Lyle Review (Film, 2014) #31DaysOfHorror
content warning: loss of child, grieving
Leah, June, and their toddler Lyle move into a beautiful two bedroom home in Brooklyn. June is busy with work, so Leah is left to set up the home and watch Lyle on her own. Sadly, Lyle passes away unexpectedly, leaving the couple to grieve while Leah is pregnant. She becomes obsessed with Karen, their landlady, and everything she imagines her to do in and around their home.
Lyle is a somber horror film from writer/director Stewart Thorndike. At 62 minutes long, the film is an intense exploration of grief, paranoia, and change. Leah and June both like to be in control in their own ways, and their shared trauma makes their slight differences all the more apparent.
That is not to say that Karen isn’t a suspicious figure. She’s obsessed with having her own child, noticing that Leah is pregnant through many layers of clothing. Shortly after, Karen appears in the hallway looking like she’s very far along in a pregnancy; it’s only been days and she admitted she wasn’t pregnant before. Her behavior changes depending on who she is around, but her focus is always pregnancy.
There’s a terrifying scene over Skype that makes the most of technology glitches. Leah is talking to her friend while Lyle plays in the background. Lyle seems to be talking to someone who isn’t there. She disappears out of frame, a strange noise is heard, and June starts looking around. The camera starts to freeze and stutter. Then you hear the screams. It’s haunting. It’s a responsible way to handle the inciting incident for the rest of the story. Not seeing what happened to Lyle is more terrifying than seeing what happened.
Lyle feels like a pared down example of the apartment gothic. This is a concept I’ve explored at Sketching Details for a few years now that explores how Gothic art has evolved to keep up with the times. As more people moved into apartment complexes or multilevel houses, authors and artists started to apply the old Gothic tropes to the new living situations. The apartment is a character just like the ancient manor, only the whispers in the air are the actual whispers of the neighbors. There’s an added level of helplessness because a person moving into an apartment has a new home, but they likely don’t own it. The modicum of control given to the Gothic heroine is eliminated, as they don’t own the house. The house is never their own and will never be their own.
So in Lyle, Leah and June move into a beautiful new home sandwiched between other houses. The landlady Leah doesn’t trust lives below them and the rotating tenants of the model apartment live above them. Leah can investigate the sounds in the building all she wants to, but if they’re not coming from her own hoome, she has no control over them.
Lyle is the perfect example of the brand new horror brought from the apartment gothic idea. Apartments aren’t passed down from generation to generation like homes are. People come and go all the time. Leah discovers two other cases of young children dying in the home while trying to come to terms with Lyle’s death. That doesn’t mean that anyone else who lives there, next door, on the block, in the neighborhood, or even in the city itself know that the deaths occurred. Leah is searching every which way for that logical thread that can prove a suit of armor can’t come alive on its own but the architects who placed a window in line with a specific planetary cycle that shifts the floorboards just so are long gone with no way to find them.
Lyle is a refreshing take on an older horror story. While the film deals with the loss of child, it does not feel like it’s exploiting that subject. The whole thing is skilled at leaning into certain genre tropes without pushing them too far. We’ve seen horror films where pregnant women are told what they see isn’t real. Lyle always has someone there to listen and support Leah’s newest theory or discovery. One positive voice, wherever it comes from, makes a world of difference.
Lyle is streaming on Shudder.
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