Dir - Anthony Scott Burns
Overall: MEH
Narratively speaking, filmmaker Anthony Scott Burns' Come True is a misguided mess despite its stylistic integrity. Prominently featuring a synth-pop score from Toronto-based duo Electric Youth and filmed in a deliberately intangible manner, visually it combines expressive cinematography with unnerving, black and gray dream representations of sleep paralysis shadow men or night hags in a traditional sense. The ambitious, tranquil presentation matches the subject matter rather ideally, very gradually guiding the audience through a stream of increasingly confusing and disturbing set pieces. This is both a good and bad thing. Burns seems very much in control of the material in a visceral sense, but at the same time, whatever he is going for psychologically gets lost along the way. Some of this can be "explained" with a twist-ending, but such a thing seems more of a throw-away than a convincingly thought-provoking tag to finish on. Too many elements are glossed-over to excuse the unfocused plot, which is a shame in that everything else is rather flawlessly executed from a production standpoint.
Dir - Madeleine Sims-Fewer/Dusty Mancinelli
Overall: GOOD
The full-length debut Violation from Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli takes a somewhat pretentious stab at the feminist revenge sub-genre though mostly in a successful way. In addition to co-directing, co-writing, and co-producing with Mancinelli, Sims-Fewer stars as a deeply troubled and traumatized woman who seems to both invite and become victimized by dysfunction. The script wisely refuses to paint her in one-dimensional colors, which plays psychologically on the audience. Making a protagonist's horrific acts also sympathetic to varying degrees is always an ambitious trick and the very earnest presentation helps pull it off. The film is also bold in its non-chronological narrative and frequent detours into artful, slow motion close-ups, plus a harrowing musical score conveys an appropriately uncomfortable amount of dread. This is not to say that the movie relies exclusively on suggestion as it is bluntly explicit in its violence and nudity, neither of which is played for exploitative effect. Some of the characterizations can afford to be less impenetrable, but despite its heavy-handed nature, it remains primarily thought-provoking and admirably fearless.
Dir - Jim Cummings
Overall: GOOD
For his second full-length behind the lens, actor/filmmaker Jim Cummings crafts a genuinely quirky horror comedy with The Wolf of Snow Hollow. Also serving as the penultimate screen appearance of Robert Forster, the film has been described as the closest available to the Coen brothers making a genre film. Set in rural, snow-covered Utah and centered around a father/son sheriff team in over their heads with a slew of grizzly murders and frustrated townsfolk, Cummings' dry, purposely dark humor is cleverly delivered due to the off-beat structure. Various montages, anger-fueled outbursts, and frustrated bickering are played for comedic effect even as the narrative circumstances are predominantly bloody and disturbing. The film could be accused of being overtly bitter in some instances if not for a genuine, heartfelt undercurrent which is greatly benefited by consistently good performances. There are some cliched plot elements, a twist ending that is not entirely necessary, and for a werewolf movie, it is in fact rather short on lycanthropian escapades. All that said though, the character-driven emphasis makes such shortcomings rather unimportant.
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