The term “Godhead” has been used for centuries to denote a divine being akin to a God. As humankind grows increasingly secular, we’ve moved on from the times of believing in spiritual figures appearing here on Earth as they were thought to have in Bible times. The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival (BHFF) feature Godhead plays with that idea when a pair of suspicious individuals try to persuade a priest of their calling.
Eccentric twins proclaim themselves prophets to a priest, blurring reality and delusion as they involve him in their supposed divine mission.
Godhead, IMDB
A (Catholic) Father (Al Warren) teaches his presumed adopted son (Luke Speakman) about the workings of God, starting at his seven-day creation. Despite the Father’s devoted love for the boy, he refuses to allow him outside. It is from there that two almost-albinistic twins (Sarah Coffey and Kimball Farley) arrive and bear a prophecy; they have been in contact with God himself, and He has chosen one of them to continue on Earth while the other returns to the heavens. The priest is to be the one to choose which twin dies. Obviously not believing them and picking holes in their story — forcing a division between them — the characters fall into delusion about religion and their past sins.
When I first saw the lineup playing at BHFF, I was extremely interested in Godhead‘s religious tone. While I’m not religious myself — nor fan or religious movies — I do enjoy films that try to pick apart stories and make the viewer think differently about their beliefs. Godhead does exactly that, spending the first half making you really wonder if the twins are being truthful or not. The back and forth dialogue goes in all sorts of directions with the wildest things being revealed about all three of them.
And all of this psychological, slow burn makes Godhead‘s latter half all the more wild. I won’t give any spoilers, but there are secrets about everyone. Though this film is in black and white, it suddenly becomes brilliant with color — not literally, but emotionally. As the delusion grows, we see the actions on screen go from subtly weird to an all our spectacle of religious dogma.
And at the end, I’m not exactly sure how I feel about Godhead. I don’t know where to place it: psychological horror, folk horror, some kind of weird social comedy à la Napoleon Dynamite. And maybe that’s the point — to keep us wondering in this eccentric bubble of a world. Godhead is not for everyone, but as a film meant to scratch that fantasy-with-an-edge itch in your brain, this one might just do that.
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