Pennsylvania gets more eerier than ever in the superb spooky feature The Veil, written and directed by Cameron Beyl. Back in 1977, a young man named Douglas (Will Tranfo) was driving through the back roads of a heavily wooded area. He marvels at the night sky, which is bathed in dancing green lights from the aurora borealis. As he is crossing an old covered bridge, a terrified woman in Amish garb (Rebekah Kennedy) leaps out in front of him. She begs Douglas to take her with him as someone is coming after her. For a brief moment, Douglas sees the Amish woman’s face distort into an inhuman snarl with jet-black eyes. He takes off alone in his car, leaving the Amish woman to her fate.
“On the doorstep is a terrified Amish woman who says she isn’t in the right place.”
Many decades later, Father Douglas (Sean O’Bryan) is giving the last rites to a dying elderly woman (Carol Chromicky) while her daughter, Gloria (Kathy Becker), sits by her side. Comforted by the priest’s demeanor, Gloria asks Father Douglas if he would reconsider retiring, but he feels too old for the job. Douglas lives alone in his old house out in the woods, acres away from anyone. One night, the sky is filled with the same green glow as the Aurora Borealis, like the night so many years ago. All the power in Douglas’s house goes out, and his phone stops working. He then hears a knocking. On the doorstep is a terrified Amish woman who says she isn’t in the right place. Douglas tries to help the woman, who says her name is Hannah, as she is bruised and bleeding. When Douglas tries to light a candle, Hannah blows it out for fear of being found.
One of H.P. Lovecraft’s favorite ghost stories was The Willows by Algernon Blackwood. It is a seemingly understated horror tale where the overt menace is unseen, while the underlying dread generated is vast and overwhelming. While Lovecraft appreciated Blackwood’s horror methods and later developed them further himself, the importance of the setting of The Willows needs to be appreciated as to how perfectly it captures the horror. The waving reeds in the darkness with the small holes opening in the sand are the kind of place that is captured in art to be rediscovered again and again.
"…A paradox to be brain-blasting, ornate, and utterly satisfying in its impossibility."
