Tag Archives: Low budget

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CAPSULE: SNORKELING (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Emil Nava

FEATURING: Daniel Zolghadri, , Tim Johnson Jr.

PLOT: Teenagers Michael and Jameson start a relationship while delving deeper and deeper into the trippy landscapes concocted in their minds by a trendy psychedelic inhalant.

Still from Snorkeling (2025)

COMMENTS: Disaffected teens have been fertile ground for cinematic drama for decades. Going back to Rebel Without a Cause, and probably well before, young people have sought out entertainment that gets them, and the movies have responded with tales of kids whom the squares refuse to get. Snorkeling is a proud inheritor of that tradition, and seems especially in tune with a moment where teenagers are too beaten down to rebel; they just want to escape.

Snorkeling finds America’s youth in an especially despondent mood, and it’s hard to blame them. We only catch glimpses of adults, but the world they’ve created for their kids is a selfish one; they’re dedicated to satisfying themselves, leaving nothing behind for the next generation. We hear from several teenagers in quasi-documentary segments where they explain their rootlessness and highlight the relief that snorkeling brings. Our guides through this defeated landscape are Michael, a half-Iranian pothead who affably goes through his days just trying to put it all behind him, and Jameson, an effervescent young woman with a home life she is so over. (One suspects that her father named her after a bottle of his favorite spirit.) She introduces Michael to a new kind of high, and they embark upon a curious push-pull relationship where he always tries to get closer, and she’s always anxious to get away.

Looking inside their drugged-out world doesn’t tell us much about its appeal. Scenes take on a pink hue, featureless bodies writhe in the sky, and everyone seems to be caught up in a blissed-out, laid-back hippie vibe. Every now and then, the disconnect is so intense that characters literally become animated, swirling around in a hand-drawn fantasia for a few seconds of true escape from the real world. (These are the moments that take the most advantage of Nava’s background as a go-to music video director for stars like Ed Sheeran, Calvin Harris, and Eminem.) We have to take it on faith that this is as satisfying as the characters tell us it is. But while these peeks inside the hallucinations are mildly interesting, the truly shocking images are what these cosmic travelers look like back in our world. They’re half-comatose bodies, staring blankly into the sky with oxygen masks strapped to their faces, as if some titan had picked up a hospital and shaken all the patients out onto the ground. We’re trading one empty room for another.

The big paradox at the heart of Snorkeling is that Michael and Jameson—and presumably all their contemporaries—desperately seek connection, but their solution is to engage in the most isolating activity imaginable. That’s the driving force behind the awkward finale, which feels like adults showed up at the very end and shoehorned in a climax from an ABC Afterschool Special. It’s a relief to see them recognizing the trap they’ve escaped, but it feels stagey in a way that the earlier surreal naturalism did not. Snorkeling has some interesting ideas about the reasons the kids are not alright these days and is very sympathetic about why they’re downright anxious to get away from it all. But the only way out it can think of is to harsh everyone’s mellow. That’s disappointing, but for a little while, it’s a nice mild buzz.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…perfectly captures the disaffected mood of a generation through its stunning, hallucinatory visuals and immersive soundscape, creating a potent atmosphere of beautiful despair. However, this stylistic triumph comes at the cost of story and soul. The characters are hollow vessels, and the film’s sanitized portrayal of addiction feels like a profound failure of nerve.” – Naser Nahandian, Gazettely (contemporaneous)

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CAPSULE: DREAM HACKER (2025)

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Dream Hacker is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

DIRECTED BY: Richard Colton

FEATURING: Molly Hanson, Luke J I Smith, Gary Webster, Hannaj Bang Bendz

PLOT: A brilliant scientist creates a machine which enables the user to hijack sleepers’ minds, and her dream to use the technology for psychotherapy is thwarted by sinister forces.

Still from dream hacker (2025)

COMMENTS: This felt very much like a middling science fiction show from thirty years ago—albeit a fairly charming one. An earnest psychiatrist (with more than a little savvy in the field of computing and cybernetics) wants to improve the world, one trauma-sufferer at a time, with an enhanced doo-dad allowing her access to their subconscious. Her machinations result not only in such a device, but also an artificial intelligence to guide her through both the dreamscape (a slightly purple-tinged forest clearing) and the concurrent possibilities of remote body control. A glowing headset, a charismatic avatar, obscure government meddling, a sinister tech-conspiracy—it’s all here, and it all ambles forward in a cutesy thriller  kind of way.

Doctor Jennifer Connelly (no, that not one, as clarified during an early scene with a woefully man-bunned blind date) is an unlikely heroine, which is apt considering her naïvety about mankind’s more sinister ambitions. She is awkwardly charming: an American plopped into a metro-collegiate British milieu. (I swear, it seems you couldn’t toss a Beefeater in this movie without hitting one of the hundreds of iconic structures that litter the greater London area.) Her mentor has a tragic history which flirts with the pathetic, and the primary villain is of unclear national extraction.

