Mute Witness

Billy, an American makeup artist, is working on a horror film shooting in Moscow. Billy cannot speak. One night she is forgotten and locked in the studio, and sees two technicians filming something of their own: the woman in front of the camera is actually being killed. They notice her. Anthony Waller writes and directs. Marina Zudina plays Billy. The best known production story concerns Alec Guinness. Waller shot Guinness's brief scene years before the rest of the film, in 1985, with nothing else in hand, and kept those few minutes for a decade. When the film was made in 1994 that old footage was cut into it. Guinness never set foot on the set of the film itself. The narrative rests on one idea: the person who has to escape cannot shout. Waller uses it continuously, and the impossibility of calling for help, telephoning or explaining generates the tension by itself. It really was shot in Moscow, and the physical state of a studio system nine years into its collapse goes straight into the film. Who it is for: viewers who like low budget thrillers and films built on a single constraint. Who it is not for: the second half becomes more convoluted than it needs to be, and the comic register undercuts the tension.