As far as northern English Forteana is concerned, the case of the Hexham Heads is right up there with that of the Solway Firth Spaceman; barely 40 miles separate the sites of these bizarre events, which occurred in 1971 and 1964 respectively. While the Solway Firth incident focused on a picture of what may or may not have been a photobombing alien, the Hexham affair involved something more tangible, namely a pair of stone heads that were unearthed by young brothers Colin and Leslie Robson. Following the boys' discovery in the back garden of their home, a series of strange goings-on affected both the Robson household and the neighbouring Dodd family; this continued until the heads were offloaded.
While the heads' next custodian, Dr Anne Ross, was able to bring an academic's eye to the party—she was of the opinion that they were artefacts of ancient Celtic origin—her family also experienced the joys of residual haunting; as was the case with the Robsons, domestic order was restored upon the jettisoning of the creepy crania. The heads' whereabouts are currently unknown, which only elevates a mystery that is now explored in Belgian-British experimental effort Hexham Heads. Screening today as part of the BFI London Film Festival programme Right in the Substance of Them a Trace of What Happened, this curious, striking work plays like a folk horror run through a filter of stone tape theory.
The medium-length Hexham Heads starts out as a fairly linear endeavour, with co-director Chloë Delanghe's measured voiceover guiding us through the story of the heads' excavation—and subsequent eventful stay—at 3 Rede Avenue, the Hexham property where the Robsons lived; it's a fine précis, one that appears to be setting things up for an investigation into the various paranormal phenomena associated with the noggins. What follows, however, is a haptic, fragmented piece that conjures a needling atmosphere worthy of such a juicy slice of oddball folklore. Via an eerie succession of 16mm, VHS and still images, all set to Sam Comerford's unsettling score, the film achieves a cumulative, nightmarish quality.
While the movie's title is undoubtedly prosaic, Delanghe and Mattijs Driesen's treatment of the subject matter is anything but. Hexham Heads drinks from the same well as Mark Jenkin's Enys Men and Kyle Edward Ball's Skinamarink—arguably the two most prominent examples of experimental horror in recent years—and like the latter work, it contains a top-class jump scare. As the film draws to a close, it takes us back to a near-deserted cement plant that was glimpsed fleetingly in the opening scenes, the implication being that there's a pretty mundane explanation for all this. Still, such airy reassurances count for little in the preceding half-hour, when the fever dream that is Hexham Heads exerts its clammy grip.
