FEATURING: Georgie Harriet-King, Paul Richards, Tony Mardon, Kimberley Findeis-Sparkes, Pierce Connolly
PLOT: Diana disappears in the woods: the police know nothing about the case, a paranormal investigator knows less than he might hope, and Diana’s step-father knows more than he lets on.
COMMENTS: There’s a sensation of ensnarement in this corner of England. Widower Kenneth is trapped by dread and lingering grief, having lost his step-daughter Diana in the nearby woods nearby. A burly stranger repeatedly circles a seven-pointed star inscribed upon the ground. A local police detective is trapped by lack of insight. And quite literally, something is trapped in a valise, in a shed. Somehow a pattern emerges from this near-stasis, and ambient clues and portents conspire to trap a psychic who could be the key to the greater mystery.
This mystery, whose nature I couldn’t fully reveal even if I wanted to, seems to be both of ancient Earth and far-flung æther, and James Newton uses this unlikely MacGuffin to bring about a stylish thriller-in-miniature. Feeling alternately theatrical and abstract (and during the brief color sequences, both), When the Sun Stands Still is a delight to gaze upon as the sound design ushers the viewer in. The movie opens on Diana wandering through a copse into a clearing, with sound cues distracting our eyes as hers eventually gaze upwards into the splashy sky, and the world shakes. Crisp framing floats amid an inky void as Kenneth is interviewed by the suspicious inspector, the harsh tone of the dialogue muted by the darkness. Clock-ticks accompany the troubled father, and suddenly we hear his name—and he hears his name—and a cryptic visitor augurs the events’ unravelling.
The pieces don’t add up, and probably can’t, but this is no criticism. James Newton (with co-writer Paul Richards) are not here to tell a commonplace story. As with their previous collaboration, Katernica, there are events that can be explained, and events that cannot—and the viewer must be comfortable in the face of a deep, otherworldly inscrutability.
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DIRECTED BY: Dominic Martella
FEATURING: Mandy Lahey
PLOT: A woman with a conjoined twin in her torso seeks romance, but runs into an evil insect queen and her fly-headed, dung-harvesting assistant instead.
COMMENTS: Once upon a time, making a feature film required commitment: cameras were expensive, technical expertise was rare, and even film stock cost money and reshoots were costly. Even the most cynical exploitation pictures had to reach a certain level of skill and resources before they could proceed, and if you actually persevered and made your movie, you’d need to find a distributor with knowledge and contacts to get the finished work in front of an audience. And although today serious films still have those requirements, the advent of iPhones, free software editing suites, and YouTube uploads have meant that the only commitment required of anyone wanting to make their own movie today is time and friends who will work for free. This has unleashed a wave of vibrant creativity on the world. It has unleashed a much larger wave of dreck that never could have seen the light of day in a gatekept era.
The taxonomy of these no-budget movies, which now find ready homes on Tubi, YouTube, and similar non-to-lightly curated venues, is more fascinating than the vast majority of films themselves. Why were these things made? Some are by young film students more interested in learning the craft than creating a marketable project. Some are experimental films from artistically-oriented filmmakers with no resources at their disposal (the majority of films covered on this site fall into that category). Some moviemakers just hope to make a few meager bucks while having a good time on set. A few are made by delusional folk who, inspired by the legend of Robert Rodriguez‘ $5000 hit El Mariachi, believe that their stories are so compelling that they can compete for eyeballs with Hollywood (or at least budgeted indie) productions. And some movies are just made as a goof, to amuse the filmmakers themselves, with no serious intent of appealing to a wider audience.
I suspect the last is the category Swollen Creek falls into. Though pitched as a surreal anthology, it’s a complete narrative, not an anthology at all. And it’s “surreal” in only the most bastardized sense: the tone could charitably be described as absurd, although ridiculous and goofy are even better fits. Almost everyone in this movie, even disposable victims, wears an ill-fitting rubber mask. Rubber flies are pulled by strings with no attempt made to hide them. The protagonist has a Siamese twin in her belly—which I’m guessing is a blow-up doll—but the character never has any payoff. The film is congested by pounds of poop and fart humor. The moral seems to be that romance isn’t for freaks, and you should trust your controlling, repressive mother when she says the external world is full of nothing but cruel normies who will try to kill you. Swollen Creek seems like the kind of movie that would be made by teenagers in their back yards over the course of a few weekends, but the only unmasked actor we see—Mandy Lahey, who gamely plays 3 roles—is middle-aged. It’s all less amusing than it sounds, although it’s clear the cast had a blast. And somehow they got Debbie Rochon to show up for five minutes, either under a mask or providing voiceover for a stand-in under a mask.
I bear no ill will to the makers of Swollen Creek, but I must conclude it is not intended for an audience beyond friends and family. If you’re a non-professional and you’re tempted to try one of those obscure little movies with weird amateurish box cover art on Tubi, I recommend you don’t try it—not even once.
