No, not a witches of Salem story or something of that kind.  Puritan is the name of the central character who does not act like a puritan at all.

Rather, as the Lebanese-born, London-based, writer-director, Hadi Hajaig, notes, it is a film noir in colour that connects with the themes of the supernatural.  While there are elements of the supernatural, with a mysterious 300 year old house whose former owner conjured up the devil, which exercised baleful influence on a woman who shot dead her rock star boyfriend thinking him an intruder, it keeps its main malice for the central character, Simon Puritan (Nick Moran).

Simon has been a journalist with a book on the paranormal.  Drinking heavily, he acts as a medium to help people in their grief.  It is mostly faked with previous information, but some things he knows…  When an attractive woman (Georgina Rylance) has a session (after a warning from her badly burnt and disfigured husband), he begins an affair with her.

This is where the noir part comes in.  Since her husband (David Soul) is a brash American businessman with wealth and the art of a demagogue, you sense murder is in the air.  Simon sells his soul for the woman – but, when he explains his theory of the fourth dimension, where time is not sequential and who knows what events influence what, we wonder whether his soul has long been sold.

Filmed in 21 days on a small budget, Puritan might be considered as an experimental film and a calling card for bigger films in the future.  It achieves what it intended and provides a variation on the femme fatale and pacts with the devil.  

Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto: