Happer’s Comet (2022)

It is 3:55 when we first see what time it is, on the iPhone that has detected motion outside. It is the middle of the night, but things have hardly been quiet, all the sounds become magnified in the dark anyway and not just because they are being recorded: the horn of the passing train, the gurgle of the swimming pool filter, the autumn leaves scratching across the tarmac. Considering how late it is, a surprising number of people are still up, the couple in the car, the old lady in the armchair on the phone, the boy who applies make-up before slipping out of the house on roller skates; the song to which the police officer does press-ups is right, a lot of people do not rest enough. The camera caresses these suburban spaces, and they feel so familiar, like the American films we watched as teenagers, at once banal and strangely ominous, knick-knacks in cabinets, quivering chandeliers, a cluttered cellar, the sword on the rack. But this is not a horror film, it is more like a shared dream, whereby the dreamers dream not of cinema but of its individual pieces, and everyone is drawn to the same place. And that is what we see in the very first image: the head of corn in the mud.