Five Hidden Gems From 2018

Easter’s coming up. What happens around Easter? Easter egg hunts? What happens to the eggs in Easter egg hunts? They’re hidden.

Here are five hidden gems from 2018.

(Nailed it)

Calibre

You will struggle to find a film from last year that matched the intensity found in Calibre. Marcus and Vaughn are two friends from the city who travel to the Scottish countryside for a weekend of hunting. However, the pair of them get caught up in a horrifying situation that wears the two of them down to the barebones of what we initially see them as. The script, penned by Matt Palmer, and two leads, Jack Lowden and Martin McCann, have a real understanding of Marcus and Vaughn so while the film takes them down a very dark path, the characters remain consistent to their core traits. Lowden portrays the nerves, eventually descending into paranoia, present in Vaughn solely in his eyes while McCann is capable of handling the explosive nature of Marcus.

It is primarily about friendship and what lengths you’ll go for each other, but Calibre also does a terrific job of encapsulating culture clashes. Like in Wicker Man, you get an immediate sense of discomfort as soon as the two main characters interact with the villagers through stony looks and piercing silences, and this is just ramped up when the brash outsiders disrupt the wholesome community. This element also adds another layer to the tension and paranoia when things truly go mad.

Thankfully, whoever decided to hide Calibre left it conveniently on Netflix.

Lean on Pete

Lean on Pete is about a boy called Charley, played by Charlie Plummer, who has a dreadful life and takes to looking after a rather rubbish race horse. Sounds quite nice, yeah? Fairly hopeful? Sadly not. Lean on Pete is a pretty miserable depiction of connection, loneliness and how quickly life can get away from you. It is also very good.

You see the lengths that people must go through when abandoned, both to survive and to connect, and it manages to merge the extreme focus on Charley with creating an expansive cast of characters. In an interview with ‘Seventh Row’, cinematographer Magnus Joenck said that they “had a rule that Charley should be in every frame of the film” which never lets the audience forget that it is his story and his journey, but the supporting cast provide another take on the film’s themes.

Lean on Pete is currently on Prime Video.

- CREDIT: IMDb -

Thoroughbreds

The way that Thoroughbreds takes you through its story is bizarre. The tone is very cold and dry, and the two leads are played rather deadpan by Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cook, but that is done in order to lull the audience before revealing shocking moments. In fact, some of its topics are incredibly dark yet writer-director Cory Finley preferred to shrug, or even laugh these off while making it clear to the audience that these themes are harrowing. Amanda, played by Cook, is an immensely troubled and broken being and there was a sense of conflict when Lily (Taylor-Joy) began to develop into becoming more assured, as it always had an undercurrent of melancholia due to her developing into something quite dangerous.

Thoroughbreds is on Sky Cinema.

Western

Despite being set in Bulgaria and spoken in Bulgarian and German, Western often feels like it’s speaking directly to English-speaking countries. It follows a group of German construction workers who have been assigned to working near a Bulgarian village, but said workers simply want to remain in their own wee bubble and avoid any interaction with the Bulgarians. Following one of the central conflicts – a failure to adapt to other cultures – can be difficult if you don’t speak Bulgarian and German, but when you realise that some are speaking different languages and characters within conversations don’t know what’s being said, things become a lot clearer and you begin to appreciate the intricate workings of the script.

The German workers in Western embody the film’s subject matters of xenophobia, exclusivity and toxic masculinity: they don’t want anything to do with the Bulgarian villagers, they make no effort to learn their language and they torment Meinhard who is the one that initiates interaction with the Bulgarians.

It’s a slow burn but there are interesting messages to be found throughout that are pertinent across the world. If that sounds like your kind of thing, you can find Western on Sky Cinema.

- CREDIT: IMDb -

The Wound

The Wound is a very intimate drama about a group of men undergoing an initiatory ritual in South Africa. While it is set in the sprawling mountains, you always get a sense that the characters have nowhere to turn and are trapped within the confines of their campsite and their minds. The cinematography often manages to portray them as compacted as possible in order to convey the claustrophobic nature of repressing your true self.

The film centres on a love triangle between three men on the trip, but what The Wound does very well is how it shows the measures taken to avoid people finding out that they’re homosexual. You feel for them due to the fact that ‘norms’ in society direct what they do with their own lives.

The Wound is a mere 88 minutes long and can also be found on Sky Cinema.