Pensive

Whilst outsiders may think of them as innately immoral, everyone familiar with slasher films will recognise that they’re built on a bedrock of conservative Judeo-Christian morality. This isn’t necessarily taken seriously by viewers, or by the people who create them, but nevertheless, as the rules laid out in Scream make clear, behaviour like taking illicit drugs or engaging in casual sex is quick to be punished, and cruel behaviour is often paid back in kind. Jonas Trukanas’ clever spin on familiar tropes looks at how this logic reflects some people’s take on real life, and explores what happens when it’s brought into contact with the moral systems most of us use in real life, and with characters who feel like real people.

Marius (Sarunas Rapolas Meliesius) has never had much luck with people of any kind. He’s not bullied; his life isn’t particularly hard; but he’s one of those forgettable kids who just drifts along in the background of other people’s lives, unsure what he wants to do with his own. He does have a crush – on the distinctly more mature and focused Brigita (Gabija Bargailaite) – but she’s dating their high school’s star student, basketball ace Rimus (Kipras Masidlauskas), who seems to have been born for success, so the situation doesn’t look very hopeful. So when, on graduation day, the cool clique’s plans to party in a rented out-of-town property fall through, Marius is thrilled to be in a position to direct them all to an alternative place which he happens to know about – an abandoned cabin on the edge of some woods. Standing in the school toilets in front of the mirror, he smiles more and more widely as beeps from the phone in his pocket tell him that his social status is shooting up.

At the cabin, which they reach by driving along a forest road honking their horns and shouting, we take some time to get to know them. Meat is grilled and beer is shared. Brigita does some DJing and all the popular people dance. Marius best (or only) friend, Vytas (Povilas Jatkevicius), hooks up with a girl, Saule (Saule Rasimaite), whom he seems to have had his eye on for a while. A special cheer goes up for the drugged-up Žygis (Martynas Berulis), who has made his own way there in a taxi, throwing up in it en route.

The middle part of the film delivers a standard slasher plot. We learn that a family burned to death in the cabin. In a nearby field there are carved wooden statues which appear to have been erected as a memorial. When the teenagers mess with the statues, a masked figure begins hunting them down, with grisly results. There are complexities to this, as in most such films, and although it’s not the goriest work of its kind, there’s enough of that to keep most genre fans happy. It also has the requisite dark humour. The real focus, however, is on the characters.

Films like Last Girl Standing and Halloween H20 have reflected on the impact of experiencing this sort of trauma, but Pensive takes it in a different direction. Faced with terrifying things happening around him, Marius retreats into himself, creating a sort of mental distance. He’s not a hero and he tries to dissuade Vytas from making a heroic attempt to save Saule. He is keen to look like a hero to Brigita, but there’s a mercenary aspect to that and a chilling sense that he’s been educated by video games in which women are treated like prizes. This comes to a head in a confrontation which flips the dynamics of the film around, introducing a much more mundane and grim species of horror – but there’s still a good measure of slasher action to come as well.

Shooting much of this at night on a low budget, Trukanas pulls off some impressive work. He makes good use of a natural environment which incorporates patches on forest, water and tall barley. The dialogue feels natural but is witheringly sharp in places. Žygis dances through it all like a holy fool, perhaps the closest to the Christ referenced in the title, his open and carefree attitude serving as a reminder of the joy and innocence sliding out of reach of the others.

Good quality slasher films are rare – rarer still those which actually try to do something with the genre. Pensive, which screened in the Frightfest strand at the 2023 Glasgow Film Festival, is a smart piece of work and worth your time.