QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN
Twenty-seven-year-old Isabelle pays an unexpected visit to her parents in a tiny rural village of Quebec, in French-speaking Canada. The community is home to no more than 30 people, the others having left decades earlier after the local mine shut down. She’s in the company of her beautiful black friend Catherine (Marie-Madeleine Sarr). Our protagonist is surprised that her prudish mother Therese (Marie-Thérèse Fortin) is so accepting of her partner. And she’s shocked to find out that her father Maurice (Richard Fréchette) died three days earlier, and nobody phoned her. The fact that he was deeply racist, homophobic and estranged from his cosmopolitan daughter serves as a plausible explanation for the silence, but Isabelle isn’t convinced.
Therese looks strangely distant, and her memory patchy. She insists that her daughter should leave as soon as possible. The once beautiful garden seems abandoned. Isabelle’s cousin Charlie has recently died and the family dog Fiston disappeared, Isabelle is told. The young woman becomes increasingly suspicious after she attempts to have a conversation with Doctor Toupin (Sylvain Marcel), who moved next door a few months earlier. The man cuts her short without giving out too much information He unconvincingly reassures our protagonist that her mother is fine.
Roughly 30 minutes into this 94-minute horror, the story travels to “a few months earlier”. We see a perfectly happy Therese, Maurice and Fiston welcome their new neighbours Toupin and his beautiful Swedish wife Maria (Anana Rydvald), a character who was nowhere to be seen in the first part of the story. The doctor discovered a natural medication capable of destroying all pain, but not without some very serious repercussions. He injects locals with a fluid extracted from local plants. At first they experience painless euphoria. Then, they lose their memory and their hair. The final stages of the unorthodox “treatment” lend the expressions “connecting with nature” and “returning to the earth” a whole new meaning. And that’s about as far as we can go without plot spoilers.
Veins is a very surprising body horror, with a naturally bonkers premise, abundant fluids, bizarre plants, plush hues, and the perfect jump scares. The apparent loose ends of the story eventually merge into one central plot, much like the roots of a plant finding its main vessel. The prosthetics and the special effects feel fresh and yet grounded. The victims vaguely recall Julia Ducournau’s marble creations in Alpha (2024), if a lot more colourful and veiny. 1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel), with its dispassionate pod people, also comes to mind. Yet this Canadian movie is a different creature.
Quebeqois filmmaker Raymond St-Jean injects his audiences with just the right amount of adrenaline required in order to keep them hooked throughout, before lacing his cinematic concoction with a dose of moral ambiguity. The ending is both heartwarming and irresistibly creepy. It’s impossible to walk out of the cinema without feeling intoxicated with a natural cocktail of sensations. St-Jean’s fellow countryman David Cronenberg should be proud. Or chlorophyll-green with envy.
Veins just premiered in the Official Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
