Courtesy of Shudder
A hothouse horror chamber piece that blends Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden and Sidney Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men with gothic ghost stories and Agatha Christie mysteries, Brooklyn 45 (which premieres June 9, on Shudder and AMC+) finds writer/director Ted Geoghegan (Mohawk, We Are Still Here) once again pushing indie genre filmmaking down unique and surprising return-of-the-repressed paths.
Infused with timely sociopolitical notions about prejudice, intolerance and truth, and free of pat, pandering conclusions, it delivers supernatural and Earthly suspense in a period-piece package whose wit and personality help overshadow its rougher bump-in-the-night patches.
Two days after Christmas 1945, with the taste of World War II blood and ash still fresh in their mouths, four military friends gather at the Brooklyn brownstone home of Lt. Col. Clive Hockstatter (Larry Fessenden). Marla Sheridan (Anne Ramsay) is the country’s foremost interrogator, which is not the same as being a torturer—or so says her Pentagon pencil-pusher husband Bob (Ron E. Rains). She’s greeted warmly by old friend Major Archibald “Archie” Stanton (Jeremy Holm), but Bob cares little for this dashing man, referring to him as a “war criminal” due to a combat incident whose particulars will eventually come to light.