Tag Archives: Independent film

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CAPSULE: LO (2009)

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DIRECTED BY: Travis Betz

FEATURING: Ward Roberts, Jeremiah Birkett, Sarah Lassez

PLOT: Justin uses a spell book to summon the infernal spirit Lo to help him see his dead girlfriend once again, but the demon uses every trick possible to avoid fulfilling the command.

Still from Lo (2009)

COMMENTS: There have been many movies about demonic possession, but few about demonic summoning… and no other, that I can think of, where almost the entire movie plays out from inside the safety of a pentagram. (Lo‘s closest competition for time spent inside a thaumaturgic circle might be Viy.) For the first five minutes we watch Justin, in a pitch black room lit solely by candles, painstakingly (if clumsily) construct this magical barrier, following the instructions etched on the yellowed parchment of an ancient grimoire, christening the ritual with his own blood. He then speaks the magic incantation and successfully summons the demon Lo, a pathetic yet powerful devil with a partly exposed brain and useless crushed legs which force him to painfully drag himself from out of the inky blackness towards his summoner, angry and defiant but unable to cross the enchanted barrier and devour Justin’s soul. The spell Justin cast compels a boon from this creature. You see, he saw a demon drag his girlfriend off to Hell, and now he wants her back—or at least to see her one last time. And Lo must meet Justin’s demand—although, in classic Mephistophelian fashion, the spirit isn’t above resorting to temptations, tricks, half-truths, and twisting Justin’s requests in any way he can.

The way Lo achieves its aesthetic aims on a minimal budget is nothing less than magical. Darkness is an ally; the set is a essentially black box, props are minimal, and only the demon costumes consume a significant amount of dollars. The flashbacks that supply the backstory are told through reenactments on a stage Lo conjures in Justin’s darkened apartment. There are red curtains, applause, visible stagehands, and comedy and tragedy masks that react to the proceedings. For additional color, Lo also summons a fuzzy green demon rat, a lizard-headed Nazi demon, a pair of damned silhouettes who press against a saran wrap wall as they describe the torments of Hell, and a couple of (mediocre, but welcome) musical numbers.

The story advances almost entirely through the antagonistic dialogues of the demon and his summoner. Chances are good that you will guess the twist ending early on; but it’s such a perfect construct that it doesn’t detract from the poignancy of the reveal. Who can’t relate to falling in love with the wrong person, a love that might be mutual and true, but which fate and circumstance dictates must be temporary? And who can’t relate to the compulsion to understand the true reasons behind a disappearance, however horrible the answer might be? As breakup movies go, Lo supplies a real, mythic catharsis.

With all that it has going for it, I would love to nominate Lo for our supplemental Apocryphally Weird list. Is it ingenious? Definitely. Engaging? Undoubtedly. Passionate? Sincerely. Recommended? You know it. Weird? Ah, here is where the favorable adjectives falter. Lo is well off the beaten path of the average filmgoer—the one who doesn’t frequent this site. What we see in Lo, though, isn’t so much weird as offbeat, rare, counter-Hollywood: unusual in its approach, by necessity, but not so far out-there that it makes us question our notions of reality, or if what a film can and should be. So, despite the fact that we give Lo a high rating, we won’t be adding it to our List. That doesn’t mean we’re giving you a pass to skip it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a peculiar and experimental horror film about love gained, love lost, and the demons that can stand in your way. ‘Lo’ is an odd twist on Faust, and an entertaining indie film that impresses with its bare essential filmmaking.”–Felix Vaquez, Cinema Crazed (DVD)

(This movie was nominated for review by Kat, who argued “I’m a little surprised not to see Travis Betz’s Lo (2009) on the suggestion list. Like Ink, its imitations and inspirations are pretty obvious– but I personally think it outstrips Ink in a few key areas, never over-stepping its budget. I found it a little more bizarre, too, in the way it takes a simple trope of a premise and reels continually between drama and dark comedy.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Capsules

CAPSULE: WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE (1995)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Heather Matarazzo, , Matthew Faber

PLOT: The trials and tribulations of Dawn Wiener, the least popular girl in her middle school (and in her own family).

