Frightfest Glasgow 2023: ‘Pensive’ Review
Stars: Šarūnas Rapolas Meiliešius, Gabija Bargailaitė, Marius Repšys | Written by Jonas Trukanas, Titas Laucius | Directed by Jonas Trukanas
Wooden sculptures of the Pensive Christ can be found in the weirdest spots all through the Baltic States. They combine folk art and Christian traditions into a singular entity concerning the fear of being judged. And that’s what is about to happen to the usually risk-averse Marius as he organises the venue for his wild high school graduation party at a remote cottage. For his drunken and drugged classmates destroy some life-size wooden statues and almost immediately a scarred, masked and mysterious killer starts picking them off one by mutilated one.
A typical kids go to the woods to party and get killed one by one is given a wrinkle in the stereotypical story, with a hero who is anything but. He is a bland, boring character with no purpose in life… So bland is he that his friends surmise he’s not even visible to the psychopath who’s stalking them! So what’s such a nonchalant “hero” to do? Not be the hero?!
Essentially playing with the cliches of the slasher genre, whilst also conforming to said cliches to deliver on the gore and grisly action you’d expect from a slasher movie (unfortunately compete with off-screen kills though those do lead to some grisly discovers for our cast of survivors), Pensive is an intriguing prospect for genre fans who think they’ve seen it all, with the lines between hero and villain completely blurred come the film’s conclusion. Speaking of which…
A Lithuanian slasher movie is, in itself, something of a rare breed but to then subvert the idea of the final girl, not only making it a final boy but also having said boy be, ultimately, so unlikeable was a refreshing change. It’s just a shame that the rest of the film was so cliched. The film does redeem itself somewhat at the denouement as our hero finally finds a personality – the heroic survivor of a massacre – but Pensive is missing just that little extra something that would’ve made it truly great.
**½ 2.5/5
Pensive screened on Friday, March 10th as part of this year’s Glasgow Frightfest.
