Dir - Quarxx
Overall: GOOD
Though imperfect since its Lars Von Trier-worthy cynicism becomes an intentional endurance test, Pandemonium from French multimedia artist and filmmaker Quarxx is singular enough to maintain one's interest if they can tolerate its unforgiving nature. A fantastic opening sequence finds two humorously logical men contemplating their new otherworldly predicament as a pair of doorways appear on a stretch of road that is becoming increasingly snow-covered. What follows are two more detours that turn the film into an anthology, and even though Quarxx throws in some opaque humor everywhere, (except in his almost unwatchabley bleak tale of a mother who cannot cope with her teenage daughter succumbing to unwarranted bullying), the story has a clear agenda that is far from user friendly. This is that mankind is inherently evil and doomed to suffer throughout eternity, but on the plus side, the whole thing borders on spectacle as far as its aesthetics go. Everything from the aforementioned deserted mountain road, to deformed monsters, to a glamorously decorated mansion, to the ashy underworld of doomed souls casts a fetching aura that forgives the narrative loose ends and austere tone. It may not leave you feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, but most viewers will be hooked on the dour ride.
Dir - Jacob Byrd
Overall: MEH
Overall: MEH
Coming from the indie writer/director team of Jerrod D. Brito and Jacob Byrd, Adalynn is a postpartum psychological nightmare with its heart in the right place, but its noble ambition is undermined by inadequate production means. The story is sufficient if not unique. Sydney Carvill plays a mother who is struggling with all of the textbook new baby blues, except she also suffers from severe OCD, panic attacks, and is instructed not to take neither her meds nor any alcohol to help levitate the symptoms when her "way too dashingly handsome to be convincingly cast as a doctor" husband leaves her alone for a number of days because work. Carvill narrates her own journaling, gets no sleep, is impulsively moody, finds it impossible to bond with her newborn daughter, and worse yet, starts spiraling into a series of hallucinations that lead to a plot twist that most viewers will be able to predict within the first few minutes. Everything is in its appropriate place, but Byrd is equipped with limited funds here and the more well-versed, (i.e. cynical), audience member will be able to notice the cost-cutting measures every step of the way. This is excusable of course, but Carvill and her supporting players occasionally embarrass themselves with hackneyed dialog, plus Byrd uses scare tactics that would be unforgivably lame even in an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark?.
Dir - Amanda Nell Eu
Overall: GOOD
A solid, multi-national co-production between eight different countries including Malaysia from which it is set, Tiger Stripes utilizes the common coming-of-age motif where blossoming womanhood leads to bestial transformation. The debut from writer/director Amanda Nell Eu, it has a familiar enough premise that has been used in your Ginger Snaps and Perpetrators to name but two, but the specific focus on a young girl who gets her first period while being systematically shunned by her friends, ignored by her father, and berated by her teachers and mother is given a singular trajectory. Newcomer Zafreen Zairizal turns in a pitch-perfect performance as such a young girl who exhibits innocently rebellious behavior before she starts literally transforming into something that no one in her community, (least of all herself), can handle. There is something to be said about the long stretches that go by where no adults seem to be either aware or concerned with the chain of events that are happening to their children, going about their routines until things have gone too far, which is when they hilariously bring in a huckster exorcist that is more concerned with getting social media likes than actually expelling evil. Even as things become more violent and silly, Nell Eu treats her characters with nothing but empathy, making this an honest genre exaggeration about how rough it is being a kid, as well as how the expectations that we place on those kids can inadvertently unleash the beast in them.
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