Jennifer finds herself testing the machine for the first time immediately following the regrettable blind date, waking in the body of a waitress/stripper in Florida. Adam, the artificial intelligence she discovers in her program, combines nigh-omnipotence and simple charm. He, too, can take over (sleeping) bodies, and can otherwise manifest a visible form to Jennifer using the unspecified powers of “science.” The baddies muddle along attempting to kidnap Jennifer, whilst Jennifer and Adam hatch their own plan involving help from the stripper. This and other relationship story-drops are tied in and around the overarching narrative arc towards a rom-com-ish finish.

So, this thing was cute: a big, big, big idea put in service by a plucky adventurer, her computerized friend, and a kooky stripper. I am left with no complaints , except an unlikely one. I kind of want more of this breezy nonsense. Dream Hacker unspools as perfectly as a feature-length pilot for mid-90s science fiction television show. Its goofiness, disregard for grand implications, and laser-focus on the affable leads would demand at least half of a season before the network cancels it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Its execution and thematic concerns feel spiritually aligned with ambitious, slightly strange cult films like David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, which also explored the porous line between a simulated reality and the physical world… a compelling genre piece for a specific viewer: one who appreciates intelligent, idea-driven sci-fi and is willing to forgive a few rough edges in service of a greater creative vision.”–Ahi Ho, Gazettely (contemporaneous)

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CAPSULE: MAGNETOSPHERE (2024)

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DIRECTED BY: Nicola Rose

FEATURING: Shayelin Martin, Patrick McKenna, Colin Mochrie, Mikayla Kong, Steven He, Tania Webb

PLOT: A 13-year old girl with synesthesia deals with a new school, first crushes, bullying, and other typical teen problems.

Still from Magnetosphere (2024)

COMMENTS: Synesthesia, the neurological condition commonly described as “seeing sounds” or “hearing colors,” provides a tempting, if underutilized, possibility for filmmakers. A director can use “draw on the lens” techniques, easily achieved on the cheap through commercial software, to depict a protagonist’s subjective experience of seeing rainbows and candy-colored floaters overlaid on reality, providing an easy excuse to add phantasmagoric visual flair to any story. Typically, an in-film illicit drug trip would provide the pretext for such effects. By addressing synesthesia, director Nicola Rose can create a childlike world of sparkly kiddie psychedelia—fluffy unicorn and cotton candy stuff, but with a tie-dye aesthetic—while staying safely within the confines of a Disney/Nickelodeon storyline.

Protagonist Maggie almost constantly, if inconsistently, hallucinates. Sure, there are the green and purple and yellow sparkles that fill the screen when she sings a ballad on her portable keyboard, and the fact that, when she concentrates, she sees all the other characters with individual colored auras: pink for her sister, brilliant green for her crush, a squiggly mess of multicolored threads for her conflicted bestie. That’s textbook synesthesia. But Maggie can also draw lines and shapes in the air, persistent tracers that form hearts and crowns and words that glow with neon colors. An art lesson is so visually intense for her that the screen glitches into an incoherent muddle as dissonant music plays, causing her to puke. Her Barbie doll, Cassiopeia, talks to her, frankly confessing that she represents Maggie’s insecurities (while denying that she’s part of her host’s “weird brain thing.”). This expansive magical realism, transcending the bounds of simply “hearing colors,” is poetic license that expresses Maggie’s inner sense of alienness. But it also makes the girl seem like she suffers more from Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder than synesthesia. Perhaps her parents slipped LSD into her bottle back in their hippie days?

While the tastefully trippy visuals are novel in this context, the plot is formula, occasionally approaching pure corn. Insecure teen girl has some ultimately minor affliction that makes her self-conscious, experiences normal teen girl problems, gains confidence and the tools to resolve life’s little disappointments with maturity, the future looks bright. There’s bullying, an inappropriate crush, and an LGBTQ subplot to deal with, and it all gets resolved as neatly as you’d expect. To pass the time while the pattern plays out, we have not only the hallucinatory bursts, but a lot of comedy. Maggie’s dad is a goofball thespian directing a community theater production of “Pirates of Penzance” (which also has a predictable arc, with the scrappy citizen-singers overcoming obstacles with help from an unlikely source). The primary comic relief comes from “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” veteran Colin Mochrie, who plays weirdo handyman Gil, a guy who comes off like a kid-friendly version of Creed Bratton from “The Office.” He has a mysterious private existence somewhere outside of polite society and is given to inappropriate, absurd non sequiturs (“I saw action in ‘Nam so that boneheaded, ungrateful numbnuts like you could have a kitchen toilet!”) Gil also hunts rats with a chainsaw. I didn’t find his silly, unmotivated antics particularly amusing, but humor is subjective, and the jokes are for a much younger crowd.

