LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2024 REVIEW! The short experimental film Hexham Heads by Mattijs Driesen and Chloë Delanghe relates the supposedly true story of a bizarre archaeological discovery in the north of England in 1972. Two young brothers playing in their garden dug up a pair of tiny stone heads, immediately after which they and their neighbors were plagued by occult visitations from a spectral werewolf and a half-man, half-goat chimera. There was also allegedly some poltergeistery with flying bottles.
Perhaps tellingly, nearly seventy years before this story, a wolf escaped from a local zoo in Hexham, causing a sensation until everyone just kind of forgot about it. This suggests that this local legend was being remembered on some level. I add this detail even though it is not in the film.
Stylistically, this is bewitchingly primitive, using everyday locations mainly captured in photographs or still video. The best sequence – referenced in all the promotional imagery – is a lo-fi, photographic ascent of some stairs. Now, I have photographed my own stairs to capture my half-witted tuxedo cat peeping through the banisters, but evidently, I should have tried harder. Hexham Heads does the same thing, catless, and it is surprisingly scary. The slow climb uses exquisite photography (Delanghe), terrifying sound (Driesen), and perfect pace to form the fabric of the nightmare.
“…two young brothers…dug up a pair of tiny stone heads…plagued by occult visitations…”
This film is sufficiently minimalist that its experimental form occasionally dashes against a slideshow’s inertia. But that’s O.K. Chris Marker’s slideshow took things to the next level with his similarly shaped genre piece from the sixties, La Jetée, and happily, I started to hold Hexham Heads in similar regard. It places many weird elements of the legend, plus a pleasant little twist, into a refined and thoughtful trickle of fear.
It’s not all golden. The anonymous female narration (by Driesen) lacks energy. This deserved and would have got better narration with more effort and time. But, the film had me, just about. It is clever and tidy.
As for the heads, they dematerialized from the news much like that (never caught) wolf. The word is they were given to ‘someone’ who was never heard of again.
This is the same region of northeast England where the legend of the ‘Monkey Hangers’ took root, a patently fake folk story that held that the locals in nearby Hartlepool had hanged a monkey washed up on the beach from a French ship as a spy during the Napoleonic wars. Hexham made it last year onto a list of Britain’s best places to live, so I hope they appreciate this Belgian film about their wonky legend and that it feels to them more like folk horror than terrace chant.
Hexham Heads is screening at the London Film Festival.
"…a lo-fi, photographic ascent of some stairs...surprisingly scary."
