Interesting Films to Dissect
"The Lazarus Effect"
starring: Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde, Evan Peters, Sarah Bolger, Donald Glover, Ray Wise, Scott Weldon, Emily Kelavos,
written by: Luke Dawson and Jeremy Slater
directed by: David Gelb
It's hard to believe, first of all, that this film was made and released this past year. Olivia Wilde has made some decent decisions with indie films and television roles. Case in point, I love her almost unrecognizable small role in "Portlandia" (check it out). And she's in an upcoming miniseries titled "Vinyl" on HBO next year. And let's not forget her extended role on "House." She had a small role in the excellent film "Her" a couple of years ago, almost a blink and you'll miss it part as a blind date for Joaquin Phoenix's character. But perhaps my favorite role for her was in the mumblecore film "Drinking Buddies" with Anna Kendrick. And then, there's "The O.C." where she played a hard, bartender lesbian. That was my introduction to her, even though she was also on the MTV version of "Skins" (honestly, I definitely preferred the British version, which my sister introduced me to years ago).
And so, why was this film made, because it really does not explore the scientific/religious implications of reanimation of human beings, a debatable topic much like stem cell research. It's a horror film instead with a bizarre backstory for Wilde's character about a fire she set as a child.
The crew of intrepid, attractive med students are led by the long-engaged Frank (Duplass) and Zoe (Wilde), who have set aside their wedding vows in the initial pursuit of a serum that could prolong life in coma patients and, as it turns out, restore life to the recently deceased. Along with Clay (Peters), Niko (Glover), and Eva (Bolger), these two aren’t about to let an abrupt corporate takeover interfere with their research, and once Zoe takes a fatal shock at the controls, Frank decides it’s high time to move ahead with human trials.
The film fails on each level it tries to bring to the surface. There's the faith versus science, the threat of corporate spying and control of experiments, and then there's the smoldering flames and ashes of a romance between Frank and Zoe. Mark Duplass is kind of wasted in this role, far away from his indie roles where he's allowed to shine, with his brother's help. Here he makes it clear he's not ready for Hollywood leading man status. Besides, everything just discussed goes away when the focus turns to Wilde's Zoe becoming a she-devil once she is brought back to life and she sets about terrorizing her coworkers and killing them off one by one, in the most chessy PG-13 sort of ways.
It's all a let down, besides Olivia Wilde's blank, vacate stare that I could honestly watch for hours, regardless of the outcome. It's creepy and yet a turn-on.
.........................................................................................
"The Heart Machine"
starring: John Gallgher Jr., Kate Lyn Sheil, David Call, Louisa Krause, Halley Wegryn Gross, Libby Woodbridge, Katie Paxton
written and directed by: Zachary Wigon
Sometimes I feel like an old man when I become vocal of my skepticism about how great technology is for our society because I feel like a hypocrite. I've been known to use online dating as I've never been one for a "bar scene" and hookups, plus I think it's a decent way to break the ice with someone before meeting in person. I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm also afraid of rejection, so there's that.
This film was very intriguing. It's about the red flags people often tend to perhaps ignore when dating and getting to know someone. It's also about the analysis of the deleterious effects of technology as it relates to human relationships. The couple in question have a strictly online relationship since the girl has claimed to be studying abroad in Germany for six months and they met online, anyway.
Filmmaker Zachary Wigon's has created an interesting introspective thriller that operates outside of the box we often find ourselves within. He showcases a genuine fascination with the mind/body split thanks to Skyping, online dating, texting, and constant iPhone app usage.
In making an impromptu sleuth of its twentysomething male protagonist, the film has a sense of curiosity and exploration in its DNA. Cody (John Gallagher Jr.), a middle-of-the-road young Brooklynite, is a few months into an exclusively cyber relationship with Virginia (Kate Lyn Sheil), a soft-spoken and attractive NYC native in a study-abroad program in Germany for six months—or, at least that's what she's told him.