COMMENTS: With it’s unflinching depiction of junior high social dynamics—including a bully who angrily promises to “rape” his twelve-year-old schoolmate, treating it as the male-female equivalent of an afterschool fight—Welcome to the Dollhouse was a shocker in 1995. Most previous Hollywood coming-of-age movies were nostalgic comedies where the even nerdiest outcasts had their moments to shine (a la The Breakfast Club). Classics like Zéro de conduite (1933) and If…. (1968) focused on the dark side of schoolboy fascism, but operated more as surreal political allegories than slice-of-life character studies. Although one probably exists, I can’t think of a pre-Dollhouse movie that focused so masochistically on its protagonist’s fatal unpopularity. The 400 Blows comes close, but it still features a charismatic antihero who triumphs through rebellion. Solondz allows Dawn Wiener no triumphs, symbolic or otherwise.

The courage to take on such on a then-unusual subject as teenage bullying and abuse made Dollhouse seem like a work of startling realism to many. Many of the episodes seem taken from real life: the outcast kid’s anxiety over finding a place to sit in the lunchroom, for example, or a group of cheerleaders asking the nerdy kid if she’s a lesbian and not taking no for an answer. But most of the story is only emotionally true. Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents took some home videos and you did something mildly embarrassing like stumbling in the pool, and when they played it back you were sure everyone was pointing and laughing at you? In Welcome to the Dollhouse, the whole family is actually pointing and laughing at you when they play it back, calling you out by name, actively enjoying your humiliation. And can we actually believe that Dawn could run away from her middle-class home—in the midst of a separate family tragedy—and her disappearance go virtually unnoticed? We see these events through Dawn Weiner’s paranoid preteen eyes, and while she’s perfect at conveying her own feelings of alienation, she’s an unreliable narrator as to external events.

This ironic tone—the light-hearted world of childhood, with its secret clubs and garage bands and first kisses that we expect from these kinds of coming-of-age movies, coupled with the far more realistic scenes of kids being mean to each other and being psychologically and neglected abused by their elders—may strike some as “weird.” To be honest, I find that while Dollhouse was a revelation in its day, its not the landmark many feel it to be. It isn’t nearly the gut-punch that ‘ much darker and more bizarre followup, Happiness, was. And, though far be it for me to recommend realist movies, I found Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade (2018), a straightforward drama hopskotching across approximately the same pavement, to be a better and more moving treatment of similar subject matter. This material calls for unflinching truthfulness, it needs no varnishing. Middle school is awkward and horrible for everyone, and for kids at the status-poor end of the social spectrum, it’s truly hellish. Though frequently called a “black comedy,” there’s precious little to actually raise a smile in Welcome to the Dollhouse, and its mixture of painful realism and morbid exaggeration doesn’t feel revolutionary anymore. The sadness of Dawn’s plight still comes through as jaggedly as ever, however. Thank goodness middle school only last three years (and that Dollhouse only lasts 90 minutes).

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“[Solondz] shows the kind of unrelenting attention to detail that is the key to satire… If you can see this movie without making a mental hit list of the kids who made your 11th year a torment, then you are kinder, or luckier, than me.”–Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by Frank, who called it “Uncomfortable to watch at times, but watched it several times since it came out in the mid-90s.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Capsules

CAPSULE: ALIENS, CLOWNS, & GEEKS (2019)

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DIRECTED BY: Richard Elfman

FEATURING: Bodhi Elfman, Rebecca Forsythe, Steve Agee, French Stewart

PLOT: Clown aliens, green aliens, Chinese gangsters, and government agents are all keen to get their hands on a mysterious obelisk that emerged from Eddy’s ass; Eddy would gladly be spared the bother.

Still from Aliens, Clowns & Geeks (2019)

COMMENTS: Depending upon your threshold for staggering silliness, Aliens, Clowns, & Geeks will either repel you right away, or draw you in like a frisky fly to a custard pie. The menu is baked in the title, and the chef of this mad meal is spray-painted in candy right there for all to see. This is an Elfman film. Oingo Boingo’s Richard Elfman wrote and directed it, Richard’s boy Bodhi stars in it, Bodhi’s uncle Danny composed the score, Danny’s sister-in-law Anastasia co-stars, and assorted B-movie luminaries flesh out the surrounding cast to deliver as non-stop an outing into fun-time idiocy as I’ve seen since the ’90s.

Overcoming the threat of further nostalgia, I’ll nip it in the bud with this: that innocent decade is where AC&G belongs. This film exists in a permeating atmosphere of un-thought-out nonsensicality and naïve whimsy, teetering along the slicked edge of guffaw and “Good God, why…?” Eddy Pine is a charmless actor and—scratch that, I’ll let him speak for himself: “My mother’s a junkie whore. My father’s an alien from outer space. Killer clowns are out to get me. My asshole’s the portal to the Sixth Dimension – and they cancelled my fucking series! Do you really think everything’s going to be ok?” The first part of Eddy’s lament summarizes the story. As for his question, I spoil no thinking-person’s anticipations by stating here and now: Yes, everything’s going to be okay. Because the Elfmans (Elfmen?) are in charge here.

