Old Resort Becomes a Wisconsin Death Trip

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Film Reviews

The two-lane county trunk winds into the deep woods of Wisconsin. Mara (Katherine Bellantone) has inherited a resort property sight unseen and is driving an SUV carrying five prospective buyers to the location. BRIDGE OUT? The party is forced to hike the remaining mile through a wilderness where cellphones die. The rambling resort building is more than Mara had hoped. Intact and nestled by a small lake, it should fetch a good price. And she needs it as a single mother in a gig economy.

But who’s that dark figure watching the new arrivals from an upstairs window? Blink and its gone. And when Mara enters through the front door, the hinges creak with ominous intent. All doubts are erased. The Headmistress is a horror movie. Let the shudders begin.

Directed by Milwaukee-Madison filmmakers Christopher A. Micklos and Jay Sapiro, who produced the film with another local guy, Glenn Chung, The Headmistress descends from a great cinematic archetype, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Mara’s resort is an Overlook in the woods, infested by the ghosts of tormented children, inexplicable blood flows and a spooky old group photo of the building’s former residents. Isolation is a factor in both films, leaving the new arrivals trapped in an unsuspected web left behind by terrible past events.

The story moves at the edge of suspense through the first half as the uncanny makes furtive appearances. Micklos and Sapiro were wise not to show too much too soon, letting the viewer’s imagination do the scary work. One of the prospective buyers takes pictures and begins to notice that the odd shadows she thinks she sees through the lens aren’t being recorded by her camera. There’s a fantastic scene with Mara, holding a kerosene lantern (electricity is patchy in the old house), discovers a room whose walls are covered with a scrawled message: HELP US. 

Like any good horror genre movie, The Headmistress reflects the society of its moment in a funhouse mirror. Mara’s party of five includes a gay couple and a rapacious real estate developer, Donovan (Thomas McCarthy), whose egregious sexism and homophobia is played with a Tom Clancy sneer. Mara is a Millennial case study as a single mom, saddled with student loans, credit card debt and her recently deceased mother’s medical bills. Her unexpected inheritance of the resort could save her … or not?

Micklos, Sapiro and Chung (aka Three Tortured Minds) will receive the Wisconsin Backbone of Horror Award at Milwakee Twisted Dreams Film Festival, Oct. 20-22 at Times Cinema. The Headmistress won last year’s Audience Award for Best Feature Film at Twisted Dreams and will screen this Halloween season at the Sawdust City Fright Fest in Oshkosh, Oct. 14.