The film's first act, a kind of bedroom procedural in miniature, follows Cody as he picks up stray clues that lead him to believe his girlfriend may actually be conversing with him from a neighboring borough. At one point, Virginia's especially perplexed reaction to Cody's offhand admission to spotting her look-alike on a train that day prompts him to retroactively listen back on the Skype video playback for hints of implicating trepidation in her voice. Screenshots also prove a go-to tactic for the resourceful Cody, who's assembled a closet shrine of potentially significant visual details from their sessions. To a degree not uncommon among the e-socializing classes, Cody is something of a mastermind director of his own omni-channel dominion, restructuring bits of the Internet detritus available to him (Facebook threads, Instagram posts, etc.) in hopes of excavating hidden meanings.
Cody is almost a professional sleuth and it would come off as otherwise creepy if you, as the viewer, didn't ultimately feel bad for him because you definitely get the sense that he is being duped by this girl. There's just something about her that rubs you the wrong way almost immediately. Plus, Gallagher Jr. plays Cody with the perfect sense of realness that you are empathetic to his journey of discovery.
There's a great Hitchcock-ness to the film as Cody follows a variety of breadcrumbs to who Virginia is and where exactly she is (perhaps just a couple of boroughs away from him). While we follow Cody's trailblazing from coffee shop to bar, talking with people he believes know this girl, we get a sense of Cody assertiveness and his pursuit for the truth, but wonder what exactly he will do once he discovers it.
Watching it all unfold, one cannot help but think about how privileged we are in this technology age of being allowed to remain omniscient through social media, as well as the lack of security and privacy allotted to us thanks to social media. This is not just about Cody, though, even though his detective work is excellent; it's also about Virginia and her 21st century psychological breakdown of an isolated human being and what brought her to this.
Prior to her emergence on screen, she's an enigma too easily assumed of cruel intentions. Vignettes from her life, however, reveal her as a girl deeply apprehensive about merging physical intimacy with emotional intimacy, a complicated psychological spectrum rendered with a typically virtuosic display of extroverted introversion by Sheil. Wigon never loses sight of Virginia's narrative even as he follows Cody's undertaking to its logical conclusion, and the eventual collision of these two threads—safeguarded insecurity versus irritated befuddlement—provides the film with its devastating conclusion, one that Wigon's unshowy, balanced compositions abstain from picking sides on.
......................................................................................
"Uncertain Terms"
starring: David Dahlbom, Adinah Dancyger, Casey Drogin, Hannah Gross, Tallie Medel, Caitlin Mehner, India Menuez, Gina Piersanti
directed by: Nathan Silver
This is a great indie life about one man's slice of life, unraveling as it seems to be, and the connection he makes with another person, even if the age difference makes any chance of a true connection unreal and creepy. Having never seen a Nathan Silver film, I was intrigued by this film's running length (a hour and ten minutes), because I wondered how much of a story could be told in such a brief amount of time and if that time would allow the characters to be fully realized and fully developed. I was not let down. There's so much here.
Robbie (David Dahlbom), is a hair north of 30, but, as he's facing a divorce, this bearded Brooklynite's passions are stirred by one of the teen residents in the home for girls where he is temporarily serving as a handyman. The home is run by Robbie's aunt Carla, a study in stoic pragmatism, wonderfully played by the director's mother, Cindy Silver. Carla houses pregnant mothers-to-be, providing room, board, homeschooling, and clear-eyed advice of the sort skimmed over in high school health classes. Carla also offers them, in the form of her nephew, drama, temptation, and a kind of dopey hope. Robbie might be fleeing a marriage that is collapsing and an adult life that hasn't quite worked out, but to several of the teens he offers what the fathers of their children cannot: a seeming maturity, a willingness to listen, his mere presence. Nina (India Menuez), a ginger slip of a girl just starting to show, succeeds in catching Robbie's eye — and in their early scenes of connection, all sweetly underplayed, the film honors our sense of the wrongheadedness of their surprise feelings and desires but also the crushed-out promise that they rouse in each other. Nothing between these two can end well, especially with Nina's hotheaded kind-of/sort-of boyfriend (Casey Drogin) skulking about, but it's hard not to be stirred by the way the air between Nina and Robbie seems to tingle — the way something seems to bloom in their eyes.
