Dir - Gillian Wallace Horvat
Overall: MEH
There is a moment in the finale to Gilliam Wallace Horvat's full-length debut I Blame Society where the footage from the entire movie is shown to two douchebag millennial producers and one of them proclaims that they "didn't buy it" due to its lack of plausibility. To say that Horvat's work here is "implausible" is an understatement of course since the premise is absurd, but her overarching theme supports such absurdity. As a meta commentary on gender expectations, the movie addresses all the criticisms that can be launched at it, and there are many. Horvat is the main subject of her own film, playing a fictionalized version of herself who has "snapped" due to the inherent frustrations of her chosen field and the way in which ambitious young filmmakers, (particularly female ones), are expected to fit into a mold. She is unlikable, unpredictable, delusional, and uncomfortable to watch, never coming off like a real person because she behaves in a way that is only meant to prop up what she feels is expected of her as a frustrated and aloof filmmaker playing a frustrated and aloof filmmaker. Each moment that obliterates verisimilitude is addressed by Horvat herself, so she is one step ahead of her audience the whole way through. This makes it a unique watch, but also a frustrating one that is aware of its own faults yet includes them on purpose.
Dir - Shana Feste
Overall: MEH
The first work in horror from American filmmaker Shana Feste, Run Sweetheart Run is an ambitious mess that tries to be the be all end all supernatural bad ass feminist revenge movie, throwing caution and plausibility to the wind in the process. Feste can be applauded for her pretensions here as much as she can be derided for them, crafting a film that cranks up the schlock to eleven while simultaneously beating its girl power themes into the ground. By design, one cannot fault Feste for telling the tale that she does, pitting Ella Balinska's aspiring law student and single mother up against a force of pure evil. Perfectly cast since Game of Throne fans will already want to punch him in the face when he pops up on screen, Pilou Asbæk portrays a creature that is basically the very concept of misogyny if it was given a flesh suit, and he behaves like a vampire yet technically is not. Feste breaks the fourth wall, flashes the word "Run!" on screen multiple times to slam home the point, and sends Balinska on a Homer-esque odyssey through dingy Los Angeles where she is met by disaster at every turn, gets rescued in the nick of time ad nauseam, and the police arrest her for public drunkenness when she is clearly terrified and running from an abuser. There are boatloads of other plot holes along the route, but the tone is kinetically charged so that when we get to the third act which is an unmitigated disaster, it all seems to make some kind of "sense" in its twisted and determined trajectory to undo the evils of female oppression and toxic masculinity once and for all. Here here to that, but such an agenda deserves a movie that is less unintentionally silly.
Dir - Joe Marcantonio
Overall: MEH
This full-length debut from filmmaker Joe Marcantonio is one of those frustrating gaslighting thrillers where the main protagonist cannot get a break and those who are keeping her at bay get away with it time and time again. Kindred also teases around vague symbolism in its one-note narrative where Tamara Lawrance is kept under unofficially lock and key by her ludicrously wealthy mother and law and said mother in law's spinless son, all after she finds out that she is pregnant by her recently deceased husband who fully intended to leave his family's entitled clutches before tragedy struck. We continually see crows perching outside of Lawrance's window where she is kept "for the good of the baby", and these airborne harbingers of doom contribute significantly to a set piece in the finally, but what exactly their purpose is besides offering up a lone, (and needless), supernatural component is never clear. Furthermore, it hardly seems to be a concern since Marcantonio and co-writer Jason McColgan's script exclusively deals with Lawrance asking to leave, trying to leave, and being brought back to her faux-benevolent captors over and over again. The tone, performances, and dialog occasionally allude to the movie having something to say about establishing one's independence from their parents, the fear of becoming a parent, the encroaching trauma of our parent's mental illness, (or various other things), but it simply never arrives there.
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