Heartless (2009)

(In French, On Cable TV, July 2022) There’s a sloppiness of purpose to Heartless that is considerably worsened by its inconclusive ending—a blend of a few different stories are left unresolved, and a confusion of themes that would have been served by a stricter focus. Jim Sturges stars as a marginalized young man convinced that his life is terrible because of a large heart-shaped birthmark covering half of his face. His Faustian bargain to get rid of the birth mark in exchange for a ritual murder would be one thing (dude: tattoos and makeup are simpler), but then there are demonic creatures running around the streets of London (killing people, such as his mother) to contend with. There’s the shadow of a long-gone father, the appearance of a near-perfect girlfriend, the ghost of an Asian girl, a representative of the devil… and levels of reality designed to confuse. By the end of the film, it all goes up in flames, as we are left to ponder not just the nature of the conclusion, but whether any of the film was either real, supernatural or a fantasy. It’s all very messy, but at least Heartless does have a few effective sequences along the way: Sturges is quite good in brooding mode, and writer-director Philip Ridley is clearly attempting something far more ambitious than a monster-of-the-week kind of horror film. Whether it works or not is highly debatable—The first half is overlong and the third act is jumbled, with the overall focus murkier than it should have been and the entire script in need of at least another rewrite to take advantage of its strengths. On the other hand, viewers without a Cartesian need for clarity and order may not have as many problems with the result. At least there’s a lot more here to discuss than in most other overly simple horror films.