The film is a brisk breath of fresh air. It's brief. The acting is done extremely well. Each little vignette, be it a birthday party or doing school work together, or just having conversations, move the story along rather well, and most importantly, Silver does not present each character's story as a punishment or something unfixable. Their lives are not bleak with no light at the end of the tunnel. Indie films like this are great because the people in them are relatable. They hurt like we hurt. They connect like we connect. And they move on like we often find ourselves needing to move on.
........................................................................................
"3 Nights in the Desert"
starring: Wes Bentley, Vincent Piazza, Amber Tamblyn
written by: Adam Chanzit
directed by: Gabriel Cowan
Wes Bentley, Vincent Piazza, and Amber Tamblyn play three characters who used to be in a band together (a decade ago) and seemingly were on the verge of stardom before calling it quits with each other thanks to some inner-band fighting and lack of cohesiveness in the direction they wanted to go with the band. Travis, Barry, and Anna agree to meet up again, on the verge of their shared 30th birthdays, for three nights in the desert, in the hopes of cleaning out their respective closets and coming clean about skeletons that seemed to be related to an awful, cliche love triangle; but also Travis (Bentley) has hopes that this trip into the desert will inspire a sort of reunion between the kindred spirits and it will reignite the creative spark in all of them and they can finally record the album they never did. And as cliche as it has become nowadays, the filmmakers chose the Joshua Tree as the place for this reunion to take place.
Our introduction to this trio is a fitting college radio interview from the height of their “fame”. The pointed question is asked, “Where do you see yourselves in ten years?” Making good music would have been a good answer. Barry forsees making good choices. But Travis announces, “We’ll either be famous or dead.” He is almost right. Turns out, their answers reveal more about their respective goals than they knew. When the band broke up – the reason is never explicitly explained but definitely Travis’s fault – pill-popping Anna went on to a mildly successful pop career. Barry settled for being a tax attorney and the cookie cutter ideal of middle class America. Travis disappeared off the face of the Earth only to be found years later living like a hermit in the California desert with a massive scar across his throat and a severe limp. A tree failed to finish the job when he lost his one musical outlet and simultaneously the will to live.
But this erstwhile hermit has reemerged, inviting his friends to join him for a spirit journey in the desert. Regardless of their individual issues with Travis, Anna and Barry can’t resist the appeal of such an offer. And Cowan cleverly plays up the mysticism of the desert life. Night one sees Travis guide his friends through the brush to a secluded cave, and in hushed tones, he tells them that this magical cave grants all who enter not their greatest wish but their greatest need. Bentley’s undeniable talents are on display here, if nowhere else, breathing life into the cunning Travis. Sure, the whole thing is a ploy to peak Anna and Barry’s curiosity and control the narrative for this reunion weekend. But for a few moments it allows this trite film to be lifted out of the realm of middling storytelling.
Wes Bentley does a great job with his character of Travis, but unfortunately his character is the only one of the three that you care anything about. The rest of the story just falls flat.
......................................................................................
"Hard Drive"
starring: Douglass Smith, Laura Wiggins, Megan Follows
written and directed by: William D. MacGillivray
This is a great, small, indie film discovery for me. It's a heartbreaking character study of two rather different young people with separate issues who still find a way to become friends instantly, perhaps under the disguise of one being able to save the other and vice versa.
