Lie Still

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Cast & Crew

Stuart Laing
John Hare

Nina Sosanya
Veronica

Granville Saxton
Dark Man

Robert Blythe
Martin Stone

Susan Engel
Old Woman

Tim Barlow
Man in Pub

Sean Hogan
Director

Sean Hogan
Screenwriter

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Critic Reviews for Lie Still

Audience Reviews for Lie Still

• Apr 06, 2013

  <B><I>LIE STILL</I>aka The Haunting Of #24 (2005)</B> WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY: SEAN HOGAN FEATURING: Tim Barlow, Robert Blythe, Susan Engel, Granville Saxton, Nina Sosanya GENRE: <B>HORROR</B> TAGS: Occult, mystery RATING: <B>5 Pints Of Blood</B> PLOT: <B>When a young man moves into a boarding house with a checkered past, the very edifice itself seems to reel him ever deeper into its morbid history. </B> COMMENTS: Sean Hogan put himself on the Screaming Room's radar as a name to watch in the horror genre by producing and co-writing/directing the horror anthology, Little Deaths (2011), the review of which appeared here last October. Hogan also wrote the 2009 film, Summer's Blood (aka Summer's Moon.) Lie Still represents an earlier effort at an indie feature film. It demonstrates Hogan's penchant for gloomy settings which hover ominously like winding sheets over a boundary between fantasy and reality that is always disturbingly malleable to his troubled characters. In Lie Still, Martin (Blythe) is a new tenant in an out of the way, seedy boarding house, far removed from his obscured, but evidently turbulent past in downtown London. Seeking a quiet setting away from bad influences where he can straighten up and figure himself out, Martin moves in under a caveat from the landlord (Laing) that the other residents are similarly taking refuge from the mainstream. It's a quiet building. Silence is the rule here. Nobody likes to be disturbed. The other renters keep to themselves, the landlord cautions Martin. Martin would be well-heeled to follow their example. But where are the other tenants? They really do keep to themselves. Martin hears them but never actually sees them. Except for one. And this is more or less agreeable to Martin, who finds the landlord a little creepy and presumptuous, having sized up Martin as for the ideal guest and predicting his acceptance of the lease. But Martin is barely settled in before someone leaves him a note commanding him to "Leave!" Matters deteriorate from there. The elderly woman down the hall (Engel), the one accessible neighbor, warns Martin to get rid of his television, but won't tell him why. She tires to none-too-subtly seduce him. Unsettling noises in the middle of the night and around the home's secluded grounds, a backyard grave that is unconventional to say the least, someone determined to enter his room at night, and the vanishing of his visiting girlfriend add to Martin's growing sense of unease. So does a disturbing photograph of the building's original owner which hangs in Martin's room. Like the very house itself, the portrait seems to take on a life of its own, its subject, face mysteriously obfuscated in shadow, approaching ever closer with each passing day. But does it really? Or is the perpetually agitated Martin's own stressful and unfortunate past merely catching up with him? Lie Still doesn't break fresh earth in the funeral plot of the horror genre by offering surprising insight into those situations where a character is either being haunted, or slowly going mad in an oppressively possessive old house. The film does do a nice job with the idea however, without being frivolous or feeling worn and familiar. Well executed on a micro-budget, surreal dream sequences and genuine chills sauce-up Lie Still's claustrophobic framing and mausoleum-esque interiors like a shot of strong formaldehyde. Its dingy optical footprint renders the picture delightfully reminiscent of one of those older, made for BBC television horror productions. This dark, shroud-like filming quality makes Lie Still a good pick for a rainy Saturday afternoon, and since Lie Still achieves its aims with no nudity or gratuitous splatter, it's a good one to screen for the kids and teens, while remaining sufficiently sophisticated to clammily grasp the attention of older audiences too.
  Pamela D Super Reviewer

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