We provide allowances for the script’s formularity, since the film is prosocially pedantic and aimed at a pre-teen to young teen audience. Still, the high ratings on this low-budget film are astounding: an 8.4 on IMDb (the original Toy Story has an 8.3), 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (Lady Bird has a 99% rating). Admittedly, that’s on inappreciable numbers (a mere 88 IMDb voters and 12 RT critics), but even accounting for the small sample size, these scores are a bit baffling. The movie is perfectly fine. The acting is competent, the effects cheap but effective, the message heartwarming, the comedy… probably works for some. But it seems that Magnetosphere is largely lauded for its good intentions rather than its actual quality. It’s a nice movie. There is a large element of self-selection here: with a very limited release, only people already well-disposed to this material are likely to queue it up. There aren’t enough teenage synesthetics to form a cult audience, and even those kids will be drawn more to the same mainstream Marvel/Hunger Games fare their peers devour—it’s mostly their parents who will be cheering Magnetosphere. For curiosity seekers like us, this is a decent, modest movie that won’t feel like a waste of time, but it’s not some hidden classic that justifies those gaudy metrics. A reminder to always be skeptical of high internet ratings on low-distribution niche items.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Magnetosphere is for the weirdo in all of us who believes in the beauty the world has to offer.”–Tina Kakadelis, Beyond the Cinerama Dome (contemporaneous)

Magnetosphere [DVD]

Magnetosphere [DVD]
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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: FIEND (1980)

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DIRECTED BY: Don Dohler

FEATURING: Don Leifert, Richard Nelson, Elaine White, George Stover, Greg Dohler

PLOT: A “fiend”—an evil spirit that takes possession of a corpse and absorbs the life energy of humans-–moves into the quiet suburb of Kingsville, where a concerned neighbor immediately suspects a connection between the new resident and an unsolved killing spree.

COMMENTS: God bless the Don Dohlers of the world. They don’t have a lot of resources, they don’t have a lot of talent, but by gum they love movies, they’ve got determination, can-do spirit, and just enough cash and friends and family to put together a chiller. You don’t go into a Don Dohler movie with the hope that it will be very good, but it’s a whole lot of fun watching him in there giving it the ol’ college try.

Shot after his debut feature The Alien Factor, Fiend finds Dohler a more experienced filmmaker, but also working with an even thinner budget of a mere $6,000 to continue his bid to become the of Maryland. So he develops a story around an original monster–the title character, a kind of free-floating, body-possessing demonic entity–to sit alongside vampires, zombies, and werewolves. We get an impressively economical introduction to our star villain: after a shapeless red cloud plunges into the grave of a recently deceased man, the reanimated body rises and, within the course of the next 6 minutes, strangles a conveniently located woman in the cemetery, moves into a split-level ranch in the Baltimore suburbs (what was the house closing like?), and chokes another woman while she walks the five miles through the woods from her carpool stop to her home. 

This kind of efficiency is typical of Fiend, which does not waste a lot of time with details. In the space of a few months, the monster takes on the name Longfellow, acquires a cat and a lucrative career teaching music, hires an accountant-cum-Renfield to manage his extensive operations, and builds a combination music studio/shrine to Satan in his basement where he keeps an ample supply of professional headshots of his prospective victims. So it’s only fair that the only force powerful enough to stop him will be equally lucky. Gary is a persnickety neighbor who has it in for Longfellow from the start (supposedly because of the noise, but more likely because the newcomer has an even more impressive mustache). But he should play the ponies, because he immediately pegs Longfellow as the local serial strangler through intuition alone, with not a scrap of evidence to back him up—much to the frustration of his unduly patient wife. Fortunately, a visit to Longellow’s subterranean lair provides all the proof he needs, and the battle of wits commences.

The usual hallmarks of bad-moviedom are here. The acting is wooden and mannered, the score-by-Casio is repetitive and intrusive, and the script is driven by incredible coincidence. (Does the cemetery groundskeeper carry copies of the obituary for every corpse in the place?) But you can tell that Dohler is a deeply earnest storyteller. Compelled to shoot his scenes of mayhem in broad daylight, he makes the killer’s audacity add to the overall sense of unease. Recognizing the convention of secondary horror characters whose ignorance does them in, Dohler crafts a pretty decent action scene in which a bystander attempts to come to the aid of a potential victim, complicating the villain’s plans. Most intriguingly, he hands the hero’s mantle to the abrasive Gary. It’s almost charming to watch Gary barrel around, insisting that something suspicious is going on and bitterly rejecting his wife’s insistence that he lighten up. It puts an intriguing twist on the fact that he’s right about everything. 