There were innumerable moments where I half-conceived the thought, “Oh, just move on from this stup-”; but, by the time I had nearly formulated my kvetch, they had moved on. On the outside chance that the on-screen clowning, both literal and figurative, wasn’t enough to keep kicking the antics along, the score reliably schlepps the actors and audience into the next schtick. (Some quick math has just informed me that 83% of the proceedings have full-blown Elfman scoring, heightening the descent into Elfmania.)

Further reflection on ACG does summon hazy complaints about how very little of it actually works; but for this film, reflection is the enemy. While watching, one does not have time to think about what’s going on—such as why the two smokin’ hot Swedes fall for -lite Bodhi, or how Doctor von Scheisenberg (“sh*t mountain”) knows so much about the 18” plinth from Eddy’s posterior—and that is for the best. Just kick back and let the Elfman clan administer an invigorating seltzer-blast into your eyeball.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Elfman’s Aliens, Clowns, & Geeks is 86 minutes of weird, strange silliness.” -Alan Ng, Film Threat (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: WYRM (2019)

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Wyrm is currently available for VOD rental or purchase.

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DIRECTED BY: Christopher Winterbauer

FEATURING: Theo Taplitz, Azure Brandi, Tommy Dewey, Lulu Wilson

PLOT: A geeky young boy must kiss a girl to pass his required Sexuality 101 course and “pop his collar.”

Still from Wyrm (2019)

COMMENTS: The basic scenario is like a tween version of The Lobster. The themes and characters resemble a much lighter Welcome to the Dollhouse or a much darker Napoleon Dynamite, with more than a  dash of thrown into the stew. Wyrm doesn’t shy away from such comparisons; its IMDB synopsis describes it as “equal parts Yorgos Lanthimos and (but gentler).” Yet, despite wearing its influences on its sleeve, and despite covering the well-trod awkward-teen-coming-to-grips-with-his/her-place-in-society terrain, Wyrm never feels derivative; it confidently inhabits its own world.

The first-kiss collar is obviously the strangest element to this world, but the movie’s first half is filled with off-kilter comedy sketches: a pair of girls practice kissing by pecking at each other mechanically on a bus stop bench, Uncle Chet cooks the family nachos for dinner every night and serves them with tongs, and Wyrm’s twin sister warns him not to watch her practice her dance routine because “it’s provocative.” For obscure reasons, the story is also set at the dawn of the Internet, and reverent references to the Web weave throughout the narrative (“it’s like… everything,” whispers the school guidance counselor, his eyes glued to his screen.) The film’s second half is a maturity arc, as Wyrm stops focusing solely on his own troubles and instead explores and appreciates the feelings and struggles of those around him: his acerbic twin sister whose nasty demeanor hides the fact that she’s dealing with her own insecurities; Uncle Chet, who appears goofy but is ultimately a stand-up guy; Chet’s paramour Flor, a sexy senorita whose lack of English skills doesn’t mean she doesn’t see what’s going on in the family; his distant parents, a perpetually-constipated father and a mother who fled the homestead for an epic months-long trek; and a sarcastic wheelchair-bound older girl whose subdued hostility to Wyrm comes from a painful place. They are an economically-sketched society of characters who work on multiple levels, both comic foils and participants in an emotional journey.

Part absurdist farce and part earnest bildungsroman, the movie’s two agendas seem like they should work at cross purposes—but while you can sometimes see the seams, it all comes together as a charming addition to the quirky teen outcast genre. As it nears the finish line, the eccentricity and comedy start to fall away, replaced by an honest reckoning of the emotionally real effects of the film’s central tragedy. The two halves might feel like completely different movies—an offbeat teen comedy welded onto a sincere teen drama—but the transition isn’t jarring. It feels like a natural journey. The imaginary coping mechanisms of childhood drop away like Wyrm’s discarded dinosaur shirts, or a popped collar.

You can see the original 20-minute short film on Christopher Winterbauer’s Vimeo channel. Many scenes were recreated almost verbatim.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The film is consistently funny, drawing a fine line between a classic coming-of-age comedy and a bonkers absurdist farce, but it shines in the amount of tenderness it brings to the screen. Balancing such strange humor with genuinely heartfelt moments is a tricky thing, and Winterbauer navigates these waters with relative ease.”–Adam Patterson, Film Pulse (festival screening)

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022)

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DIRECTED BY:  ( and )

FEATURING: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis, James Hong

PLOT: Evelyn Wang is barely keeping it together, running a business and raising a family while the threat of an IRS audit hangs over her head; as if that wasn’t enough stress, just before a last-chance appointment with her stern auditor, a visitor from a parallel universe tells her the fate of the multiverse lies in her hands.

