Nerdly » Romford Horror Festival 2022: ‘Wyvern Hill’ Review

01st Mar2022

Romford Horror Festival 2022: ‘Wyvern Hill’ Review

by Phil Wheat

Stars: Pat Garrett, Ellie Jeffreys, Pete Bird, Ben Manning, Michael Coombes, Pable Raybould, Ayvianna Snow, Keith Temple, Oliver Robert Russell, Emily Lane, Katy Dalton, Lewis Booton | Written by Keith Temple | Directed by Jonathan Zaurin

From the opening shots of the film you know you’re in for something special with Wyvern Hill, as director Jonathan Zaurin gives us snippets of… something. Something sinister, something torturous, something evil, that’s happening to a handful of terrified people. That footage is intercut with newsreel talking about mysterious deaths and possibly Herefordshire’s first serial killer…

The film tells the story of Beth (a wonderful Pat Garrett), a mother in her sixties who is showing signs of early Alzheimer’s. Worried about her, her daughter Jess (Ellie Jeffreys) and son in law Connor (Pete Bird), try to find a way to help her. Together they purchase an old house on Wyvern Hill so that she can move in with them and be looked after. However, her symptoms and slow loss of reality render Beth unable to realise that something has moved in with her, observing her every move and preparing in the darkness of Wyvern Hill.

Wyvern Hill shares a lot in common with Scott Jeffrey’s Curse of Humpty Dumpty, both films exploring the impact of Alzheimer’s through the medium of horror. They also share a fascination with puppets… Jeffrey’s film had a Humpty Dumpty puppet that seemingly came to life, killing anyone in its path; whereas in Wyvern Hill we have Beth, whose deathly afraid of puppets – in particular the Punch and Judy variety – and we have a killer who it looks like is putting together his own macabre human-puppet show, stringing his victims up like marionettes. And in both cases whether any of either thing is happening for real, or it’s all in the minds of the Alzheimer-suffering protagonists is debatable.

Both films also share an almost soap-opera like look at everyday life too. With the in and outs of Beth’s daughter and son in law’s financial predicament, their personal relationship and the relationship they have with Beth juxtaposed with the grotesque nature of this film’s killer. A juxtaposition that is also marked by a stark difference in the film’s appearance – the bright “normality” mirrored by the neon-drenched colourscape of the murder, a colourscape that rivals the hues of Dario Argento’s Suspiria and Inferno. A mise-en-scene that marked out the evil of Argento’s film and does the same here, also with terrifying imagery that recalls the wildest of giallo. Wyvern Hill also has a remarkable fascination with dragons, in this case wyverns, that only adds to the macabre nature of the tale. Almost as if the film is comparing the dangerous actions of dragons in Welsh mythology with the actions of the killer in this film – as if death, torture and murder are ingrained in the very nature of this film’s “killer”.

Central to everything in Wyvern Hill however is Beth. Played brilliantly by actress Pat Garrett, Beth’s very character is in question throughout Wyvern Hill. She is seemingly suffering from the early stages of dementia, her mental state seemingly deteriorating. But is it really? We see her forget people. Places and situations. She hyper-focuses own things at other times. Then, at times, she seems aggressive, as if she’s angry at the world – perhaps angry that she losing mental cognisance. Then there’s her deceased husband Ken, played by the film’s writer Keith Temple, who Beth still sees lying next to him in bed, talks to him at night… Is he a figment of her imagination, her deteriorating mind? Or is he a demonic spirit, haunting Beth’s life? And that inherent fear of Punch and Judy, the product of a childhood dream in which Beth was chased by Punch… Was that more than a dream? Was that something… something other-worldy… coming for Beth? Is the breakdown of her mind now unleashing that evil into the real world?

Questions, questions, questions. It’s what keeps you watching Wyvern Hill with an attentive stare; what gets you truly involved in the story. You want to see this story reach its conclusion. You want to find out just what the hell is going on. Audiences will also stick around for Wyvern Hill‘s superb macabre visuals which, even when not focussing on death, are eerie and terrifying. Hell, just seeing the film’s “killer’ (if he or she exists) dancing around a room in a paper-mache Punch mask to a nursery-rhyme sounding, xylophone-style, musical track is enough to give anyone nightmares!

And that’s one of the key things about Wyvern Hill. How the film looks. Shot over 25 days on a low budget, Wyvern Hill looks stunning. The aforementioned use of colour; the juxtaposition in visual styles, as diametrically opposite as day and night; to the appearance of the “killer’; everything on show in this film belies its low-budget nature. The other key to the film’s success is Pat Garrett. Without her nuanced performance none of Wyvern Hill would work. At all. She runs through the gamut of emotions, at times strong and determined, at others weak and fearful – a reflection of dementia and the havoc it reeks on the mind. She plays the role of possible killer and final girl, a woman wise beyond her years and a woman becoming infantilised by Alzheimer’s, all at the same time. Watching Pat Garrett act in Wyvern Hill is like watching a master at work. Truly.

And thankfully scriptwriter Keith Temple and director Jonathan Zaurin don’t ever give us direct answers to the aforementioned gaggle of questions Wyvern Hill posits. Instead, the film leaves us asking a bigger question. What is it to lose one’s mind? Is it truly as terrifying as everything that plays out in Wyvern Hill?