REVIEW: The Roost (Ti West, 2005)

An auspicious debut from director Ti West, The Roost focuses on its suspense, with every other element in the film providing support.  The nominal plot - a flock of bats holds a revivifying pathogen - offers barely enough action to justify the eighty minutes of film, but West shows a keen sense of restraint and mood, both key to elevating this film from dumb creature feature into legitimate entertainment.  His shots linger, his characters search, and the emphasis lies on unseen threats hidden in dark corners.  Also helpful: understated performances by the lead actors, who play to the reality of their situation.  Clunky meta-moments involving a midnight movie host (Tom Noonan) do little except inflate the film to feature length, and some of the dialogue feels half-baked, but West's confident style outpaces his mistakes, rendering The Roost an admirable, chilling diversion.

RATING: B-

Read my review of West's second feature, The House of the Devil.

FURTHER ANALYSIS
While watching The Roost, many shots reminded me of Sam Raimi's similar campfire classic The Evil Dead.  While some of these shots are likely incidental, and the two films differ in their overall approach (with West more reserved than the hyper-kinetic Raimi) I assembled some of the more noticeable repeat images, and you have to admit, some of these are eerily close.

The following images and text contain spoilers.

Both films feature an image of the Moon with an awkwardly matted-on effect.  The Evil Dead with dark clouds of darkness, The Roost with the color of blood (because in horror movies, blood helpfully symbolizes blood).

Both films feature a point-of-no-return bridge that results in the heroes isolated in their rustic setting.

A stretch, sure, but since we're on the bus, we might as well stop at all the destinations.  Heroes consider their options from above.

Open doors just beg for us to walk right through them, don't you think?  Even when we have some notion of what terrors lie within, curiosity always outstrips fear.  Granted, Ash has a lot more reason to come in (he's investigating the ominous wound on his girlfriend).

Both of these attacks occur halfway through the picture, when a formerly trusted compatriot goes zombie on the heroes and must be disposed of with the aid of farming implements (a pitchfork in The Roost, an axe in The Evil Dead). 

Floor and cellar doors prove no match for the eager undead.

Dutch (re: tilted, canted) angles represent the idea that reality has been knocked out of balance.

A trope few can resist: push suspense from one direction (in both cases here, the foreground), then whack the audience from another angle.  Three-quarters of the way through both films, a fate becomes clear with the re-emergence of a disappeared character.  Although one may be a little hungrier than the other.