Cara (Elle O’Hara) is a troubled young woman living in a flatshare and engaged in online sex work, for which she earns a meagre living with her webcam via a sleazy site called RedRoomFans. She had previously been institutionalised in a hospital where she was abused, and now experiences episodes of “maladaptive daydreaming” which her therapist is concerned indicate a drift into psychosis. (Spoiler: her therapist is not wrong.) These interludes are rendered through a colourful blue-green filter effect which, like the rest of the film, is not particularly subtle but underlines its point effectively enough.
Cara’s sex work is not viewed through any kind of filter, flattering or otherwise. We see a selection of her customers, of which Jacob Roberts’ character Paul Ashton is the least charming. These guys aren’t an imaginative bunch, on the whole, and while nothing overtly explicit is shown, Cara’s distaste for her work is palpable. But it’s nothing next to her absolute aversion to being sent back to hospital, and we sense from the moment we first hear about Cara’s mysterious plan to protect herself from this fate that said plan will turn out to be a grand guignol affair.
In the end, in addition to the usual constraints of low-budget film-making, the film suffers from falling between two stools. Until its final 10 minutes or so, it’s not gory and trashy enough to qualify as a midnight movie romp, but nor is it subtle or complex enough to interest an arthouse audience. While the mixture of elements from psychological drama and extreme horror makes for an interesting experiment, the two tones don’t always blend well. For example, a beheading is shot using practical effects that would look top notch in a zombie horror comedy, but in a film aspiring to tough psychological realism, it would need either to look realistic or remain unseen; the evident prosthetics that are all part of the fun in sillier horror movies undermine the effect that the film is aiming for.
• Cara is on digital platforms from 17 February.
