(For the Calgary Underground Film Festival 2022) Sometimes a film is more about the filmmaker than the film itself, which is to say that no matter the quality of the movie, it is the what the director does in telling it that leaves the greater impression. Such is the case for What Josiah Saw, the latest from Vincent Grashaw, a taut, moody thriller with some fine performances that breathes heavy a palpable terror thanks to Grashaw’s subtle and immersive direction.
We sense right away that not all is well on the Graham Farm, where the grizzled old Josiah (Robert Patrick), soured by drink, lives with his grown boy Thomas (Scott Haze), said not to be fully correct in the head. We learn from the town Assemblyman telling a pair of oil men looking to buy up the property that there is a past at that farm, some sure the homestead is haunted by the ghost of Josiah’s wife, she having hanged herself from the tree out front.
This sets up what looks to be another solid tale of American horror with the classic old house a stage for ghosts in the night to come carrying threats of terrible redemption. However, this is not entirely the case as the story suddenly, jarringly, cuts away right when we’re sure we know what’s coming, taking us to the story of Eli (Nick Stahl), another son of Josiah, deeply troubled and living in the desert, out of options, harassed by the law, falling into debt with the wrong people. Choice is no longer on the table.
Written by Robert Alan Dilts, What Josiah Saw is a curious mixed bag with a third chapter that makes things all the more complicated and not the least bit depressing, introducing us to Mary (Kelli Garner), Josiah’s daughter, not unlike the others, in a bad way. That’s the theme of course, these children each ruined by a past that has come seeking its toll. It’s not new of course, movies full of family dramas corrupted by things done wrong in years before, and Grashaw doesn’t shy away from a slew of horror standards, with plenty of dimly-lit rooms, scratchy strings, and a few well-time jump scares. However, it’s held together by a careful patience that easily outlasts these occasional dips into the obvious, allowing many scenes to play out at length in a kind of muted terror.
I suppose there’s a fable-like color to it all, at least I found myself working to see it that way, the journey of these siblings and the oddities they encounter steeped in metaphor perhaps. Questions abound if there is something sinister truly at play, even as Grashaw often delightfully goes out of his way to make it clear there is. From bumps in the night, to seizures in bed, to nightmares of ghastly mutilation, What Josiah Saw is a formidable challenge, especially as it peels back its last layers in the final act.
Credit goes to the cast, with Patrick a disheveled fright, Haze tempered and fragile, and Garner deeply scarred. Stahl perhaps comes away the most memorable, his performance raw and intimate. Yet it remains Grashaw’s steady hand that keeps this from teetering too far into the familiar, his balance of light and shadow, depth of field and even time itself aiding plenty in giving this its real staying power.