Anton Bitel | On 23, Sep 2023

Director: Otto Baxter, Bruce Fletcher, Peter Beard
Cast: Otto Baxter, Bruce Fletcher, Peter Beard, Lucy Baxter, Daisy Allsop, Paul Kaye, Rebecca Callard, Myanna Buring, Dexter Fletcher, Reuben Reuter, Adeel Akhtar, Kiran Shah, Vikash Bhai
Certificate: 15

“It might be completely mad, [with] no sort-of string going through the whole thing,” says Lucy Baxter. “He thinks quite deeply about things, so the meaning I’m sure will come out.”

Lucy is talking about her adopted, adult son, Otto, and his first film The Puppet Asylum, which he writes and directs, and in which he eventually stars as a version of himself. Make no mistake. This 30-minute short, filmed in dribs and drabs over several years as funding allowed, may feature an eccentric armchair narrator (Adeel Akhtar) reading from an ancient tome a “creepy story… about a monster, fighting to become the master of its own destiny”. It may be set in the Victorian era and take the form of a Dickensian penny dreadful full of grotesque gothic colouring. It may feature devils, magic and murder, as well as liberal swearing, song-and-dance numbers and breaches of the fourth wall. But it is also, improbably, an autobiographical work, tracing, through a glass darkly, the troubled journey of Otto, a young man born with Down Syndrome, towards autonomy and empowerment.

In other words there is a lot of unpacking and unraveling to do here, to see the meaning come out – and that is where Bruce Fletcher and Peter Beard’s companion documentary, Otto Baxter: Not A F***ing Horror Story, helps. It is part follow-up to their previous documentary work about and with Otto, part making-of feature – not unlike Jesse Suchmann and Robert Carnevale’s Sam & Mattie Make a Zombie Movie (2020), also about horror filmmakers with Down Syndrome – and part parallel medium for Otto’s self-expression, as both this and The Puppet Asylum, in different ways, reveal aspects of his life.

Mostly, though, the two films offer insider perspectives of the exclusion, alienation and oppression often experienced by people with Down Syndrome, and so they serve as pleas for recognition and acceptance from the rest of us. Otto may be no angel – and the alter-ego that he portrays in his film may literally have devil’s horns and choose evil – but what Fletcher and Beard grant their friend is a platform and representation, warts and all, which he in turn extends in his own short film to various other Down Syndrome performers who act in it – alongside Paul Kaye, Rebecca Callard, Myanna Buring, Dexter Fletcher and Kiran Shah.

Otto is not remotely shy, but he struggles to address his feelings directly. Hence the Victorian setting of his own autobiography, and other distancing effects that he introduces. Yet once the documentary has decoded the different scenes of the short (which we see Otto workshopping with Fletcher and Beard) and related them to aspects of Otto’s own history, it becomes clear just how deeply personal this otherwise bizarre allegorical fairytale is, and how much its fictions tell of Otto’s own anxieties and emancipation.

For in assuming the freakshow monstrousness that others ascribe to him and finding his own power in it, Otto becomes a hero – or perhaps antihero – in a drama that, through a Freudian slip, he instead calls a dream. The Puppet Asylum offers Otto a cathartic stage for cosplay, fantasy and wish fulfilment, where finally he will turn the tables on his oppressor, become master of his own strings – and direct his own horror films. Meanwhile this complicated yet endearing diptych exemplifies the kind of thing that someone with Down Syndrome can achieve if given half the chance, making the short and its accompanying documentary not just biopics, but activist works. These films are also, thanks largely to Otto’s irrepressible personality and his rapport with Fletcher and Beard, charming and funny.

 

Otto Baxter: Not A F***ing Horror Story is available on Sky Documentaries. Don’t have Sky? You can also stream it on NOW. For the latest Sky TV packages and prices, click the button below.

 

This review was originally published during FrightFest 2023.

Add to Watchlist