In Fabric Review: Director Peter Strickland embraces silliness with open arms when a demonic red dress runs amok.
A recurring issue with arthouse cinema is the tendency to muddle style and substance to mean one and the same; in the case of Peter Strickland’s In Fabric, a comedic horror about a killer dress, its style is elevated to become its substance.
Strickland’s latest certainly offers a bizarre conceit; it’s a slow-burning, wry look at the shopaholic – a concoction of colours, music and some utterly intoxicating production design to create something wicked and absurdly delightful. Whilst shopping in Dentley and Soper’s – a store that is so off it would be an apt replacement for Mushnik’s Flower Shop in Skid Row – for an outfit for her upcoming date, Sheila (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) catches her eye on a one-of-a-kind dress in a beautiful “artery red”. After a more than a satisfactory deal on the dress, Sheila returns home to prep for her date – after a recent divorce, she’s reluctantly trying her hand at being a single again – but her occult frock begins to take over and cause havoc in the life of the lonely bank teller and the world around her.
A film that plays the narrative of a demonic dress with such a straight face and somehow works, can only be crafted by Peter Strickland – the British filmmaker has made a name for himself because of the unrivalled absurdity and panache of his films after all. Yet he clearly approaches In Fabric with gleeful wonder; Strickland really embraces the silliness with open arms – the stoic stiltedness of the ordeal inviting the belly share of laughs. This is a horror-comedy that belongs in a movie night with Shaun of the Dead or Double Date – more comedic than it is horrifying by riffing on the genre and just having a good old time. Yes, Strickland does craft some good tension and creates quite the unsettling character out of a dress but that’s clearly not the point. The set-pieces are brilliant; there is something thoroughly enjoyable about watching a dress kill its victims through crashing cars and starting fires. From a technical aspect, Strickland impresses – it’s a lavishly designed film that exudes a style and swagger that is engrossing to watch, a purposefully and meticulously designed sensory experience that fires on all cylinders to make for a dizzyingly watchable piece.
However, it’s on a narrative front where In Fabric falters. It’s exciting watching a dress murder people and Strickland does so with unbridled visual splendour but it all feels a little aimless – the narrative meanders without purpose. It’s slow as hell too, the film has a lot of lulls where nothing happens; Sheila is a charming enough character to anchor the proceedings but there’s little development there and you can’t help but wonder if the film exists purely as a vehicle for the dress and not the other way around. There are a lot of subplots thrown in – a particularly fascinating thread involves her son (Jaygann Ayeh) and his manic girlfriend (Gwendoline Christie) – but the film very rarely takes time to build on them; it’s a shame given how funny those scenes are, albeit not given room to breathe.
In Fabric is very stylistically driven – and, in that regard, it excels – and it does manage to heighten its sensory experience into quite the engrossing watch but, sadly, it’s too little to take it beyond entertaining. It’s a good time, sure enough, but, from Strickland as well, it could have been a killer one.
In Fabric was reviewed at the Sydney Film Festival by Awais Irfan, June 2019.
In Fabric opens in cinemas on 28 June 2019.