Douglas Smith plays a young man named Ditch and he really becomes this boy. He is a young man without a future. He lives at home with his mom, has never met his mother, and seems to be an aspiring musician. His mom is trying and has been trying to get him moving on with his life and like most mother's she wants better for him. One evening, after a gig at a small club for his band, Ditch meets Debs (the excellent Laura Wiggins whose otherwise claim to fame was an appearance on the MTV dating show "Next" as well as a great supporting role on the Showtime show "Shameless" which I now have to check out, as soon as I can). Laura Wiggins is enthralling and not just because of her girl-next-door appearance (she's looks like the younger version of Taylor Swift, when Taylor came out as a teenage country star). Okay, I was instantly hooked and attracted to her because of this, but, I was also drawn to her performance as Debs- a girl who is alone with just a laptop and cellphone as her possessions, as well as some deep dark secret behind her eyes. There's a tattoo on her back as well, that seems to be the key to something. Debs rents a room in Ditch's home and the two become very close instantly, sharing her mattress and having sex in an extended scene.
It is made very clear that Ditch falls in love with her and will ultimately do anything for this troubled girl. He finds out about her secret and wants to help her, to vindicate her, even though he's unaware of just how awful things are for Debs. He wants to be her savior. She, though, just wants a friend she can rely on.
Douglas Smith and Laura Wiggins are forced to carry almost the entire film, and they do a great job, although Wiggins is the standout performer. Debs will allow Ditch to come close, but then will also quickly push him away. We can see that there’s something she needs help with, but there’s also a concern that she could just be too much trouble for Ditch. Viewers will spend almost the entire film with a nagging sensation about Debs, wanting Ditch to try and help her but also stay away from her. When we finally realize what is actually going on, the resolution takes a bit too long to arrive. The story of two different souls finding each other in the world, and eventually helping each other in ways nobody else could, isn’t new, but there are some very unique twists on the idea here. Not every decision makes sense at first, and only becomes clear when the entire picture comes together.
I found myself enthralled by the story, even though it seemed to develop slowly, there's a slow burning effect to finding out the truth.
This is a great film, but be prepared to have your heart broken for Debs.
starring: Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde, Evan Peters, Sarah Bolger, Donald Glover, Ray Wise, Scott Weldon, Emily Kelavos,
written by: Luke Dawson and Jeremy Slater
directed by: David Gelb
It's hard to believe, first of all, that this film was made and released this past year. Olivia Wilde has made some decent decisions with indie films and television roles. Case in point, I love her almost unrecognizable small role in "Portlandia" (check it out). And she's in an upcoming miniseries titled "Vinyl" on HBO next year. And let's not forget her extended role on "House." She had a small role in the excellent film "Her" a couple of years ago, almost a blink and you'll miss it part as a blind date for Joaquin Phoenix's character. But perhaps my favorite role for her was in the mumblecore film "Drinking Buddies" with Anna Kendrick. And then, there's "The O.C." where she played a hard, bartender lesbian. That was my introduction to her, even though she was also on the MTV version of "Skins" (honestly, I definitely preferred the British version, which my sister introduced me to years ago).
And so, why was this film made, because it really does not explore the scientific/religious implications of reanimation of human beings, a debatable topic much like stem cell research. It's a horror film instead with a bizarre backstory for Wilde's character about a fire she set as a child.
The crew of intrepid, attractive med students are led by the long-engaged Frank (Duplass) and Zoe (Wilde), who have set aside their wedding vows in the initial pursuit of a serum that could prolong life in coma patients and, as it turns out, restore life to the recently deceased. Along with Clay (Peters), Niko (Glover), and Eva (Bolger), these two aren’t about to let an abrupt corporate takeover interfere with their research, and once Zoe takes a fatal shock at the controls, Frank decides it’s high time to move ahead with human trials.