On a side note, here’s a mystery for you: where the hell are Gary and Marsha’s kids? There’s no shortage of children in the film, including Dohler’s own son; one of those youngsters even ends up at the wrong end of Longfellow’s glowing hands. We’re certainly supposed to believe the Kenders have kids, because they talk a lot about their filmmaking project for Scouts (an opportunity for Dohler to drop the name and the address of his real-life bookshop), but we never see them, not once. Is this a scenario borrowed from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It’s truly bizarre.

Fiend is not a good movie. Crucially, it’s not a scary or suspenseful movie. But it benefits strongly from a second viewing, when you can set aside all the film’s ineptitude and appreciate the purity of the effort. Viewed in the right circumstances, it’s a goofy piece of fun, and the world of cinema can always use a goofy piece of fun. That’s a legacy to remember Don Dohler by, long after both he and the Fantasy Kingdom Bookstore at 704 Market Street have left the mortal plane.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Even the amateur quality of the performances contribute to the film’s overall dream-like feel…  I mean, don’t get me wrong. This is definitely an amateur film, full of clunky dialogue and the occasional slow scene. But so what? Even those flaws add to the film’s nicely surreal atmosphere.” – Lisa Marie Bowman, Through the Shattered Lens

(This movie was nominated for review by Joe. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Fiend (Special Collectors Edition) [DVD]

Fiend (Special Collectors Edition) [DVD]
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Capsules

CAPSULE: ALMA & THE WOLF (2025)

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Alma & the Wolf is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Ethan Embry, Li Jun Li, Lukas Jann, Jeremie Harris, Kevin Allison

PLOT: Ren, a deputy in an out-of-the-way town, investigates a dog-killing wolf at the behest of his old high school crush, Alma.

Still from Alma & the Wolf (2025)

COMMENTS: A word of advice: don’t go into Alma & the Wolf expecting a standard werewolf movie, or any standard horror movie, for that matter. Focus instead on Ethan Embry’s fine portrayal of Ren, a peaked-in-high-school separated dad struggling with a drinking problem. You’ll be much happier with that approach.

“Nothing good ever comes from here, but lucky for the wider world, nothing ever leaves,” Ren says of the rural town of Spiral Creek. Ren himself is a former high school pitcher whose career ended prematurely with Tommy John surgery and whose life has been in a downward spiral since. Now a failed husband and deputy cop who’s been on this rural beat forever without much hint of promotion, he’s pinned all his hopes on his son, Jack, who’s following in his athletic footsteps and has serious athletic prospects. Ren is also interested in Alma, who seems (at times) to reciprocate his feelings, despite being a hot mess alcoholic herself. (This is a very boozy movie). Rounding out the small-town cast are a newbie cop Ren can bounce backstory off, a comic relief sheriff more interested in promoting Buddhist breathing techniques than hard policing, and a handful of colorful, trashy yokels.

As good as the acting is—Embry, as mentioned, is excellent, and the rest of the cast supply no weak notes—the special effects are noticeably poor: the mangy wolf costume is neither realistic nor frightening, there’s a head-on-fire effect that looks like it might have been made in ChatGPT, and at one point the use of rubber glass to substitute for a shattered windshield is painfully obvious. Given that Alma is more focused on drama and psychology than actual horror, these slip ups aren’t fatal, but they do imbue the film with a sheen of cheepnis that’s out of step with the professionalism of the rest of the production.

The first weird thing that happens in the story occurs when Ren suddenly promises to kill the wolf for Alma, despite his obvious reluctance and his warning that they’re a protected species and it’s a “class C felony” to kill one. Then comes his first encounter with the wolf, followed by recurring hallucinations where he glimpses the lupine taunting him. As the movie continues, the weird stuff intensifies, from the relatively subtle (whispering voices) to the elaborate (a well-staged pagan dream sequence in the woods with Alma and the talking wolf at a pagan bonfire flanked by a pair of goat-people). By the time we reach the one hour mark, confusion reigns, as the narrative seems to be spinning out of control, and occasionally contradicting itself.

Alma & the Wolf‘s twist ending turned off a lot of people. That’s understandable for viewers who didn’t go in bargaining for a weird movie: the final act makes some of the events of the rest of Alma feel arbitrary and irrelevant, and if you get invested in certain red herrings, you could feel cheated. But although the movie doesn’t quite stick its landing—it’s not tightly scripted enough, and it could have used more foreshadowing—it’s far from as abysmal as its 4.6 IMDb rating would suggest. I admire the ambition and certain aspects of the execution—specifically the performances—and although I wouldn’t give it a general recommendation, I wouldn’t advise you to steer away, either. If you’re in the mood for a well-acted, modestly-budgeted, artistically ambitious psychological thriller, you could do worse than hunting down Alma & the Wolf.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a one-of-a-kind, surreal, nightmarish journey that will give  audiences emotional whiplash.”–Molly Henery, Blogging Banshee (festival screening)