by Joel Harley
The home invasion thriller gets a shocking subversion in Raymond Wood’s Faceless After Dark. Jaded eyes may roll when a stalker in a clown mask turns up at the home of actress Bowie (Jenna Kanell, co-writing with Todd Jacobs), looking to re-enact the atrocities of her most famous movie. However, it quickly becomes apparent that Wood’s violent revenge fantasy has more on its mind than old slasher movie cliches and damsel-in-distress tropes.
And, after being tied up and abused all over the place in Terrifier, who better to unpack that legacy than Kanell? Playing a character who has herself risen to fame battling an edgelord horror clown, Kanell delivers a blistering performance, raging against the world and the creeps and abusers who reside within it. It’s a scream of fury, echoing Promising Young Woman and Brea Grant’s Lucky in its relevance and feminist energy.
Wood, Kanell and Jacobs channel this sense of fury into a deviously unpredictable work – one brimming with punk vigour and vinegar. Faceless After Dark is angry, and rightfully so.
Faceless After Dark had its world premiere at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 25th, 2023
