I Came By

One of the things that Alfred Hitch­cock​’s Psy­cho is famous for is the way it sub­verts expec­ta­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to the rela­tion­ships we forge with its main char­ac­ters. Writer-direc­tor Babak Anvari takes a leaf out of that dev­il­ish book for his urban hor­ror-thriller I Came By, and in doing so teas­es the view­er when it comes to the ques­tion of who the film’s hero will be.

Its bold, trip­tych-like struc­ture defies easy grat­i­fi­ca­tion, and in its race towards the nar­ra­tive fin­ish line, it adopts the struc­ture of a relay race in which the pro­tag­o­nists pass the baton between one anoth­er. George MacK­ay​’s Toby is a black-clad, hood­ed-and-masked mis­chief mak­er who, along with his more down-to-earth accom­plice Jay (Per­celle Ascott), break into the hous­es of the monied elite and admin­is­ter the graf­fi­ti tag ​“I Came By” as a giant punk­ish eyesore.

Jay decides to hang up his paint cans when his law stu­dent gf Naz (Vara­da Sethu) announces she’s preg­gers, so Toby decides to go solo on a mis­sion into the gat­ed mini-man­sion of shifty pro­gres­sive judge Sir Hec­tor Blake (housewife’s choice Hugh Bon­neville, effec­tive­ly play­ing against type). While prowl­ing around the prop­er­ty, Toby’s atten­tion is drawn towards a base­ment that bares stark resem­blance to a ser­i­al killer’s totrure cham­ber. He also dis­cov­ers a secret met­al door behind a shelv­ing unit, but has to make a mad dash before he gets a chance to peep inside.

To start with a bit of a gripe, the film looks absolute­ly awful. With its gar­ish dig­i­tal sheen and jerky, ham­fist­ed cam­era move­ments, Anvari makes it feel like we’re watch­ing a hashed togeth­er Sun­day teatime TV thriller. Bon­neville in par­tic­u­lar is lit in a way which makes it look like he’s just emerged from an oven, with his glar­ing, almost maroon-red facial skin tones.

It may be an attempt to make him resem­ble the Dev­il, but it actu­al­ly just appears as if the cam­era has been cal­i­brat­ed incor­rect­ly. For­mal­ly and aes­thet­i­cal­ly it comes across as slap­dash, and you won­der why the mak­er of the slick and rugged­ly beau­ti­ful 2016 fea­ture, Under the Shad­ow, has all but dis­pensed with his cre­ative arse­nal. So yes, an ugly, ugly film.

How­ev­er, it’s in the writ­ing where this one shines. Less in the moment-by-moment dia­logue between char­ac­ters, which is func­tion­al to a tee, and more in the way in which the clever plot is con­struct­ed and vital details are grad­u­al­ly teased out. The way it deals with time, too, is par­tic­u­lar­ly inno­v­a­tive, and it’s all the more shock­ing that the events take place over years rather than a few short days.

And the choice of mak­ing Sir Hec­tor a judge (albeit pre­ma­ture­ly retired) is no coin­ci­dence, as we see that, despite his over­tures towards mar­gin­alised com­mu­ni­ties, he’s quick to per­se­cute the vul­ner­a­ble (asy­lum seek­ers, sin­gle moth­ers, left-lean­ing activists) in the name of his ghoul­ish MO.

The rea­son the visu­als stick so firm­ly in the craw is that they serve to under­mine the rad­i­cal and rich essence of the broad­er polit­i­cal state­ments that Anvari is try­ing to make, as this is a film about the impos­si­bil­i­ty of social jus­tice as much as it an enter­tain­ing­ly-wrought por­trait of a gen­teel psy­cho killer.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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