Not a prequel to Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Brooklyn 45 is a finely tuned, well-played chamber (of horrors) piece. Writer-director Ted Geoghegan’s film mines 92 minutes of dread out of a single night in a one location set up — in this case, a 1940s New York parlour room — but perhaps more impressively laces the thrills with compelling thematic dynamics and interesting ideas that lift it above the genre pack.
The night in question is December 27, 1945. Lt. Col. Clive “Hock” Hockstatter (Larry Fessenden), living with the recent suicide of his wife, has brought together his friendship group who in different ways have been touched by the trauma of WWII; Pentagon officer Marla (Anne Ramsay, excellent) who is carrying the psychic scars of interrogating Nazi war criminals; controversial vet Archie (Jeremy Holm), a soldier living with a dark secret about his tour of duty; and military blowhard Paul (Ezra Buzzington), self-medicating the ravages of combat with copious amounts of booze. The outsider of the gang is Bob (Ron E. Rains), Marla’s partner – a gentle, well-adjusted soul. Geoghegan economically sketches the set-up until the raison d’etre for the evening is revealed: to cope with the loss of his wife, “Hock” has thrown himself into books about communicating with the dead and instigates a séance to speak to his deceased spouse.
Geoghegan perfectly orchestrates the initial unease— lots of unnerving business with candles, chandeliers and a weird white vomit — but at the point where it looks like it’s going to ramp up into full-blown horror, the film pivots into surprising, sophisticated areas, a compelling drama exploring knotty questions: chiefly, can you commit a solitary heinous act in the cauldron of conflict and still consider yourself a good person? (It equally taps into themes of xenophobia and paranoia that feel as much a fixture of 2023 as 1945.) When it comes to a resolution, Geoghegan’s reach extends his grasp with CG spectacle he doesn’t really need, but this is a beautifully modulated drama where the biggest bumps in the night are caused by the characters’ crises of conscience.