REVIEW: Brooklyn 45 [2023]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 92 minutes
Release Date: June 9th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Shudder
Director(s): Ted Geoghegan
Writer(s): Ted Geoghegan

Will you humor me?

Before the ghosts appear and tensions rise to homicidal heights, writer/director Ted Geoghegan ensures we understand exactly who his characters are at the start of Brooklyn 45. Maybe it’s a line of dialogue like retired interrogator Marla Sheridan (Anne Ramsey) tellingly reminding her CIA analyst husband Bob (Ron E. Rains) that she married him because he’s so sweet. Or the purported war criminal Mjr. Archibald Stanton (Jeremy Holm) catching his reflection in the glass of an American flag case, getting lost in judgment while weighing his patriotism against his morality.

For me it’s a brotherly hand on the shoulder from Mjr. Paul DiFranco (Ezra Buzzington) being met by its target’s steely glare, reminding him the man he calls his best friend isn’t just “Hawk”. No. He’s Colonel Clive Hocksatter (Larry Fessenden). There’s nothing like a shot of PTSD to ensure he won’t forget again.

This quintet wishes they could simply be Marla, Bob, Archie, Paul, and Hawk, but that’s no longer possible with an event as traumatic and world changing as WWII marking their very souls. Whether they’ll admit it or not, it’s that truth that has kept them apart so long. The war’s been over for three years and they haven’t all been together since Marla and Bob’s wedding, so this occasion has an air of celebration even if none has anything to celebrate considering memories of war crimes, nightmares, and, most recently, Hawk’s wife’s suicide.

It’s the latter that finally gets them together. Hawk called in search of “hope” and they rallied to help. What they couldn’t know until sitting down, however, is that he sought to find it via a séance. With his faith waning and mind losing its grip on reality, he needs proof of an afterlife. If one spirit—any spirit—speaks to them, Hawk can move forward knowing he’ll see his Susie again.

Blame it on the booze, guilty consciences, a premature release of hands, or all the above, but things turn about as dark as possible at the sound of a gunshot. Add the reason for why Susie killed herself (nobody believing her when she said their German neighbor, Kristina Klebe’s Hildegard Baumann, was a Nazi spy) and the line separating civilians picking up the pieces of their lives post-war from ex-soldiers whose devotion to the cause can only manifest as paranoia with their enemy defeated disappears.

Will Archie still follow his commanding officer’s orders to kill despite no longer being on the battlefield? Will Marla use the skills she currently abhors to torture innocents on the whims of a bloodthirsty superior trained to kill the “other” his country created (because a lack of Nazis will turn sights onto communists, LGBTQ+, and whomever else threatens the status quo that keeps white American men in power)? Is Hildegard actually a Nazi?

What’s great about Brooklyn 45 is Geoghegan’s refusal to reduce the answers to lazy plot devices. Nothing that happens on-screen is solely to provide the audience a resolution. It’s about pushing his characters against the wall to see whether they bend or break. Because there are still unspoken truths that prove as palpable as their dated and/or misjudged preconceptions of each other. Truths that are in some cases unspoken to themselves too.

That’s war’s power. It forces you to justify horrific acts of violence in the name of patriotism and heroism without supplying the necessary support to deal with the ramifications beyond “Boys’ Club” promises and self-serving betrayals. Whereas that one ghost will soothe Hawk’s uncertainty, it will rock the others to their core because of the regret they hold in their hearts.

The result is an acting masterclass that unfolds like a stage-play with each “hero” exposing the blood spilt to earn that title. Because despite any ceasefire or treaty, the mark of hate never dissolves. Not for survivors, bystanders, or future generations. Some wounds never close. They fester and consume.