At the centre of Harry Sherriff’s dark comedy Misper lies an intriguing question: when someone goes missing, how does it affect the people on the fringes of their life? The first-time writer-director applies this premise to the employees at a fading seaside hotel when one of their colleagues – 25-year-old Elle (Emily Carey) – suddenly disappears.
Stories such as this tend to focus on the missing person, their family, or even the mystery behind their disappearance. It’s refreshing that Sherriff largely sidesteps these familiar angles – there’s certainly plenty of material to mine from this set-up. It’s disappointing then that he chooses to focus his lens on Leonard (Samuel Blenkin), a mumbling sad sack infatuated with Elle.
The early goings of the film establish that there is some semblance of a connection between Leonard and Elle, but it’s clear they barely know each other. As such, focusing the narrative on Leonard’s grief over Elle’s disappearance feels like an old-fashioned cliche, turning Elle into a manic pixie dream girl that never was. This concept – Leonard projecting meaning onto a woman he never really knew – could have been a compelling angle, but the film never meaningfully interrogates it. A few scenes hint at ambiguity, even suggesting Leonard could be involved in Elle’s disappearance, but the script ultimately plays it straight, and those more unsettling implications are left unexplored.
Still, Misper is not without its merits, and despite the story never quite being as interesting as it could have been, Sheriff shows real promise as a filmmaker. He demonstrates a strong command of tone and a clear eye for atmosphere, capturing the decaying hotel and grey coastal surroundings with a deep sense of melancholy. The flat, beige interiors reflect the drab routine of the staff’s lives, with Elle’s red raincoat standing out as a rare pop of colour – an effective visual metaphor. A rich vein of deadpan humour also runs through the film, much of it stemming from Daniel Ryan’s pitch-perfect turn as the hotel’s David Brent-esque manager.
Ultimately, while Misper contains intriguing ideas at its core, it never explores them to their fullest. Combined with such a brief runtime – just 73 minutes – the film feels too slight to really make a lasting impact. Nonetheless, Sherriff marks himself out as a filmmaker to watch, and it will be interesting to see what he goes on to do.
