Double Bill 2: Here in my car, where I'm safest of all...

Double Bill 2: Here In My Car, Where I'm Safest Of All

Cinema can do wonderful things. It can show us the most fantastical, otherworldly places, take you to strange, wonderful lands and galaxies far, far away. It can also show you the real world through a different set of eyes, present stories about real world situations and make you relate to a story or character. It can also show you the insides of cars for 90 minutes and make them the most exciting places in the world. Two criticisms levelled at today's double bill picks are that 'nothing really happens' in the films. While this may be kind of true (please keep reading...), I disagree with it as a criticism, because for today's film picks, tension is the driver rather than plot!

Locke (Steven Knight, 2013) and In Fear (Jeremy Lovering, 2013) hail from different genres and tell different stories but share some cinematic DNA. Each of these films is a masterclass in tension in that they begin with real situations and spin stories from there; granted In Fear evolves into a horror-morality play but the films are so effective because they originate from real and relatable situations. Both are also fine examples of limited location films; yes, both of these films pretty much take place inside a car.

There's a skill to setting a film entirely in one setting. Hitchcock explored the idea successfully with Rear Window, Rope and Lifeboat, and Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men is a peerless piece of drama which uses its 2-room setting to ramp up the tension for the titular characters and audience alike. The skill is in using the surroundings to maximum effect. In Fear is set almost entirely in a car, so much so that the effect of the characters leaving the car is quite unsettling when it happens: the safety is gone. Have you ever been lost on a country road? Felt like you're going round in circles? The rising panic which comes with every glance at the dwindling petrol gauge? In Fear taps into these elements and basic fears of the unknown. Close ups and unusual camera angles are used, adding to the claustrophobia while giving the impression of being watched from somewhere. The unfolding and climax are satisfying and don't completely resort to horror cliché. For me, this is high praise in a genre ridden with it.

Locke is one of those films which is impossible to recommend via a plot description: a man drives his car through the night, makes 36 phonecalls (source: IMDB. I didn't count them) and, er, well that's about it. But the effective thing about Locke is that Tom Hardy's Ivan Locke is going through real, life changing events, the kind that happen to people every day. There is very little heightened or exaggerated about Locke and that's why it works. Shooting the car from every possible angle, employing every conceivable use of reflected road lighting, and a tour de force of restraint from Hardy, this film is a tough, tense watch despite nothing really happening. Ivan Locke is a good man, trying desperately to atone for an error, to make things right even though he knows what it will cost him. Every other character is a voice on the phone, but each is sketched with just enough of a person behind them to make them matter. Top marks to national treasure Olivia Coleman for making us love her without being able to see her.

So both films are exercises in (kind of) one-location suspense, in tension derived from the unknown possibilities of the Irish country roads, and the known realities of the M6. Locke's integrity and humanity draw us to him, as does the believable relationship between In Fear's protagonists (fine work from Alice Englert and Iain De Caestecker), meaning we relate to them and care about what happens to them. Through this, the films manage to make something as simple as car journeys into pure cinema. I'd recommend Locke first and In Fear second, purely for that final couple of frames. Does she or doesn't she?