Brooklyn 45 (2023)
Jeremy Holm plays Archie, a gay army major with a dark past, in bisexual filmmaker Ted Geoghegan’s (@tedgeoghegan on Instagram) 2023 supernatural horror film BROOKLYN 45.
The film is set in December of 1945 and opens to a group of military veterans gathering in a Brooklyn brownstone to support their friend, commander Clive "Hock" Hockstatter (Larry Fessenden), after the passing of his wife. The group is made up of Marla (Anne Ramsay), a former Army interrogator who has brought her husband Bob (Ron E. Rains), and two army majors, Archie (Holm) and Paul (Ezra Buzzington). To ease an underlying tension, drinks are poured and the friends attempt to reminisce.
When Hock begins to open up about the loss of his wife, he reveals he has also lost his faith and wants proof of an afterlife. He requests a séance. After the friends hesitantly oblige, they are not only confronted by ectoplasmic specters – but also with the metaphoric ghosts of their pasts.
From the beginning, we know that one of the characters (Archie) is gay. For the most part his friends accept him and, refreshingly, his queerness isn’t treated as a shameful secret to hide (something common in films of the past). Instead, like his friends, he has a concealed darkness he hoped to leave behind when the war ended.
In the past we were often depicted as villains, full of self-loathing, or as quippy one-dimensional sidekicks. In recent years there has been a growing discourse about this, and we’re starting to see greater changes in mainstream media. A large part of that is queer writers and directors, like Geoghegan, taking control behind the scenes and helping to create more multi-dimensional LGBTQ+ characters.
In an interview with Joshua Anderson of Dread Central, Geoghegan stated, “LGTBQ+ people are just as capable of making terrible decisions as straight people. I’m a messy queer person. I want to see more messy queer characters in art … Representation means being truly seen, warts and all.”
BROOKLYN 45 is streaming on Shudder & available on blu-ray through Vinegar Syndrome!
BROOKLYN 45
2023. USA.
Director: Ted Geoghegan
Screenplay: Ted Geoghegan
Starring: Anne Ramsay, Ron E. Rains, Jeremy Holm, Larry Fessenden, Ezra Buzzington & Kristina Klebe