The film fails on each level it tries to bring to the surface. There's the faith versus science, the threat of corporate spying and control of experiments, and then there's the smoldering flames and ashes of a romance between Frank and Zoe. Mark Duplass is kind of wasted in this role, far away from his indie roles where he's allowed to shine, with his brother's help. Here he makes it clear he's not ready for Hollywood leading man status. Besides, everything just discussed goes away when the focus turns to Wilde's Zoe becoming a she-devil once she is brought back to life and she sets about terrorizing her coworkers and killing them off one by one, in the most chessy PG-13 sort of ways.
It's all a let down, besides Olivia Wilde's blank, vacate stare that I could honestly watch for hours, regardless of the outcome. It's creepy and yet a turn-on.
.........................................................................................
"The Heart Machine"
starring: John Gallgher Jr., Kate Lyn Sheil, David Call, Louisa Krause, Halley Wegryn Gross, Libby Woodbridge, Katie Paxton
written and directed by: Zachary Wigon
Sometimes I feel like an old man when I become vocal of my skepticism about how great technology is for our society because I feel like a hypocrite. I've been known to use online dating as I've never been one for a "bar scene" and hookups, plus I think it's a decent way to break the ice with someone before meeting in person. I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm also afraid of rejection, so there's that.
This film was very intriguing. It's about the red flags people often tend to perhaps ignore when dating and getting to know someone. It's also about the analysis of the deleterious effects of technology as it relates to human relationships. The couple in question have a strictly online relationship since the girl has claimed to be studying abroad in Germany for six months and they met online, anyway.
Filmmaker Zachary Wigon's has created an interesting introspective thriller that operates outside of the box we often find ourselves within. He showcases a genuine fascination with the mind/body split thanks to Skyping, online dating, texting, and constant iPhone app usage.
In making an impromptu sleuth of its twentysomething male protagonist, the film has a sense of curiosity and exploration in its DNA. Cody (John Gallagher Jr.), a middle-of-the-road young Brooklynite, is a few months into an exclusively cyber relationship with Virginia (Kate Lyn Sheil), a soft-spoken and attractive NYC native in a study-abroad program in Germany for six months—or, at least that's what she's told him.
The film's first act, a kind of bedroom procedural in miniature, follows Cody as he picks up stray clues that lead him to believe his girlfriend may actually be conversing with him from a neighboring borough. At one point, Virginia's especially perplexed reaction to Cody's offhand admission to spotting her look-alike on a train that day prompts him to retroactively listen back on the Skype video playback for hints of implicating trepidation in her voice. Screenshots also prove a go-to tactic for the resourceful Cody, who's assembled a closet shrine of potentially significant visual details from their sessions. To a degree not uncommon among the e-socializing classes, Cody is something of a mastermind director of his own omni-channel dominion, restructuring bits of the Internet detritus available to him (Facebook threads, Instagram posts, etc.) in hopes of excavating hidden meanings.
Cody is almost a professional sleuth and it would come off as otherwise creepy if you, as the viewer, didn't ultimately feel bad for him because you definitely get the sense that he is being duped by this girl. There's just something about her that rubs you the wrong way almost immediately. Plus, Gallagher Jr. plays Cody with the perfect sense of realness that you are empathetic to his journey of discovery.
There's a great Hitchcock-ness to the film as Cody follows a variety of breadcrumbs to who Virginia is and where exactly she is (perhaps just a couple of boroughs away from him). While we follow Cody's trailblazing from coffee shop to bar, talking with people he believes know this girl, we get a sense of Cody assertiveness and his pursuit for the truth, but wonder what exactly he will do once he discovers it.
Watching it all unfold, one cannot help but think about how privileged we are in this technology age of being allowed to remain omniscient through social media, as well as the lack of security and privacy allotted to us thanks to social media. This is not just about Cody, though, even though his detective work is excellent; it's also about Virginia and her 21st century psychological breakdown of an isolated human being and what brought her to this.
