'Brooklyn 45' Movie Review

Brooklyn 45 is a Shudder original from writer/director Ted Geoghegan. One night in December 1945, a group of five veterans get together at the request of Lt. Col. Clive Hockstatter (Larry Fessenden). There’s former interrogator Marla Sheridan (Anne Ramsay), her husband Bob (Ron E. Rains), a Pentagon clerk, Major Archibald Stanton (Jeremy Holm), and Major Paul DiFranco (Ezra Buzzington). Hockstatter asks that they perform a séance to summon his late wife, a staunch nationalist "patriot" who committed suicide when nobody believed her claims that their German neighbor (Kristina Klebe) was a Nazi spy. The séance appears to work at first, but things go awry, and the skeletons in the closet begin to reveal themselves.

Ted Geoghegan wrote or co-wrote plenty of smaller genre flicks before making his directorial debut in 2015 with a film called We Are Still Here, which was a simple, lean, and effective low-budget horror flick, as well as an excellent tribute to Lucio Fulci, a genre legend. He also made a movie in 2018 called Mohawk that showcased his ability to use historical unrest as an effective backdrop for fictional horror stories. Brooklyn 45 feels very much like a merging of various ideas from both of those, and it might just be his best movie yet! I was riveted by this picture, not in spite of its simplicity, but largely because of it. It’s a fairly bare-bones film on the outside, taking place almost entirely in one room and having only a handful of visual effects shots. But the mood is just impeccable, and the tension is some of the best and thickest I’ve seen all year.

This is a film that rests almost completely on the shoulders of its cast, and by god, this is a good one. Anne Ramsay, best known for “Mad About You” and A League of Their Own, is most often the voice of reason amongst the group, but even then, doubt and fear are a constant, and she plays her role with a great sense of empathy and uncertainty. Ezra Buzzington is the starkest contrast to her that we have, with his character being rash, combative, and aggressively nationalistic. He, along with a couple others, are representative of the worst tendencies of the American military machine, and Buzzington is just excellent. With Major Stanton, played exquisitely by Jeremy Holm, we get a little bit of both. He's a former soldier who automatically feels beaten down, being a gay man in the 1940's, but he's also previously dealt with allegations of some pretty disturbing war crimes, and despite having been exonerated in court, whether or not he actually committed said acts is still up in the air (for now). His character is the most conventionally charming, but also among the most haunted by his past, and he can only maintain this front for so long. Ron E. Rains is the bookish one on whom the others constantly rag for never having seen combat. For a lot of the film, his character is fairly standard, but he gets a couple of moments, especially near the end, where he gets to shine, and his performance is never boring. Kristina Klebe plays Hildegard, the neighbor who had been repeatedly antagonized by the late Mrs. Hockstatter. She is so instantly engaging and sympathetic, and you truly feel for her plight, especially as it uncomfortably echoes the way the Nazis had been so similarly distrustful of Jews, Roma, etc. It's a painful reminder of nationalism as a constant, ever-evolving evil that even the "good guys" can often fall prey to. Larry Fessenden is something of a horror renaissance man, having been acting, writing, directing, and producing for the genre for decades, and if this movie has a single show-stealer, it's him. He gets to run the gamut of emotions, from grief to fury to mania, and it's some of his strongest work to date.

The heavy themes of Brooklyn 45 are apparent from get-go, and even with this being a smaller film, they're handled better here than in a lot of blockbusters. Paranoia is rampant among them, with the dark cloud of war still looming. Despite most of them being lifelong friends, there’s still so much distrust amongst them, and you often feel like you’re right there in a foxhole with all of them. And as the audience, we’re never really sure who we can to trust either. It’s genuinely unnerving, and it stays that way throughout pretty much the whole movie. As mentioned before, nationalism is also a recurring theme in the movie, and it’s especially prescient now with the American right wing’s continued embrace of white/Christian supremacist groups. It’s haunting how timely the film feels, given that it takes place almost 80 years ago, and I can’t praise that part of it enough.

Brooklyn 45 may not be a “big” movie, but it’s a powerful one. Every actor delivers an outstanding, engaged performance that helps maintain the palpable sense of dread and paranoia from beginning to end. Ted Geoghegan’s tight script gives the actors plenty to chew on while also touching on some surprisingly relevant themes without ever feeling divorced from its period setting.

SCORE: 4.5/5

TRIGGER WARNING: suicide, homophobia