Dir - Alex Henes/Matthew Merenda
Overall: WOOF
A frustrating full-length debut from the writer/director team of Alex Henes and Matthew Merenda, Mind Body Spirit has a nifty gimmick that is ripe for tearing faux-enlightenment influencer culture a new asshole, but it indulges in the biggest found footage no-nos along its clunky path. On the one hand, it seems unavoidable for Henes and Merenda to utilize any other format than the found footage one since this is a story about a troubled young woman who embarks on an online journal, documenting her "journey" after inheriting her weird grandmother's old house. Yet by going this route, the filmmakers set themselves up for an endless stream of moments that take the viewer right out of the proceedings. This includes the use of scary music, ambient sound effects, those obnoxiously blaring noise swells that contemporary horror movies seem required by law to include, and the camera being turned on any time that the audience needs to see something scary, plausibility be damned. Despite its subject matter which is predicated exclusively on Sarah J. Bartholomew recording herself, (except for a tag at the end), it is all edited and structured like a conventional film, plus the plot is too hackneyed with its vague occult tropes to pass Alfred Hitchcock's icebox test. And for fuck's sake, can we finally stop with the characters opening their mouths and screaming into the camera gag please?
Dir - Daniel Kokotajlo
Overall: MEH
For his second full-length, British filmmaker Daniel Kokotailo adapts Andrew Michael Hurley's novel Starve Acre, which serves as a more lackluster and cold variant to Valdimar Jóhannsson's singularly strange Lamb from 2021. Set in the 1970s, it has a couple losing their child in the first act, (a weird kid who exhibits anti-social behavior like murdering a horse and having an imaginary friend of sorts whisper unwholesome things in his ear, or so he claims), who then embark on less than agreeable coping mechanisms in their ensuing grief. The tone is humorless and deliberately uninviting as we are never allowed to connect with Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark's aloof characters, instead just witnessing their behavior as spectators like they are some unknowing experiment to supernatural manipulation. One has to stretch to come to such a conclusion though since the otherworldly elements are murky at best, plus the pacing suffers because of both this and the dour atmosphere that is not helped by persistent music from Matthew Herbert. This would work if the film had a more engrossing and underlying mystery, but it is more lackadaisical and unclear than spooky, with the curious elements spread out so gingerly as to almost be indecipherable.
Dir - Jason Yu
Overall: GOOD
The debut Sleep from Bong Joon-ho collaborator Jason Yu rides a thin line throughout its three chapters, chronicling the psychological turmoil suffered by a devoted couple who is both expecting their first child and dealing with the fact that one of them is a violent sleepwalker. On paper, this is nothing new, as the horror genre has long presented its characters in vague enough lighting to put their paranoia in the perspective where what we are witnessing could be of supernatural origin or merely the unreliable outcome of a mental breakdown. Yu does remarkable things with this set-up though, which is down to the details by which he allows us to immerse ourselves with the characters played by Jung Yu-mi and Lee Sun-kyun, (the latter sadly delivering one of his last performances before his untimely suicide the following year). They are relatable, likeable, and seem to have a warm relationship where the honeymoon phase has yet to pass. This both builds a solid footing for their sticking together when things get impossible and it makes their harrowing ordeal shift the earlier comedic focus into a well-earned darker tone towards the finale. Every step of the way, we are left to ponder exactly who was crazy and who was just playing along to keep the family together, but as the characters themselves allude to, it ultimately does not matter. So long as "it's over", they can live to fight other battles that life throws at them.
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