Earnest in intent but shaky in delivery, Helen is a film whose execution just can’t live up to the strong ideas behind it. Intended as a thoughtful treatise on the ideas of identity and destiny, some wooden acting, clunky dialogue and ponderous direction channel it more towards the realm of faltering student experimenta.
It’s a typical British Christmas scene. An extended family descends upon one another to spend the festive season in a whirlwind of food, drink and celebration. But in Shankland’s (WAZ) film, something goes badly, bloodily wrong. An unexplained event silently changes the children, turning them into cold-blooded, calculating killers who systematically dispatch the adults in a variety of gruesome ways.
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