on, or really feeling anything at all, feels dangerous. One senses the need to stay very still or risk earning the wrath of the mysterious woman at the heart of the story. 

The film is set in the 1920s. The old ways are on the way out, but in the meanwhile, they have seemingly all congregated in a shadowy parlour where young Michael (Ethan Carlos Cameron) awaits an appointment whose details are not clear even to him. The room is shrouded in darkness, its secrets alluring, and maybe just a little frightening. The many big men (and two equal women), with all their accoutrements of prestige and power, give as much hint of potency as reason to be afraid. On the face of it, it feels that the neat thing about it is that Michael is a man, accompanied by his father (Jamieson Rhyme), and thus seems less likely to be, let’s say, consumed whole or mutilated into parts. But let’s not rest easy yet.

When he is finally escorted upstairs, two or three things come to the forefront. First, the film accords sensuous emphasis on detail—a lightswitch, a hand wrapped around the chair’s backrest, a metal lion atop a walking stick. Surely a generous budget is likely behind the luxury, especially when it is a period piece, and the film has made good use of it. The handheld, lingering camerawork allows the shadowy lighting to bathe everything in an invitation to get comfortable, even lounge.  But of course, there is the just barely discernible shape of a person on the bed, and the softly commanding voice emanating from her. The music turns deliberately anachronistic.

Confronted with this unnamed woman (Tiffany Cornwell), Michael has little to fall back on.   Cameron has worked out the character with layers. Michael has the nervous manner of someone trying to tamp down dread, and covering inexperience with politeness along the way. There is a little of Darren Arronofsky’s mother! to the film, and She is portrayed in the vein of Carla Gugino’s non-human Verna, but with a smidge more malice and air of threat. The suspense builds beautifully, leading almost unannounced to rather blood curdling horror, but without nearly as much of the customary blood involved. Somehow that makes it worse. 

Gruesome does not quite cover the tone of the scene, though it is a quality contender. It is macabre. It evokes terror in the way a deranged mother evokes terror. But Cornwell makes it impossible to look away. She asks, “Do you understand?” He replies, choking on some undefined emotion, “I understand.” Well, it is not certain the viewer does, but they may be a little too petrified for a while to start asking questions yet. 

The final shot answers everything with imperious silence. Sensuous and unsettling to the end, The First comes into its own after a somewhat weak, though well constructed, opening. An impressive work of horror that knows how to cast a spell.