Cara (2024)

 

"Nightmares in a Damaged British Brain?"

After its premiere at last year's London Frightfest, writer-director Hayden Hewitt's CARA is getting a digital release from Reel 2 Reel. It's a film that, despite an obviously low budget, has quite a bit going for it, but you need to stick with the film to the end to truly appreciate it, and some viewers may find that to be more than they can handle.

Cara (Elle O'Hara) has a history of abuse, is on antipsychotics, and regularly attends group therapy sessions to help her cope with the world. In her spare time she lives with her flatmate Ashley (Michaela Longden) and works out of her bedroom as a cam girl providing internet porn to customers, at least one of whom she is an abusive real life relationship with.

But her main problem is that the antipsychotics aren't working. Every now and then she slips into a delusional state, signified by the screen turning blue and whoever she happens to be engaged in conversation with suggesting she do terrible things to friends and family and even herself. As she gets worse she begins to turn those suggestions into reality.

CARA is a grim piece of work which some will find tough going. Pacing, acting and dialogue are all relentlessly one-note, to the extent that you begin to wonder if it's a failing on the part of the director to provide nuance. Only when you get to the end, which is as extreme a climax in a British horror film as any out there, that one appreciates (or at least one hopes) that the tone of the rest of the film has been deliberate, a way of illustrating Cara's poverty of affect and flattening of mood. If that's the case then well done to Hayden Hewitt, who also exhibits a fine sense for nightmarish imagery, scenes of which punch the narrative throughout, but which really comes to the fore in a kind of 'Ben Wheatley goes to hell' way at the end. 

The only slight quibble is that it's sometimes a little difficult to work out Cara's relationship to those around her, but again that may have been intentional. Either way CARA is grim and depressing stuff, with a climax that will definitely satisfy anyone looking for a fix of intense extreme horror. Here's the trailer:

Hayden Hewitt's CARA is out on Digital from Reel 2 Reel on Monday 17th February 2025