Still from Everything Everywhere all at Once (2022)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Based on the trailer, I had originally assumed this was going to be Daniels’ mainstream popcorn movie: a sci-fi/action/comedy not likely to be significantly weirder than The Matrix or the latest Marvel Phase 4 offering. And while there were plenty of wisecracks, kung fu free -for-alls, sentimentality, and CGI frippery, the makers of Swiss Army Man  snuck enough genuine weirdness and unpredictability into the formula that, as the credits rolled, a young theater patron was moved to loudly announce “bizarre is the only word that describes that.”

COMMENTS: Evelyn is a hot mess: a hot mess in a quiet, middle-aged matron kind of way, but a hot mess nevertheless. Harried and constantly distracted, she vainly tries to balance running her laundry business with an overextended social life. She also has to deal with the family members constantly vying for her attention: neglected husband Waymond, lesbian daughter Joy and her new girlfriend, and disapproving, ailing father Gong Gong. It’s no wonder that Evelyn’s 1040 was selected for audit, and that she’s having enough trouble filling out the forms correctly and collecting the proper receipts and documentation that the business is in danger. And so it’s also little surprise that, when told by an interdimensional emissary that the fate of the entire multiverse depends on her, her response is an exasperated “Very busy today, no time to help you.”

But of course, help she reluctantly does. After the setup, the movie reveals its relatively complicated mechanics about infinite universes that branch off at individual’s decision points (i.e., marry Waymond or don’t marry Waymond creates a new universe, as does eating eggs for breakfast instead of noodles), all leading to a network of bubble universes that are visualized as nodes on a smartphone app. A helpful avatar of her husband from the “Alpha” universe explains the evil force threatening all existence (which involves a “bagel of everything”) and how Evelyn can access the skills and knowledge of versions of herself from parallel universes to counter it. So she does, with both badass successes and wacky failures along the way.

With its focus on branching realities, the Canonically Weird movie Everything Everywhere all at Once most resembles is Mr. Nobody (2009) rather than Swiss Army Man. In fact, it’s Nobody to the nth degree: where ‘s cult classic confined itself to three main alternate histories (with notable detours like the argyle universe), Everything attempts to live up to its title with dozens upon dozens of alternate realities, from simple ones where Evelyn is a martial arts expert or a movie star to bizarre worlds where she’s a piñata, a sentient rock, or (the audience’s favorite) a lesbian in a universe where everyone has hot dog fingers. Adding to the eccentricity, the Daniels posit that it’s necessary to seed a jump to a new universe by performing an unpredictable action like eating an entire tube of ChapStick or—in another audience favorite scene—finding an unconventional use for a suggestively shaped IRS auditor’s award.

The script requires almost every actor to play multiple roles, and the ensemble acting is about as good as it gets. Everyone shines, although naturally it’s Yeoh who holds it all together with a performance that recalls (and references) her Hong Kong roots in wuxia films, as well as her recent turn to comedy with Crazy Rich Asians. And a special kudos have to be given to 93-year-old James Hong, for whom this would be an excellent cherry on the top of an incredible 450-role career (except that he still has more films coming out, and may be trying to hit 500 credits before he passes the century mark).

Ultimately, all the apocalyptic furor relates to events in Evelyn’s real universe—uh, the universe we started in, that is. My only slight reservation is with the ending, which gets a bit sappy in delivering its honorably intended “love yourself, faults and all” message. On the other hand, not everyone is a black-hearted cynic like me, and most audience members seemed as moved by the film’s pathos as they were invigorated by its action and amused by its comedy. In the end, this impressive feature comes pretty close to delivering Everything, with bizarre and imaginative conceits delivered at a hyper pace that does make it sometimes seem like they’re happening All at Once. Everything Everywhere all at Once is recommended for everyone everywhere as soon as you can.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…an explosion of creative weirdness that is equal parts exhilarating and overwhelming…  It’s ground-breaking because it allows a new perspective, but it’s also just blatantly weird. It’s not glossy or careful; the film is an onslaught of visual and thematic ideas… In an era of sequels and remakes, something this outside the box is a welcome alternate reality.”–Emily Zemler, Observer (contemporaneous)