The Appointment
Given I’ve not watched The Appointment in somewhere around thirty years, I was kinda surprised throughout at just how much of it had lingered in the recesses of my memory.
I’d all but forgotten about the thing until its recovery and rerelease a couple of years back, forgot about it again until rummaging for stuff to watch, and it very quickly fell into “ohhh, this one” territory and stuff that I might have found unnerving were this my first time round felt more comfortably familiar. It’s all relative, of course, and it certainly does still carry an air of unease throughout still. I wouldn’t exactly describe it as a masterclass in tension or dread but it’s certainly enough, if you know what I mean? And maybe comforting is not entirely the right word here either.
Right from the off, there’s a palpable sense of wrongness, a very British eeriness. A matter of fact news report of an inexplicable death in the woods, of something - some evil - left unattended and unaddressed and to the film’s credit, whilst it does sometimes venture into a very seventies middle class spookiness, for the most part it keeps it together well. And when the thing you’re waiting to happen does, finally, happen, it still has a few unpleasant surprises left for the viewer.
The Appointment is not without its creepiness throughout, Edward Woodward and Jane Merrow do a good job of selling the whole “scratch the surface and…” well to do middle class veneer thing. I’m not as sold on what Samantha Weysom gets to work with as some but fair enough, she does well with what she’s given and does, indeed, ensure the ending holds together enough. I just couldn’t shake a very seventies drama vibe from it but hey, it still works! I think that’s just my aversion to kids being written that way in general so whatever.
It’s a film that is intent on never really staying grounded and it really does make that intent incredibly clear not just as it sets up the woodland murder that sits perpetually in the background of the story but also as it introduces everyone’s place in the film, it freely mixes the grimly, boring, everyday with a pervading, all encompassing, wrongness that is far from confined to the nightmares and unreality that bleed through into that everyday. Yeah, there’s a kind of obviousness to its themes if you’ve any experience of UK drama through the seventies but also, it doesn’t dwell on things, preferring to concentrate on keeping the viewer slightly unmoored and unsettled than delve too far into the icky family dynamics.
It’s the last half hour for me though. There’s a commitment to it, to staying within the confines of the weird and eerie, to not waste any of the imagery it plays with prior and to bringing it all together in a captivating final act that goes harder than you might expect. It helps the film stick the landing as nothing feels wasted. And as it cuts to black then to the credits in the final moments, well, it’s no wonder it lingered in my memory, you know? It’s effective!
Given it went out on the cusp of the video nasty wave, it does now somewhat feel a bit like a last hurrah of a certain style of British film and TV drama, of saying a farewell to certain well trodden preoccupations. Perhaps if it hadn’t spent so much time largely lost to time, it would have a more settled place in UK film history, I dunno. I like it a lot no matter. It is, very much, my kind of spooky. It is Ghostbox as fuck. Sometimes, that’s way more than enough.