Review by Nik Mohan

Ten years after ‘The Love Witch,’ Anna Biller finally returns with ‘The Face of Horror,’ and unsurprisingly, it looks like almost nothing else being made today. Premiering at TIFF, Biller’s medieval ghost story is lavish, deliberately old-fashioned and frequently very funny, combining the heightened artificiality of classic Hollywood with something much darker underneath.

Set in 14th-century England and inspired by the Japanese ghost story ‘Yotsuya Kaidan,’ the film follows Edward (Jonah Hauer-King), a disgraced knight whose ambitions considerably outweigh his morals. After murdering a landowner, Edward marries his daughter Eleanor (Kristine Frøseth) and claims the estate for himself. But domestic life quickly loses its appeal when the wealthy Countess Isabel (Bella Heathcote) enters the picture, offering Edward an opportunity to climb even further up the social ladder. From there, betrayal, murder and eventually something supernatural begin to take over.

The first thing you notice is just how gorgeous the film looks. Biller isn’t simply borrowing imagery from old Technicolor productions and Hammer horror — she recreates their entire language. The saturated reds and greens, theatrical costumes, painted-looking environments and almost unnaturally pristine lighting make every frame feel like something pulled out of a forgotten studio movie from the 1950s. Even the performances and sound design occasionally have that slightly heightened, artificial quality associated with films of the period.

That commitment is both the movie’s greatest strength and probably what will divide audiences most. ‘The Face of Horror’ moves at the pace of the movies it is paying tribute to. At two hours, it can feel deliberately slow, particularly throughout its first half, and anyone expecting a conventional modern horror film may wonder when the actual horror is going to arrive. Biller is much more interested in building the world, relationships and absurdities of these characters before finally letting everything descend into madness.

Thankfully, the cast understands exactly what kind of movie they’re in. Hauer-King makes Edward wonderfully easy to dislike — vain, childish and constantly looking for whichever woman or opportunity can advance him next. Bella Heathcote is similarly entertaining as Isabel, delivering even the film’s more ridiculous dialogue with complete sincerity.

But Kristine Frøseth is easily the standout. Eleanor begins as almost an Old Hollywood archetype — innocent, romantic and desperate to hold onto her husband — before gradually becoming the emotional and eventually horrific centre of the film. Frøseth completely commits to Biller’s exaggerated style without turning Eleanor into a joke, and when the film finally allows her performance to become bigger, angrier and considerably more monstrous, she goes for it. The transformation is helped by some fantastic practical makeup and prosthetic work.

And underneath all the camp, Biller is saying something genuinely bleak about relationships. Edward’s treatment of Eleanor becomes increasingly cruel as her beauty fades and his ambitions grow, while Eleanor continues measuring her own worth through the affection of a man who clearly doesn’t deserve it. The film may look like an antique fantasy, but its ideas about insecurity, male entitlement and the pressure placed on women to remain desirable feel considerably more contemporary.

It won’t be for everyone. The pacing is patient, the performances intentionally theatrical and Biller’s commitment to recreating another era of filmmaking is so complete that viewers have to meet the movie on its own terms. But once The ‘Face of Horror’ reveals what it has been building towards, the combination of tragedy, comedy and grotesque horror becomes increasingly difficult to resist.

Beautiful to look at, wonderfully strange and anchored by a terrific Kristine Frøseth, ‘The Face of Horror’ is the kind of singular filmmaking we simply don’t get very often. Biller hasn’t made a horror film designed to scare you every five minutes. She’s made something much stranger: a movie that feels like it could have been discovered in a vault after seventy years — only with considerably more blood and anger underneath the surface.

Our score (out of 5 stars): ★★★★☆