'The Blazing World' is a horror thriller that follows Margaret, a young woman who returns to her family home years after the accidental drowning of her twin sister, Elizabeth, in search for her, delving into an alternate dimension where Margaret suspects Elizabeth may still be alive.
The film opens with Margaret and Elizabeth playing as children, collecting fireflies by their family home. As their parents, Tom and Alice get into a fight, Margaret peers through a window to watch the altercation, meanwhile Elizabeth falls into the pool and drowns. Years later we find Margaret living away from home, haunted by an entity - Lained, who proceeds to intermittently appear before her and torment her. Margaret is then shown in a bathtub, with a razor-blade in her hand, seemingly planning to commit suicide. Later Margaret returns home to gather her things, as her parents are selling the family home and she encounters Lained and runs through a portal to follow him, hoping that she'll be able to find her sister in an alternate dimension.
As she crosses over, Lained tells her to gather four keys in order to unlock a door behind which Lained says that her sister can be found. One of the keys is provided by Lained, and Margaret is told to gather the rest by venturing through other doors that take her through to other dimensions. The first door she goes through takes her to a desert. After wandering around she comes upon a small shack. Inside she finds a masked woman with whom she has tea. The two exchange their insecurities and fears, discussing loss and being forgotten. As Margaret notices the key she has come for, the masked woman agrees to exchange it for one of her memories. A struggle ensues, but Margaret manages to get away with the key. On her return, Margaret prepares to go through the next door, only to find it to have taken her to an alternate version of her home. There she peruses through her fathers office until she is confronted by a distorted version of him. The two talk, and alternate Tom proceeds to have an outburst, and tries to kill Margaret as he accuses her of stealing from him. Margaret manages to overpower her father and escapes the house with the key.
On her return to Lained, Margaret confronts the entity as a construction of her own suppressed grief for her sister and Lained bursts into a swarm of fireflies. Realizing that Margaret has to make peace with losing her sister, she accepts that Elizabeth is not hidden behind the door, rather is with her always. Margaret then re-emerges from her bathtub and drops the razor-blade she was holding, seemingly having abandoned the idea of taking her own life. The film closes on Margaret going to her parents home and taking the two to catch fireflies where she had done so earlier with her sister.
'The Blazing World' is a horror film that explores the themes of loss and guilt and how different people cope with having lost someone close to them. Through Margaret we are shown that having lost a twin has serious repercussions, seemingly having shaped the young woman's life and altered her perception of reality. As is illustrated, Elizabeth's drowning has deeply scarred Margaret, as every facet of her life seems to centre around wanting to find and reconnect with Elizabeth. In addition to that, Margaret is plagued by the dark thoughts surrounding the loss of her sibling through Lained, a fictitious creation of Margarets diseased imagination, that appears to always be with her, even if not shown to be seem by her all the time, his presence can still be felt as Margaret fears him, yet also looks to him for clues as to her sisters possible whereabouts. The film explores how Margaret is trying to cope with the loss of her twin, striving to find her, as she endures physical and emotional trials for the duration of the film, at the conclusion of which she realises that her sister is gone, a fact that she needs to accept, as death is final, and Lained is not there to help her, and is rather a hindrance of her own creation, - a desperate plea in her mind to seek and alternative answer to the harsh truth and reality of the fact that death is final.
The film is loosely inspired by the 1666 work of prose fiction by the English writer Margaret Cavendish, written, directed by and starring Carlson Young. The creator has managed to present a twisted and intriguing world of the main characters subconscious mind, illustrating the darkness that dwells within Margaret's psyche as she tries to make sense of her loss. The trial and tribulations that Margaret goes through further illuminate her understanding and explanation of how the death of her sister has affected her parents, with her mother receding into herself and becoming withdrawn from those around her and her father becoming more unhinged, expressing his grief through anger and violent outbursts of rage. The mother and father are portrayed by Vinessa Shaw and Dermot Mulroney respectively, and both illustrate the effect of losing a child in very different yet understandable ways. Udo Kier portrays Lained, the entity plaguing Margaret, ultimately to be revealed as a manifestation of her denial. Kier evokes a sense of fear and uncertainty every time he appears on screen, providing for an effective antagonist and allowing for the viewer to better understand Margaret's angst and panic that being around him evokes within her.
On the whole 'The Blazing World' is a spectacle to behold, as we get to explore the confused young woman's psyche through coulourful representations of the intertwined corridors of her mind, yet the film leaves room for improvement as the main story is explored, yet all other aspects, namely the repercussions of her twin's death as felt by her parents, could have been examined to a deeper extent. The film is vivid and at times perplexing, yet it feels that it could have been improved, as style seems to take precedence over substance.
Score: 1/4
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