Prior to her emergence on screen, she's an enigma too easily assumed of cruel intentions. Vignettes from her life, however, reveal her as a girl deeply apprehensive about merging physical intimacy with emotional intimacy, a complicated psychological spectrum rendered with a typically virtuosic display of extroverted introversion by Sheil. Wigon never loses sight of Virginia's narrative even as he follows Cody's undertaking to its logical conclusion, and the eventual collision of these two threads—safeguarded insecurity versus irritated befuddlement—provides the film with its devastating conclusion, one that Wigon's unshowy, balanced compositions abstain from picking sides on.
......................................................................................
"Uncertain Terms"
starring: David Dahlbom, Adinah Dancyger, Casey Drogin, Hannah Gross, Tallie Medel, Caitlin Mehner, India Menuez, Gina Piersanti
directed by: Nathan Silver
This is a great indie life about one man's slice of life, unraveling as it seems to be, and the connection he makes with another person, even if the age difference makes any chance of a true connection unreal and creepy. Having never seen a Nathan Silver film, I was intrigued by this film's running length (a hour and ten minutes), because I wondered how much of a story could be told in such a brief amount of time and if that time would allow the characters to be fully realized and fully developed. I was not let down. There's so much here.
Robbie (David Dahlbom), is a hair north of 30, but, as he's facing a divorce, this bearded Brooklynite's passions are stirred by one of the teen residents in the home for girls where he is temporarily serving as a handyman. The home is run by Robbie's aunt Carla, a study in stoic pragmatism, wonderfully played by the director's mother, Cindy Silver. Carla houses pregnant mothers-to-be, providing room, board, homeschooling, and clear-eyed advice of the sort skimmed over in high school health classes. Carla also offers them, in the form of her nephew, drama, temptation, and a kind of dopey hope. Robbie might be fleeing a marriage that is collapsing and an adult life that hasn't quite worked out, but to several of the teens he offers what the fathers of their children cannot: a seeming maturity, a willingness to listen, his mere presence. Nina (India Menuez), a ginger slip of a girl just starting to show, succeeds in catching Robbie's eye — and in their early scenes of connection, all sweetly underplayed, the film honors our sense of the wrongheadedness of their surprise feelings and desires but also the crushed-out promise that they rouse in each other. Nothing between these two can end well, especially with Nina's hotheaded kind-of/sort-of boyfriend (Casey Drogin) skulking about, but it's hard not to be stirred by the way the air between Nina and Robbie seems to tingle — the way something seems to bloom in their eyes.
The film is a brisk breath of fresh air. It's brief. The acting is done extremely well. Each little vignette, be it a birthday party or doing school work together, or just having conversations, move the story along rather well, and most importantly, Silver does not present each character's story as a punishment or something unfixable. Their lives are not bleak with no light at the end of the tunnel. Indie films like this are great because the people in them are relatable. They hurt like we hurt. They connect like we connect. And they move on like we often find ourselves needing to move on.
........................................................................................
"3 Nights in the Desert"
starring: Wes Bentley, Vincent Piazza, Amber Tamblyn
written by: Adam Chanzit
directed by: Gabriel Cowan
Wes Bentley, Vincent Piazza, and Amber Tamblyn play three characters who used to be in a band together (a decade ago) and seemingly were on the verge of stardom before calling it quits with each other thanks to some inner-band fighting and lack of cohesiveness in the direction they wanted to go with the band. Travis, Barry, and Anna agree to meet up again, on the verge of their shared 30th birthdays, for three nights in the desert, in the hopes of cleaning out their respective closets and coming clean about skeletons that seemed to be related to an awful, cliche love triangle; but also Travis (Bentley) has hopes that this trip into the desert will inspire a sort of reunion between the kindred spirits and it will reignite the creative spark in all of them and they can finally record the album they never did. And as cliche as it has become nowadays, the filmmakers chose the Joshua Tree as the place for this reunion to take place.
