The Rickety Man
2021 · 15m · US
Directed by Cameron Gallagher
Genres: drama, historical, horror
Tones: dark, melancholic, surreal
After his wife's death, a distant widower watches his children grieve in their own terrifying way — guided by a mysterious entity they met in the woods.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Most people would've made this a jump-scare ghoul film; Gallagher instead builds a slow, sick-minded portrait of grief and children as unknowable vessels—which somehow feels more transgressive than any conventional horror move.
The formal restraint here is exquisite: Gallagher composes the frame as a kind of memorial space, each shot aware of its debt to folk horror and psychological drama, and the pacing trusts the viewer's discomfort in a way that recalls the best of British genre cinema.
The decision to make the entity *barely* visible—suggested through the children's behavior rather than shown—is what makes this work; it's a technical gamble that transforms a modest budget into something that feels genuinely haunted and true.