By now, it’s almost undeniable public knowledge that Josephine Decker is a very gifted filmmaker. She has only made a handful of films, but each one of them is well-formed and fascinating, and works of incredible poignancy by a truly talented artist. She has recently started making her way into more high-profile circles, working with some prominent performers, and having her work embraced on a much bigger platform. However, going back to the earliest days of her career is just as interesting, since she established herself as a unique authorial voice right from the start. Her feature-length directorial debut was Butter on the Latch, a bewildering psychological drama that hearkens back to the experimental work done in the 1960s by independent filmmakers, who used the medium less as a stage on which to perform particular stories, but rather to set a particular mood, and take the audience on a disquieting journey into the heart of the human condition. Decker started her career as one of the most captivating young artists in the field of experimental filmmaking, and while Butter on the Latch is certainly an acquired taste (being extremely peculiar, and oftentimes just outright bewildering), its quirks and unique charms work their way to the surface, drawing the viewer in and allowing us to see a nightmarish version of the world, that is likely to be either alluring for some viewers, absolutely repulsive for others – in fact, it’s entirely possible an open-minded member of the audience may find themselves experiencing both in tandem, which is an excruciating but fascinating situation that all comes through in the fabric of this disconcerting but thoroughly gripping psychological thriller.

The best way to describe Butter on the Latch is as a film that takes place during that harrowing moment of realizing you have gotten lost in the woods – the feeling of encroaching danger and inescapable entrapment that only gets worse the more we venture into the thick of the unknown. There’s a lack of direction in this film that is almost inspiring, considering how Decker is constantly playing on the viewer’s inherent curiosities, all the while heightening the paranoia and making the situations the characters find themselves in all the more deranged. Butter on the Latch takes the form of a horror in many ways – there is a sense of evil that persists throughout the film, and is even mentioned in passing by some characters, which sets the mood for the rest of the film as being one where the deepest, most perverse recesses of the human condition would be exploited through this harrowing deconstruction of a broken friendship. Classifying this film is certainly a difficult task, because at its core, this is a work of art without any clear conventions embedded anywhere in it. Cynical viewers may play down this film’s production as simply being a few young artists venturing into the forest and filming a few loose ideas, and calling it a film, which is often a derisionary tactic for those who want to criticize the loosely structured narratives of experimental storytelling. However, this concept does hold a small amount of truth, since the fluidity of the narrative does suggest that this story unravelled as Decker went about telling this story. It adds to the spontaneity, and only complements the growing sense of mystery, since it isn’t clear exactly where this story is heading, but it is implied quite heavily that, wherever it may be, it’s going to be a challenging journey, and not one that we’ll soon forget.

Folklore plays a pivotal role in the construction of Butter on the Latch, with its setting somewhere in the Balkan Mountains (heavily implied to be somewhere in Bulgaria) playing on its peculiar, otherworldly aspects of the story, and adds to the overarching mystery that serves as its foundation. There’s a growing sense of danger that seems to be coming from within these characters, perhaps qualifying Butter on the Latch as a peculiar version of the possession horror sub-genre, where evil spirits take over the bodies of innocent hosts. This is reflected in the increasingly erratic behaviour of the two main characters, who begin to lose their grip on reality, to the point where they’re driven to absolute madness. Decker shows remarkable restrain in constructing this side of the story, never going too far so that it becomes excessive, but instead showing us exactly what is necessary to unsettle and provoke, but not entirely repel. Part of the brilliance of this film is how the viewer is placed in an uncomfortable position of mandatory voyeurism – we’re thrust into this world, watching the declining relationship between these two friends, but without the possibility of turning away, since we’ve been entirely bewitched by this story, drawn into its world. This is done through the atmosphere that Decker and her creative collaborators establish from the very start, with the intimate style of filmmaking serving to let us into the minds of these characters, while simultaneously driving us away from it. Decker has always been a director that peddles in contradictions, and throughout Butter on the Latch, she’s creating a series of carefully curated moments of madness that extend beyond these characters, to the point where the viewer starts to get the same unsettling sensations.

Like any artistically-resonant horror film, Butter on the Latch doesn’t just function as a work that aims to terrify us, but rather has a deeper meaning. In this instance, the story centres on the decline of a friendship, with the growing paranoia between the two main characters serving as an allegory for their rapidly declining trust in one another, with both of them questioning their relationship and the other’s commitment to maintaining what is clearly a fragmented companionship that is barely holding on by a thread. This creates nuance, and provides method to the madness – suddenly, Butter on the Latch isn’t just about two ambigious, mysterious women wandering through the woods, but a vivid exploration of a friendship that is falling apart. As the film progresses, we witness these characters start to lose their grip on reality, which is expressed in their outright hostility to one another. Decker has a particular tendency for layered portrayals of human relationships – whether that between a mother and daughter as in Madeline’s Madeline, or in a more professional setting as in Shirley, or the unconventional sisterhood presented in Thou Wast Mild and Lovely – and even here in her debut, the director is showcasing a very peculiar talent for using tension as a powerful tool to look into the dynamic between a group of people (or in the case of this film, a pair that are driven apart by the exact presence of additional people in their lives), and how they react when their innermost insecurities manifest as dark reflections of the soul. It’s a strange but very compelling way of looking at these situations, but it works perfectly when contrasted with Decker’s demented but sincere way of representing these stories.

Butter on the Latch can be puzzling if you’re not accustomed to the kind of approach Decker is taking here. Even at this point, I personally don’t feel like I’ve scratched the surface in my own interpretation of what this film was conveying. Taken on the fundamental level, the film is a strange and disquieting portrayal of friendship, as filtered through the lens of a deeply unsettling psychological horror, set in a distant land that seems entirely detached from reality. There’s a sense of mystery and intrigue that underpins every scene, and at only 70 minutes, we’re left to meditate on the multitude of bizarre themes all too fast, with Decker withholding all the answers in a way that would be considered cruel if there wasn’t clearly some degree of complexity underlying each decision she made in telling this story. An audacious debut that started one of the most fascinating careers in modern filmmaking, and a wonderfully deranged excursion into the darkest recesses of the human mind, Butter on the Latch is an experience quite unlike any other, which is something we should celebrate, because while it may not always make much sense, nor be particularly entertaining (often working hard to disturb us and place us in a very uncomfortable mental space), for viewers with a taste for the narratively and thematically exotic, this film may be the perfect way to spend an hour. It’s creative, unsettling and dark – and absolutely brilliant in every way, which is difficult to achieve when working from as ambigious a place as whatever inspired Decker to literally venture into the wilderness and tell such a hypnotically dark story about survival – not necessarily from the dangers that lurk out there, but rather within us.