Elma Postma and Chris Chameleon, former Boo! frontman, reconnect in the unsettling Showmax psychological drama Horisonne, 17 years after their bittersweet romantic plotline on 7de Laan as Dezi and Liam.
Melissa, a psychotherapist, discovers that her dominating ex-lover, Melchior van Staden (Chameleon), has established Horisonne, a mindfulness retreat where he appears to be brainwashing young men and women. Worse, Adri, her estranged 18-year-old daughter, has become the cult leader’s right-hand woman. Melissa risks her life by going to the retreat to free her daughter from Melchior’s grasp.
Postma had seen Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey the week before her audition for Horisonne. The docuseries investigates what women had to do to leave Warren S Jeffs’ extreme Mormon group, which purportedly demanded complete devotion to male leadership and ensnared them in sexual exploitation. Elma had also seen the 2018 documentary Wild WIld Country, which told the story of Indian guru turned cult leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose promise of community disguised financial abuse.
“Both are about people being promised a new life, a good future, but in the end falling for someone or something that is all about money and power (mentally and otherwise), or being taken advantage of,” says Postma. “The reality is that the situation in Horisonne isn’t new. Young people, people in relationships, are being manipulated because they are targeted as being weak. People like Melchior give them something to live for. Hope. A future. But they are, in the end, just part of a sick person’s power-hungry game.”
Postma drew on her own experiences to shape her performance. “Thankfully I haven’t been in any situation close to this specific story. But looking back at previous relationships when I was much younger and more insecure, one does tend to become more of a someone you think your partner wants you to be – to be accepted, to be loved. Only afterwards you realise, ‘Okay, that was happening. I can suddenly be myself again; I feel relieved and free’. There are different degrees of this behaviour in relationships. But if you see this happening, I suggest that you re-evaluate your reasons for being with someone,” Elma warns.
For Chris, the surrender of self that Melchior demands of his followers is horribly familiar. “I was a military conscript in 1990,” says Chris. “I went AWOL five weeks into what was intended to be a year and a half’s ’service’. The pressure there was strong. The military tries to break you down so that it may reconstruct you into a tool to suit its functions. That was the most pressure I’ve ever felt in that regard.”
Adri is played by rising star Deoudoné Van der Merwe, the face of kykNET’s Stella campaign, and the script was written by Fleur du Cap nominee and Fiesta winner Wessel Pretorius, who also has a scene-stealing role as Alwyn, a psychopath who is one of Melissa’s patients: the Hannibal Lecter to her Clarice Starling, if this were Silence of the Lambs.
Horisonne, directed by SAFTA winner André Velts (Die Pro, Raaiselkind, Vergeet My Nie), is currently available on Showmax.