CUSTODES (2021) - Low-budget Italian Gothic Horror

How low can you go? What's the smallest amount that's ever been spent on making feature film? Custodes doesn't look particularly cheap, or at least not all the time. It is in fact rather 'arty' in that Italian way. Set in one location - a run-down villa and the surrounding woods - Custodes is a simple, traditional tale of a haunted house and a naive person who arrives to spend a few nights there. Or at least, that's what it seems to be at first. In the last half hour or so, things take a rather different tur

Young and impoverished Ada is invited by estranged cousin Umberto to come to the Villa Artemisia to help catalogue the contents for sale. Ada has been cut out of her uncle's will. Umberto feels guilty and wants to share this part of his inheritance. However, when she arrives at the villa (traipsing through the woods lugging her suitcase) she finds Dante, the less-than-jolly caretaker whose tinted sunglasses more than hint at some deception. Nothing daunted, Ada gets out her notebook and starts listing contents. The villa is one of the stars of the movie, here, with its faded grandeur and murky interiors. 

Soon Ada unearths a mysterious bas relief that has a slightly Lovecraftian feel about it. That night she dreams of a mysterious woman performing a mysterious dance while wearing a sinister cat-like mask. (There is a real cat in the film, named Milli, who does some excellent lurking about.) Ada wakes to find a mysterious bruise on her arm, and feeling weak and light-headed. We know something occurred in the night, but what? Eventually, we get the full Monty of dodgy archaeology, hell dimensions, murderous madwomen, and a fair amount of blood that isn't kept where it should be.

The film is arguably a little too slow to get started and, towards the end, shoehorns in too much exposition. But these are minor flaws in a production that is always absorbing and frequently delightful. Part of the pleasure comes from the limitations of location filming and having a very small cast (with the writers/directors doubling as actors in some cases). It gives the whole thing the feel of a 70s BBC Ghost Story for Christmas. You know there will not be big-budget effects so you wait to see what can be achieved with lighting, soundtrack (which is very good), and of course, that oft-neglected thing called the plot. 

As you can see from the pic of Ada above, the setting is period but timeless - almost certainly 20th century but there doesn't seem to be a landline phone and we see no cars or trains. This gives the film a suitably weird, dreamlike feel, as Ada is drawn deeper into the mystery of the house and eventually uncovers a fairly mad conspiracy.

Currently streaming on Amazon Prime, Custodes is unlikely to be considered a classic like, say, Carnival of Souls. But it shares such films enthusiasm for the genre and is a perfectly good way to spend 90 minutes of an evening.