My Review Of Horror Short “Behind The Cross”

“Behind The Cross” is the first film from Finnish director Tomi Kerminen. The horror short is from an original script and concept. The story follows the downward spiral into depravity and madness of Father Michael. The priest is burdened with a dark past filled with ridicule. After years of seeking salvation from a horrible childhood Father Michael is unable to suppress the darkness inside him. He becomes the very embodiment of evil. He sets out on the path spiritual degradation and murder becoming a serial killer in the shadows of darkness and a man of cloth desperately clinging to the light. Which is were this short film picks up in the madness that is Father Michael’s life.

“Behind The Cross” is a strange blend of symbolism and expressionism. It is truly a dark piece of avant-garde cinema that drives heavily from an experimental influence while enveloping the classic nature of horror. It is steeped in imagery and metaphor creating bizarre visual moments of a true psychotic with iconic symbols associated with more extreme images of a more modern style known as Dada, a sort of anti-art movement that creates expressions and emotional responses from such things deemed unacceptable by mainstream contemporaries. It is a style I am only vaguely aware of but have recently come to find very intriguing and thought provoking.

Tomi Kerminen has managed to step forward as an artist of film with his first film, heading into the right direction. A direction I hope he continues to explore and impress upon. I for one would like to see how far he is willing to go and to what extent he is willing to push his audience as far as what they consider art or horror or even entertainment. For me “Behind The Cross” could have gone far further and not be offensive or loose the edge of experimentalism. The film opens up so many possibilities as far as it’s intent or representations. As I recently stated to Tomi about this film…” I am pretty sure that it was going to force me to push my limit of “What Is Acceptable” in my definition of Horror as an entertainment medium”. The film gives impressions of religion as a sadistic corrupter of society’s true spiritual and physical prosperity as a real representation of Horror. Plus there are moments it whispers a thought that the true evil is the Church and we are merely dutiful servants willingly sacrificing our children at it’s alter.