Director: Danny Villanueva Jr.
Release date: 2021
Contains spoilers
A psychopomp is a being tasked with guiding the souls of the recently deceased to the afterlife. The movie uses the word in that sense and, of course, prominently in the title of this portmanteau film.
The wraparound in this case follows Kerry Reynosa (Elohim Peña) who survived the car crash that his wife, Evelyn (Kulani Kai), died in. Having experienced a supernatural event when he went to view her body, it becomes apparent that he can now see and communicate with the dead. He is visited by a psychopomp (Steven Alonte) in his dreams who guides him on how to use his gifts. The stories then are designed to explore aspects of death and communicate the lessons he and (in the case of the story that led to the review) Evelyn need to understand aspects of death.
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| Jillian Lebling as Elayna |
In many respects these are not horror segments, however the segment entitled Answers does have more of a horror side to it. The segment we are interested in, Until Forever, may have a vampire but it is much more a musing on the implications of living forever. It starts with a young girl, Elayna (Jillian Lebling), riding her bike along a street at night. She stops and looks over at a church. We then see a man, Obed (Jay Rattle), check that the church door is chained (on the inside), after which he limps away. Elayna, however, has somehow got inside.
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| Ben Shaul as Adriano |
She walks into the (clearly abandoned) church and places a bottle on the floor and then hides in the shadows. A man, Adriano (Ben Shaul), enters and takes the bottle. He drinks the contents (which are not shown but we can guess at blood). He then addresses Elayna and says she can come out. She knows what he is (hence the bottle), though the film never addresses how she knows or, indeed, use the ‘V’ word. The two talk.
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| turning Gabriel |
He laments time, which he calls his enemy, and the fact that he is stuck with forever, that his story has no end. He longs for death, in fact. She suggests that time is her enemy also and removes the wig she wears – revealing her bald head and we understand that she is undergoing some form of cancer treatment. She wants him to give her more time – by turning her – but he is opposed to the idea remembering how he once turned a friend, Gabriel (Reinhold Von Bolt), who became a murderous bestial creature. However, Adriano quickly relents and fills a chalice with his blood… he wants her to reconsider and there is a price to be paid before she can drink…
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| awaiting payment |
This was a very nicely shot segment, with a decent atmosphere offered by the location. It wasn’t, as I said above, horror. Rather it was a musing on the idea of living eternally and what that would mean and the essential stage of our life’s journey that death represents. It wasn’t perfect – whilst shorts have to condense their stories often, the speed at which characters changed their minds made their responses feel feeble. Also, the dialogue felt stagey and Elayna’s dialogue, particularly, felt too old for her. Whilst I get that her terminal illness may have given her an older perspective, it felt off, especially as she was not a child vampire but a young girl. That said, Jillian Lebling’s actual performance was mostly good but her crying felt like acting, rather than natural. All that said, it was an interesting exploration – the score is for the vampire segment only. 6 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
On Demand @ Amazon US
On Demand @ Amazon UK
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