Teething Problems is awaiting a UK release date.
Death is unavoidable; it stalks our every living moment, waiting in the shadows to take us at a time and date of its choosing. Nobody has control over this eventuality, no matter how much they may attempt to halt its arrival. Our only hope is that it waits until we are old, frail, and ready for it, but sometimes, it comes earlier than we expect. No matter when it comes, the grief left in its wake for those who loved us is painful, jagged and raw, eating away at every minute, hour and day in a forever-changed world. During the first months of grieving, people often ask the universe, “Please bring them back, even if just for a day, so I can say the things I need to say.”
Over the years, many films have explored this desire, from Stephen King’s Pet Sematary to The Lazarus Effect. However, unlike these two horrors, director Felix Bamborough’s Teething Problems opts to explore this dark desire through a comedy/horror lens, lacing the horror of this sharp, visually stunning and witty tale of grief and grave choices with the comedic tone of Beetlejuice, Life After Beth and Burying the Ex.
As we join thirty-something Jude, played brilliantly by Sam Haygarth (Masters of the Air), Jude sits at a dining table set for a celebration. But this table has been taken over by nature, as snails crawl over cake and fruit and spiders weave their webs between mugs and plates. Jude appears oblivious to the decaying food around him as he vacantly watches the small portable TV in the corner of the room. He is trapped in grief and unable to move on from the death of his loving wife, Ellie. She was taken too soon, and Jude’s only wish is for this nightmare to end and for Ellie to walk back through the door. But, as he sits in his dirty pyjamas, waiting for sleep to take hold, an intriguing advert flashes up on the TV from an organisation calling itself New Life Services. They offer to resurrect dead loved ones, and all you need to do is knock three times on any object. Desperate to see Ellie again, Jude throws caution to the wind and knocks three times on the wall.
Jude doesn’t expect anything to happen until his sleep is rudely interrupted by a mysterious man, Frank (James Payton), who provides him with a list of required items to bring Ellie back: a lock of her hair, an object she loved and several of her teeth! With the help of an unlikely partner-in-crime, his teenage neighbour Ben, the brilliant Alex Bullen, Jude embarks on a quest for all the objects necessary, including the teeth, before time runs out, and he suffers the supernatural consequences, but as Stephen King wrote, “sometimes dead is better.”
Felix Bamborough and co-writer Larry Wilson beautifully reflect the no-man’s land of grief in which Jude is trapped, his days stretching out with nothing to occupy his time but the overwhelming sense of loss and what could or should have been. The arrival of the Hammer House of Horror-inspired Frank not only offers macabre hope but allows Jude to escape this baron wilderness he has fallen into as he teams up with the optimistic and youthful Ben for a quest like no other, one that will allow healing to penetrate pain, but not before some Frankenstein inspired chemistry, a rather tense visit to his mother-in-law (Eileen Davies) and a spot of nighttime digging.
Bamborough and Co’s short is devilishly entertaining and wickedly sharp, with performances that sweep you away into a world that feels familiar yet slightly off-kilter. The result is a short story rich in classic British comedy/horror traditions and one that feels far too brief, given the story’s potential. There is no doubt Teething Problems contains the seeds of something bigger, whether that be a TV comedy series or a possible feature-length production, and I, for one, would be keen to see Jude and Ben become a dynamic duo hell-bent on discovering the secrets behind the mysterious New Life Services and its colourful supernatural characters.
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