Intended as a short, sharp, shock-inducing piece of multi-media, movie-infused live theatre, this fell rather flat. Possibly the problem was that, drawing as it did on the familiar tropes of the horror film, the material was simply TOO familiar, but though the set delivered the necessary air of vintage decay and of old tales rotting down to a depressing emotional mulch, there really weren’t many of the promised chills and thrills. Essentially a one-man show, expanded by filmed footage of other characters plus the (unseen) person who must have been manipulating the props, it was set in the mouldering back rooms of the Metropol Cinema, once home to Herbert and his dysfunctional parents but now virtually his prison, where he spins his fragmented version of reality. Something went wrong – was his mother possessed and exorcised, did an elderly priest try to help or get things terribly wrong, and who killed who? Woven into these shards of spiritual damage is the web of movie references that Herbert spins to flesh out his interior world, where attempts to intervene or make sense will only reverse themselves into chaotic hauntings of ideas and images ultimately beyond control. Some of the effects were wonderful, understated and effective. The wafting of cobwebby drapery that surely has a body behind it or the turn of a doll’s head speak volumes when it comes to quiet menace, but unless you picked up the specific film references (and is Freddy Kruger really still up there as a major movie monster?) this was a touch too convoluted and interiorised to produce the required impact on its audience.

Gail-Nina Anderson