Our introduction to this trio is a fitting college radio interview from the height of their “fame”. The pointed question is asked, “Where do you see yourselves in ten years?” Making good music would have been a good answer. Barry forsees making good choices. But Travis announces, “We’ll either be famous or dead.” He is almost right. Turns out, their answers reveal more about their respective goals than they knew. When the band broke up – the reason is never explicitly explained but definitely Travis’s fault – pill-popping Anna went on to a mildly successful pop career. Barry settled for being a tax attorney and the cookie cutter ideal of middle class America. Travis disappeared off the face of the Earth only to be found years later living like a hermit in the California desert with a massive scar across his throat and a severe limp. A tree failed to finish the job when he lost his one musical outlet and simultaneously the will to live.
But this erstwhile hermit has reemerged, inviting his friends to join him for a spirit journey in the desert. Regardless of their individual issues with Travis, Anna and Barry can’t resist the appeal of such an offer. And Cowan cleverly plays up the mysticism of the desert life. Night one sees Travis guide his friends through the brush to a secluded cave, and in hushed tones, he tells them that this magical cave grants all who enter not their greatest wish but their greatest need. Bentley’s undeniable talents are on display here, if nowhere else, breathing life into the cunning Travis. Sure, the whole thing is a ploy to peak Anna and Barry’s curiosity and control the narrative for this reunion weekend. But for a few moments it allows this trite film to be lifted out of the realm of middling storytelling.
Wes Bentley does a great job with his character of Travis, but unfortunately his character is the only one of the three that you care anything about. The rest of the story just falls flat.
......................................................................................
"Hard Drive"
starring: Douglass Smith, Laura Wiggins, Megan Follows
written and directed by: William D. MacGillivray
This is a great, small, indie film discovery for me. It's a heartbreaking character study of two rather different young people with separate issues who still find a way to become friends instantly, perhaps under the disguise of one being able to save the other and vice versa.
Douglas Smith plays a young man named Ditch and he really becomes this boy. He is a young man without a future. He lives at home with his mom, has never met his mother, and seems to be an aspiring musician. His mom is trying and has been trying to get him moving on with his life and like most mother's she wants better for him. One evening, after a gig at a small club for his band, Ditch meets Debs (the excellent Laura Wiggins whose otherwise claim to fame was an appearance on the MTV dating show "Next" as well as a great supporting role on the Showtime show "Shameless" which I now have to check out, as soon as I can). Laura Wiggins is enthralling and not just because of her girl-next-door appearance (she's looks like the younger version of Taylor Swift, when Taylor came out as a teenage country star). Okay, I was instantly hooked and attracted to her because of this, but, I was also drawn to her performance as Debs- a girl who is alone with just a laptop and cellphone as her possessions, as well as some deep dark secret behind her eyes. There's a tattoo on her back as well, that seems to be the key to something. Debs rents a room in Ditch's home and the two become very close instantly, sharing her mattress and having sex in an extended scene.
It is made very clear that Ditch falls in love with her and will ultimately do anything for this troubled girl. He finds out about her secret and wants to help her, to vindicate her, even though he's unaware of just how awful things are for Debs. He wants to be her savior. She, though, just wants a friend she can rely on.
Douglas Smith and Laura Wiggins are forced to carry almost the entire film, and they do a great job, although Wiggins is the standout performer. Debs will allow Ditch to come close, but then will also quickly push him away. We can see that there’s something she needs help with, but there’s also a concern that she could just be too much trouble for Ditch. Viewers will spend almost the entire film with a nagging sensation about Debs, wanting Ditch to try and help her but also stay away from her. When we finally realize what is actually going on, the resolution takes a bit too long to arrive. The story of two different souls finding each other in the world, and eventually helping each other in ways nobody else could, isn’t new, but there are some very unique twists on the idea here. Not every decision makes sense at first, and only becomes clear when the entire picture comes together.
I found myself enthralled by the story, even though it seemed to develop slowly, there's a slow burning effect to finding out the truth.
This is a great film, but be prepared to have your heart broken for Debs.
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