Horror has a very long history of exploring Biblical and other religious texts. The genre often positions faith as monstrous or the root cause of humanity’s downfall. The First Omen, Mother!, The Exorcist, and The Lodge are just a few examples, but these themes run deep. With Armageddon Road, playing this year’s Fantaspoa, writer/director Karen Lam offers up a refreshing interpretation of end-of-days belief, specifically the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Lam stages an intimate character study about choice, passion, desperation, intent, and purpose, all set within a near-apocalyptic world. And it’s not just a horror film; it’s a demonstration of style and tone so irrefutably charming that it’s intoxicating.
Steve McNaulty (Brian McCaig) has big, ambitious dreams of turning a now-desolate parking lot into a theme-park high-rise. He just needs investors. For now, he picks up odd jobs, and on this particular occasion, he’s tasked with chauffeuring a mob boss’ girlfriend Delilah (Natalie Grace) around for the night. They hit the strip, weave through the back alleys, and eventually arrive at a party. In a bizarre turn of events, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse kills her and inhabits her body. Delilah, as this otherworldly being, instructs Steve to head out to the desert to a pre-determined meeting place—to set the apocalypse in motion.
Their evening together doesn’t exactly go as planned. “Delilah” and Steve engage in an intellectual conversation about choice (if we even have one), an inevitable collision of events, and how ideas morph through time. It’s not as cut and dry as it appears. These complicated ideas frequently get marred by humanity’s innate greed, yet there’s also an earnest truth buried somewhere below the surface. They just have to be willing to accept it. McCaig’s performance gives major Matthew McConaughey vibes but decorated with puppy-dog magnetism.
Karen Lam astutely applies Biblical fables to a more modern setting, giving the ideas and notions considerable weight. While delighting the viewer with warm vintage visual flair, she’s also hammering in her thematic nails with a two-ton anvil. The contemporary world is a dangerous and sticky one, and Lam invites the audience to confront issues about man’s place in the world and how much, if any, control we actually have over our lives. Is it destiny? Fate? Something else? Lam contends with these questions, and the audience must arrive at their own answers.
Think of Armageddon Road as a reworking of Samuel Beckett’s 1953 tragicomedy, Waiting for Godot. Larger views of being and God are wrapped in an otherwise mundane situation, but it’s the conversation that both drives the plot forward and elicits necessary thought. Explanations about the universe aren’t what they could or might be, and Karen Lam understands the intricacies of humankind’s constant need for the whys, hows, and whats. But, just maybe, we’re not meant to know those things.
Leave a Reply