Dir - Robbie Banfitch
Overall: WOOF
Possibly the worst offender of "unwatchable cinematography" in any found footage movie, (which has long been a legitimate complaint hurtled at the sub-genre), The Outwaters melds impossible to decipher visuals with comatose pacing and a bloated running time. The first full-length from Robbie Banfitch since 2007's White Light, the filmmaker handles all levels of production and is virtually the only person on screen for more than half of it, not that anyone could notice. It cannot be understated how poor the found footage framework is used here as Banfitch holds on to his camera for no reason whatsoever, letting it hang by its side or upside down, pointing it in random directions, and carrying it with him when his character seemingly ventures into a hellish underworld. While the daytime, Mojave Desert sequences are claustrophobic enough with extreme, blurry close-ups and shots of inconsequential nonsense, (including the first forty-five to fifty minutes which is apparently still not enough time to get to know or care about its small group of characters), the scenes at night are an entirely different and frustrating ballgame. With either a tiny pocket flashlight's worth of illumination rapidly scattering all over the frame or worse yet just pitch blackness and a cacophony of muffled camera shuffling noises and freaky sound effects, you may as well just run into a hurricane with tar in your eyes for two hours and get the same experience.
Dir - Justin Benson/Aaron Moorhead
Overall: MEHThe latest genre mash-up Something in the Dirt from filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead continues their fascination with cosmic realities and trippy science fiction ideas and is back to an indie scale after the comparatively larger budgeted Synchronic from 2019. Both collaborators carry the movie on screen as well, with Benson playing a down on his luck deadbeat with a rap sheet and Moorhead as a divorced member of an evangelical, apocalyptic church who each team up to uncover strange phenomenon in their Los Angeles apartment building. There are a lot of concepts being explored here, too many in fact to keep up, which involve mathematical patterns, coincidences, secret societies, ancient aliens, inner dimensional doorways, and gravitational pulls to name some of the more prominent ones. The film's primary agenda is dealing with how these obsessions bond/cause tension between the two protagonists, but Benson's script alludes to just as many psychological elements as it does mystical and pseudo-scientific ones. In other words, it is an ambitious project that spirals into numerous directions without properly landing on anything for long enough to ponder. It is also a bold move to present it as a part documentary, with interview and archival footage mixed in with an otherwise conventional cinematic framework that confuses things that much more.
Dir - Lorcan Finnegan
Overall: GOOD
The latest from Irish director Lorcan Finnegan and screenwriter Garret Shanley, Nocebo offers up a few unique and freaky ideas within a familiar "mysterious caregiver" framework. Foreign mysticism has often been presented as sinister in Anglo productions where well-to-do white people come face to face with ancient magic from an impoverished part of the world, but Shanley's story here does not use such a concept for cliched, insensitive purposes. Instead, its main goal is to shine a light on the injustices suffered by sweat shop labor at the hands of capitalist mores. In some ways, the characterizations are sensationalized for dramatic effect, (Eva Green as the wealthy, oblivious fashion designer and Chai Fonacier as the Filipino witch lady that is out for comeuppance), but the sympathetic shift is satisfying if still contrived. Such manipulation plays into the plot as well where the audience knows that Fonacier's mysterious house servant is up to something even if those around her are either trusting or eventually suspicious under the wrong assumptions. The otherworldly details have the appropriate and disturbing psychological effect as well, offering up some nifty black magic set pieces for genre fans.
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