“The Dreadful Place” Knows the Real Terror is in the Mind
In recent years, horror has been a vehicle for directors and writers to process grief and loss. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there is more to ghosts, ghouls, and nightmares than putting a little fear into the heart of the audience. In Cole Daniel Hills’ The Dreadful Place, we are all trapped in a circuitous bad dream of loss. Some death is easier to handle, like when it comes at the end of a long, full, and happy life. The death at the center of The Dreadful Place is filled with emotions not as easy to parse, which makes for something thorny, messy, and hopeful.
courtesy of “The Dreadful Place”
Six years ago, Willow (Keaton McLachlan) lost her father (Matt Fling) in a tragic car accident. In the time since, Willow has not fully processed her father’s death. While he was a famous classical musician beloved by a specific community, at home it was a different story. He was an alcoholic who wasn’t as present in Willow’s life as he should have been as a father. Because of his untimely death, Willow’s own life feels stagnant. Her best friend from childhood (Abigail Fawn) is getting married, while Willow is alone, working a dead-end diner job. As the anniversary of her father’s death looms, she finds herself trapped in a psychological, surrealist nightmare she can’t wake up from.
There’s a certain trope in horror movies where dreams are a stand-in for actual plot development. Or they’re an excuse for a filmmaker to add in jumpscares that are explained away by the fact that everything was all a figment of a character’s imagination. In the case of The Dreadful Place, fantasy and reality do because impossibly entangled. Sections of the film raise more questions than they answer, but The Dreadful Place does ultimately stick its landing. The chaos is serving a deeper purpose.
courtesy of “The Dreadful Place”
Most of The Dreadful Place takes place within the mind of Willow. Her fears, anxieties, and hopes, conscious and subconscious, are swirling around, mixing together in odd ways that make sense only in a hazy, just-waking-up sort of way. While not as surreal as something from David Lynch, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that he was a favorite filmmaker of writer/director Daniel Hills. However, you don’t need to read a thinkpiece to see what Hills is doing, because the film’s nightmare is guided by a bizarre interview. Willow imagines she’s on a fictitious program where she’s being questioned about the death of her father. The interview is carefully constructed to allow Willow to essentially interrogate herself without inhibition. From here, The Dreadful Place can explore the complex emotions about losing someone who raised you, disappointed you, and who you still miss, despite everything.
Unlike other films that primarily exist within the confines of a character’s mind, the goals of The Dreadful Place rest on the premise that what we’re seeing is something imagined. Willow is asleep in a greater sense of the word. She is letting life and people exist around her without interacting with them. The death of her father trapped her mentally in a dreadful place, and it’s up to her to be the one who wakes up. Loss is something that happens to all of us. We have no say when, where, or how we lose someone, but we do have choices in the aftermath. The Dreadful Place knows the extremes our brain can take us to, knows that we can ruin our own minds with rampant self-loathing, but that isn’t the extent of our capabilities. To wake up and live every day, The Dreadful Place says, is the bravest, hardest choice a person can make.
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