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The Appointment (Lindsay C. Vickers, 1981)
Vickers seems rather uninterested in establishing coherent
continuity here. As a result, The
Appointment is perhaps best described as a dream film. As it proceeds, Ian’s
journey becomes increasingly apparent as a descent into a private hell. His
familial squabbles escalate and his dreams become tormented by visions of three
vicious dogs. The director becomes increasingly interested in the environment as
the film unfolds, devoting many long, unmotivated pans past the characters to
the spaces that they inhabit. From time to time, a devious, unseen presence
manipulates objects, impeding Ian’s trip. What this all means is uncertain in the end. The dogs and
other supernatural elements that Vickers conjures might be agents of the
disappointed daughter, some sort of divine punishment for Ian’s minor
transgression, or a purgatory devised to punish him for some uncertain sin.
The Appointment offers rooms for many
interpretations, and is all the more beguiling as a result. Admittedly, many of
these potential explanations would feel like a cheap screenwriter’s trick if
they were endorsed by the film, but the insistent inconclusiveness turns clichés
into something more deeply unsettling. By the time
The Appointment reaches its intense,
claustrophobic conclusion, it manages to end its plot without breaking the spell
cast by its narrative loose ends. Few horror movies are open-ended enough to
have their atmosphere permeate even after they have ended, but
The Appointment manages the feat,
perhaps at the expense of logic. That’s a small price to pay, really. 67 Jeremy Heilman 06.25.12 |
Perhaps
guilty of creating atmosphere for its own sake, 1981’s
The Appointment nonetheless manages
to succeed in weaving a creepy spell. The only feature film credited to director
Lindsay C. Vickers, it almost totally eschews plot and characterization for the
sake of mood. Things start out with an unsolved mystery in which a young school
girl meets a shocking and entirely unpredictable fate. After providing this
opening jolt, surely one of the most inexplicable in all of cinema, the film
leaps forward three years. Here The
Appointment settles, for a while at least, into the mundane. Ian, a father (The
Wicker Man’s Edward Woodward), must break the news to his daughter (who may
or may not be the same girl from the opening) that he won’t be able to attend
her violin recital due to a work commitment in London. From a plot perspective,
the rest of the film follows his tormented journey into London. In practice,
The Appointment is much stranger.