The Piper (2024)
Writer: Erlingur Thoroddsen
Stars: Charlotte Hope, Julian Sands, Alexis Rodney
Where to Watch: VOD
Synopsis: When a composer is tasked with finishing her late mentor's concerto, she soon discovers that playing the music summons deadly consequences, leading her to uncover the disturbing origins of the melody and an evil that has awakened.
Tagline: A Deadly Tune
Thoughts: I'm not really into music horror, neither in books nor in film. Usually the story revolves around Metal or Rock and for some reason "the devil" is always involved. I guess it's a crossroads trope that has been regurgitated in one form or another for as long as storytelling has existed. But The Piper leans more into the folklore than into the "evil music", which is classical, and more haunting than the usual fare. I'm unfamiliar with the piper folklore, but it was scary in that familiar way, like The Brothers Grimm, stealing children because the adults are terrible people and must pay for being such. And the monster is the scariest kind, not obvious and in your face but instead made of shadows and fiery light with no voice but a simple focused purpose of destruction and revenge.
One of the biggest complaints I have about the film is that the main child, Zoe, is supposed to be hearing impaired, and yet they used an actress that was not. The actress that played Zoe, Aoibhe O'Flanagan, played the role well, but I can't help but wonder if they couldn't have employed a child who really did wear a hearing aid and who really did know how to read music through vibrations. More and more filmmakers make an effort to fill roles using actors that are authentic to the culture/race/gender/sexual orientation, etc. portrayed in their film. But I so often don't see the same effort when it comes to impaired or disabled roles. ::stepping off the soapbox::
Bottom line is, if you're looking for a moody folklore horror with some cool atmosphere, this one will do quite well.
3 out of 5 💀s
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