Reflective Encounters

“In Glaswegian filmmaker Bryan M. Ferguson’s atmospheric Red Room, fear comes from waiting. Holding on for the apocalypse is no different to looking out of the window for the weather to change. 

On vintage wired phones, a man and woman discuss possession fantasies. A cut to red, like a Nicolas Winding Refn film, teleports the viewer to a forest, where another man seems to come under a spell. The joy comes not from piecing together these puzzle pieces, but from the sensual chills that Ferguson offers. From luxuriating in crystalline, liquid lighting, to an utter shower of mechanic and creepy sound design, this is an overload of cinema in its purest form: driven by sound and vision. 

After all, what could be uncannier than the human voice, warped and unrecognisable, when it emerges from a shadowy figure in the back of a car? Perhaps, it’s in the utter resignation with which another character awaits their fate, or the way that lamps seem so soft as to actually drain a character’s soul from the screen. Nothing is safe, and everything is inevitable in Red Room.”

— Ben Flanagan