At 50 minutes, Beyond Mamushi rides that line between extended short film and not quite your usual feature-length film. This seems ideal, partly because of the film's emotional and physical intensity and partly because it further amplifies the messages being driven home by writer/director M.W. Daniels, a British indie filmmaker whose work has crossed my desk before.
In the film Kate (Corina Jayne) is moving into her dream home alongside her partner, Chris (Gary Cross).
We establish fairly early on an attraction toward Kate, an obviously troubled young woman yet also one whose vulnerability makes us hurt. Quite the opposite is true for Gary Cross's Chris, a ghastly human being whose controlling ways and willingness to prey on Kate's vulnerability amplify our sense that all is not well within this relationship.
The approach by Daniels with Beyond Mamushi is one of staunch realism, a slow-burning and emotionally exhausting honesty that lingers in both heart and mind long after an exceptional closing scene and the closing credits have scrolled by. Beyond Mamushi doesn't always go where we want it to go, but Beyond Mamushi goes where the story demands it to go.
Both Jayne and Cross are tremendous here, though I'll confess that it was Jayne who snagged my attention early on and never let it go. From a scene only moments in all the way through the end, both Corina Jayne and Gary Cross impress. Domestic horror is difficult to pull off effectively, often either playing it too timidly or going off into the land of histrionics. Beyond Mamushi rarely hits a false note, the drama heightened when it should be and the more horror elements feeling achingly true.
Both Jemma Thompson and Stephen Atkins make the most of smaller yet vital roles. If a more full-length feature would ever come about from this film, one would hope to see Thompson and Atkins more prominently.
Daniels's own original score for the film serves as a tremendous complement for the story that unfolds here. The score carries the story's emotional rhythms without ever dominating them.
Beyond Mamushi is a meaningful and memorable film brought to life by a small but mighty ensemble cast along with Daniels's disciplined, precise storytelling. At 50 minutes, it's ideally suited within a transitional length of time that matches the film's transitional sense of time, place, and the cyclical nature of toxic relationships and abusive cycles.
Beyond Mamushi may not be a film you "enjoy" seeing, but it's most certainly a film you won't soon forget.
Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic
