Lace Crater (2015)

W A T C H I N G

Film after film: The Invitation (dir. Karyn Kusama, 2015)

This pleasantly slow-boiling though mostly predictable horror film displays what I have just come to identify as typically problematic of Kusama's almost-great films: there's a boring aesthetic glibness to what the film sounds and looks like, which unfortunately translates into the acting. No one is particularly interesting here, no one gives a bad or flat performance. There's simply not much registering beyond the impressive twisty reveal that sets off the speedy and bloody final act.

Want some really, really weird queer horror? Sling, Hulu, Showtime, and Paramount+ have you covered with this tonally unusual possibly cannibalistic love story. tw for animal death.

The Midnight Swim

When their marine biologist mother disappears while diving, three somewhat estranged sisters return to their lakefront childhood home to settle her affairs while one films everything for a documentary on the situation and strange things start happening, but not nearly enough of them. Sarah Adina Smith’s THE MIDNIGHT SWIM (2014, Shudder, Tubi, Plex, Roku, YouTube) has been praised for its atmosphere of dread and the strong relationships among the three leading actresses — Lindsay Burdge, Jennifer Lefleur, Aleksa Palladino. One critic even said the found-footage format was integral to the film’s psychology. Them’s pretty high-fallutin’ words for a poorly structured film that leaves out transitions and uses the found footage format with no sense of logic. And the atmosphere is basically Chekhov without the jokes.

There are two scenes that rise above the overall tone of dourness. In one, the three sisters lip synch a music video to “Free to Be…You and Me.” In the other, they dress in their mother’s clothes and play out their memories of them, which takes a decidedly contentious tone. In both cases, Smith quashes any joy or drama in the situation. There’s also one very funny performance from Michelle Hutchinson as a local realtor caught in a tight closeup as she discovers the three sisters haven’t agreed on whether or not to sell the house. Then she leaves, never to brighten the screen again. But after one of the sister's vehemently opposes keeping the house, she suddenly agrees to help turn it into an artist's colony. Then all three decide to sell with little sense of what changed their minds. As for the structure, it takes two thirds of the film to discover the videographer (Burdge) isn’t just an eccentric who can’t eat in front of other people and films everything. No, she has serious mental issues the family has tried to deal with in the past but haven’t bothered mentioning even as strange things (but not nearly enough of them) start happening. Guess finding dead birds on the back porch every night and having footage nobody shot turn up on her camera wasn’t strange enough to make them wonder about any effect on her mental state.

Then there’s the camera work. Most found footage films have a rawness about them. They look like something shot on the fly. Smith establishes that Burdge has a very high-quality camera. But can it automatically link scenes by having dialog overlap? At one point, there’s a shot that could only have been achieved by Burdge’s sitting on the bow of a speeding motorboat. This suggests a level of bravado not previously established. And when she’s alone and leaves the camera at the edge of a pier before walking out to go in the water, who picks it up to move it in for a closeup? At the end, it follows her into the water again and into a finale whose filming makes no sense. One convention of found footage is that there’s some explanation of where the footage came from and why we’re looking at it. But there’s no sense of who put this material together. I’m not even sure Smith knows.

6 Years: Directed by Hannah Fidell. With Taissa Farmiga, Ben Rosenfield, Lindsay Burdge, Joshua Leonard. A young couple, bound by a seemingly ideal love, begin to unravel as unexpected opportunities spin them down a volatile and violent path and threaten the future they had always imagined.

Materna https://bit.ly/3nlPCCh   Not so much a film as four shorts held together by a framing device, Materna looks at women through the prism of the family – the mother, the daughter, the sister, the neice. All four stories and women are united for the briefest of moments on one of those New York subway journeys made … Read More »

Black Bear

Black Bear    [trailer]

A filmmaker at a creative impasse seeks solace from her tumultuous past at a rural retreat, only to find that the woods summon her inner demons in intense and surprising ways.

The amount of aggression in the first half is insane. I almost expected that they would (attempt to) murder each other. The close-up shaky cam in the second half made me feel a bit nauseous.

Aubrey Plaza's performance is intense and the best reason to see the film.

While this approach is clearly more ambitious, for watching a film about the difficulties of making an indie movie, I think I prefer the lighter Living in Oblivion.

The Dark End of the Street Official Trailer (2020) , Drama Series

XX: The Birthday Party (2017)

Her Smell

April 12, 2019

Lindsay Burdge

Duck Butter

Preview- The Midnight Swim (Collector’s Edition Bluray)

Preview- The Midnight Swim (Collector’s Edition Bluray)

Yellow Veil Pictures is proud to unveil the new cover art and special disc extras for the upcoming re-release of Sarah Adina Smith’s acclaimed debut feature THE MIDNIGHT SWIM. The film is available for pre-order in a special collector’s BluRay edition from Yellow Veil Pictures and will be followed by a digital release on January 25th 2022. The relationship of three half sisters unravels as they…

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Thirst Street (2017)

dir. Nathan Silver