When Katie takes a job in a centre for people with Down’s syndrome, she’s the model carer – until the terrifying flashbacks start
From Don’t Look Now to The Masque of the Red Death, physical disability has been a troublingly cheap way for horror directors to summon unease. A couple of freaky moments notwithstanding, Dementer – set largely in a care facility for people with Down’s syndrome – takes a more sober tack, and in the process adds an invigorating vérité jolt to this low-budget chiller that contrasts effectively with its occult side.
Katie (Katie Groshong) takes a job in a special-needs care home and, despite her strung-out demeanour, finds she has a natural affinity for the occupants. But when one of her patients, Stephanie (Stephanie Kinkle), comes down with a respiratory illness, it seems to kick Katie’s legs from under her. What she has been passing off as headaches to colleagues are actually flashbacks to a terrifying past experience: bursts of her fleeing naked across a field, and standing in some kind of Wiccan fire ceremony, as a sinister voice slowly counts upwards. Now, as Stephanie wheezes helplessly, could dark spirits be coming for her, too?