When Katie takes a
Job in a centre for people with Down’s syndrome, she’s the model carer – until the terrifying flashbacks start
![Dementer review – unsettling low-budget care facility chiller](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4128a21c960d7ad7d42db7f63188af00d2032e14/216_82_1140_684/master/1140.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctcmV2aWV3LTMucG5n&enable=upscale&s=f09d207471e8f3c72f2b00c0c9f63fb2)
From Don’t Look Now to The Masque of the Red Death, physical disability has been a troublingly cheap way for horror directors to summon unease. A couple of freaky moments notwithstanding, Dementer – set largely in a care facility for people with Down’s syndrome – takes a more sober tack, and in the process adds an invigorating vérité jolt to this low-budget chiller that contrasts effectively with its occult side.
Katie (Katie Groshong) takes a job in a special-needs care home and, despite her strung-out demeanour, finds she has a natural affinity for the occupants. But when one of her patients, Stephanie (Stephanie Kinkle), comes down with a respiratory illness, it seems to kick Katie’s legs from under her. What she has been passing off as headaches to colleagues are actually flashbacks to a terrifying past experience: bursts of her fleeing naked across a field, and standing in some kind of Wiccan
fire ceremony, as a sinister voice slowly counts upwards. Now, as Stephanie wheezes helplessly, could dark spirits be coming for her, too?