The Bell Keeper – 2023
The Bell Keeper has one of those teasers that’s really interesting. I really like the it. It’s kind of suspenseful and I think that the music is much to thank for it. But there’s also mystique in the imagery and there’s some blood and gore. But above all else it manages to make it interesting, I wonder what this film will be once it starts for real. What does it mean “you rang the bell”? It gets me interested, I wanna know more, about what will The Bell Keeper become. Will it deliver or fail?
The Bell Lake
When the actual movie Begins we learn that The Bell might refer to the Bell Lake. We have These five or six youngsters in an RV Heading to Lake as a first stop. They are about to make a documentary about Urban Legends and they talk about all these different places they are about to feature in the documentary. First out is the Bell Lake where numerous people have disappeared over the years. There’s bound to be something sinister going on there. I don’t think any of them really believe in something supernatural though. The funny thing is that the most responsible of them is the stoner in the gang. He drives the RV and doesn’t want to smoke weed while he drives and he holds back on the other whims. It’s a refreshing choice of “sane person” in the character gallery.
Once they come close the cell services are so bad that they don’t have any signal (duh?). But one of them actually has a signal booster so they get to communicate with the outside world in an emergency. Keep that in mind. They decide not to hook up their phones though, as it will take focus away from the documentary and what they’re there to do. To me, it just seems like a way for some of them to make out. There’s also this twisted gender debate going on, where one of the females is very active. She can do everything for herself and doesn’t want to depend on a man, regardless of reason.
Gas Station
And guess what, they run out of gas just before they arrive at Bell Lake. I really laughed out loud when they saw this gas station to fill up the RV in. You know the kind of gas station that is always present in movies like Wrong Turn or The Hills Have Eyes. If you have seen a few of these movies, where people get “lost” and come across some hillbillies with less than friendly intent you know what I mean. And it’s obvious that the creators of the movie know it as well, They are using the concept for some comical relief in The Bell Keeper. There’s always a gas station and it’s never a good place to be. At this point, I thought it might be a red herring as it was so obviously there to make fun of the clichés.
They arrive at The Bell Lake and I’m still not sure what “you rang the bell” means. Isn’t the Bell short for the Bell Lake? Maybe not. They hear about the legend, of how a man sacrificed three virgins to open a portal to hell. And that he still haunts the place if someone rings the churchbell that is standing by the lake, at midnight. Ah, so there is a real bell there! I don’t think the lake got its name from the bell though since there seems to have been a village there before the bell was even put there. But they learn that the bell has been there for a hundred years or more and that the curse is ever present.
The Hiking Girl
We also have this other character hiking about in the area searching for her brother. Good luck with that, he’s the one who dies in the teaser. But just as the stone in the other group, she also makes sense. She’s not there just to make out or something like that. You realize that they will cross paths more than once. And yes, they do. It’s actually a quite funny encounter as the stoner more or less falls in love with her instantly. She’s not interested though and when we get to know why it’s a really funny development of character.
In search of a good documentary, these filmmakers, high on weed, need to ring the bell and see if anything happens. It doesn’t seem so. So they ring it again and again. Big mistake of course. Something did indeed happen but not what I expected it to. I was expecting some boogeyman like Jason Voorhees or Madman Marz to show up and kill them one by one. But this isn’t a slasher in that sense. There are killings and blood, even some gore I think but it’s more at a demonic level. Along with this the legendary Hank, who according to legend kills whoever rings the bell shows up. But everything is not as we expected it to be. There’s a twist of sorts. I won’t say more as I think it’s kind of a spoiler.
Unfortunately. when all is revealed and how everything connects it’s now that interesting anymore. The rest of The Bell Keeper becomes more of a transportation to the end. There are some nice action scenes and some more humorous reliefs when the clichés are used. So, if not anything else, you can tell that the filmmakers know the craft, you need to know the clichés before you can use them for mockery. There’s often a wink to the genre.
I think it’s a shame that it was relieved so early, the film was so much better before all the answers were explained to us. I like the acting most of the time. It’s not Oscar-winning material but for the most part, it suits its means.
