‘Could you put some sad music on?’
With Flowers, writer/director Will Sharpe created one of the best TV shows of the last decade. Hilarious, moving and strange in equal measure, my love for Flowers ensured that I would eventually have to pour over the rest of Sharpe’s output as is my way. Black Pond is Sharpe’s first and to date only feature film and as with Flowers, it is uniquely his, uniquely odd. A tale of dead dogs, dysfunctional families and a grisly murder…
The Thompson family is falling apart. Tom (Chris Langham), the patriarch, struggles to connect with his wife Sophie (Amanda Hadingue). Sisters Katie (Anna O’Grady) and Jess (Helen Cripps) are constantly bickering. Friend of the family Tim (Sharpe) is tormented by his sadistic therapist Eric Sacks (Simon Amstell). And thrown into the middle of this is Blake (Colin Hurley) – a mysterious stranger who has a profound effect on all involved.
Filmed as a kind of quiet retrospective of events that have already passed, Black Pond mixes elements of mild found footage horror with knowing arty pretension in order to create something quite wonderful. The cast do a great job with Langham and Hadingue really selling their mutual hatred and Amstell having an absolute ball in his role as Tim’s chief tormentor. The score is haunting and affecting and the dialogue spiky but often hilarious.
While Black Pond never quite hits the dizzy heights of Flowers, it shares many of the same themes and concepts, and this ensures that it is worth seeking out for those of us who have a penchant for the darkness.
Sharpe’s new show Landscapers (starring Olivia Colman, no less) is due to drop at some point in 2021. I would urge everyone to get in on the ground floor with that one.