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DIRECTED BY: Xavier Terhorst
FEATURING: Kevin Ludowitz, Justin Cutler, Alyssa Duarte, Pamela Pace, Michael Vaughn
PLOT: Left behind with the riff-raff after the Rapture, Emo Superstar attempts to leave Sin City behind.
COMMENTS: “There she was: the only innocence left on Earth.” She is a naked woman, mouth pursed in anticipation, and limbs ready to accommodate any bend. Easy to hold, easy to lift, easy to caress, and easy to inflate. Amidst the dregs of humanity, a crude sex doll may be the apex of humanity after the better souls are wrenched from our sick plane. This rapture is shown simply: human silhouettes—dozens, hundreds of them—in still-form floating above the garbage remnants of Las Vegas where the rat-like survivors cling tenuously to an existence of violence and getting high. Emo Superstar (Kevin Ludowitz) wants something more, and with the reluctant acquiescence of his drug boss, Superstar attempts an impossible journey for salvation—or at the very least, something more than the mass damnation where he finds himself.
Early on, Emo Superstar remarks that “[l]ife became colorful when my parents died.” Xavier Terhorst is obviously working through some rough thoughts, and we ride alongside him over the course of My Vegas Eyes. Guerrilla filmmaking and exhaustive editing make for a visually compelling journey. Vegas has rarely looked so depressing, sparsely populated by made-up psychos clinging to a lust for kicks or hope in the Lord. A photorealistic face of a person fills the screen, its eyes carved out to reveal a flickering backdrop of trash and bright lights. Colors saturate and flip as Superstar navigates a dead city and an ominous tunnel guarded by the Trash Man. The protagonist’s thoughts play quietly from time to time, only for us to be jarred back into the harsh now with full-volume shouts from a psychotic matriarch or simpering Mormon preacher.
The experience is rough. Terhorst’s feature debut shows much promise, however, maintaining stylistic coherence and a just-followable-enough narrative, all despite the apparent restraints of him nearly being a one man band. Terhorst slots firmly into the informal collection of “curious what comes next” filmmakers. Putting that potential future aside, though, My Vegas Eyes is an interesting exploration of life after the apocalypse, and how we can still find value in life (or death?) at its worst.
PLOT: Selections from Kati Keli’s surreal, satirical YouTube channel mixed into a feature film, plus her only completed short, “Total Body Removal Surgery.”
COMMENTS: It’s not the first thing Kati Kelli uploaded to YouTube, but the most accessible entry point to this bizarro YouTube creator’s world is “Marva the MILF,” a 14-episode series that works as recognizable satire. It’s the only strain where Kelli plays a consistent character, a 50-year-YOUNG unapologetic golddigger and would-be glamour influencer in a blonde wig wearing too much bronzer. Cluelessly arrogant Marva refers to her audience as “babies” (or sometimes “fuglies”) and complains about her daughter ignoring her beauty advice because she (eye-roll) “wants to be herself.” Marva even stays in character while jumping on the ASMR trend: while tapping her fingernails as she mimics applying mascara to the viewer, she whispers “I’m not sponsored, I’m just a big fan… I always blow hubby’s money on this brand.”
But that focused character is a big departure from the usual inventory of her “Girl Internet Show” channel, which quickly turned manic when Kelli discovered the joys of Adobe After Effects suite. Future, non-Marva episodes quickly went techno-maximalist, with hyper editing, text flying about, shots of social media feeds, Kelli’s head swelling into a bulbous monstrosity, altered film speeds, random musical accompaniment, cartoonish sound effects, gif bluebirds circling her head, miscellaneous filters, stock photos of broccoli zipping across the screen, and basically any kind of embellishment that seized her short-attention-span fancy. Sure, she still mocked the vapid self-absorption of overly-dramatic V-loggers and beauty influencers, but the satire was more of an excuse for relentless experimentation and absurdity than the meat of her vegan aesthetic. Episodes might be anything from a fashion show to a commercial spoof to a fake confessional to relatively sedate entries like Kelli gyrating maniacally while holding a glass of wine or wearing a skull mask, playing a ukulele, or shaking a ragdoll to simulate dancing while singing monotonously. The entire “show” is shot in a single apartment, often with her pop-surreal, occasionally obscene artwork displayed on the walls; when it’s necessary to add another character, Kelli simply dons a wig, or incorporates a Barbie doll. (She does have, at least, the assistance of an unseen and uncredited cameraperson—and a housecat.) It doesn’t hurt anything that Kelli is conventionally gorgeous, with luminous olive-green eyes, full lips, and a model’s figure, which only makes her choice to specialize in completely uncommercial culture-jamming media hit harder. And although her comedy is mostly of the absurd non-sequitur variety, she gets across the occasional zinger, as when describing her multitudinous mental maladies, she muses, “I’m also diagnosed as being an amazing kisser… actually, by the same psychologist who diagnosed me as having daddy issues.”
Kelli also made a parody of Spring Breakers featuring only Barbie dolls.
Kelli’s final completed piece was the short film “Total Body Removal Surgery,” a Kickstarted project which was not posted to YouTube (it’s the only truly exclusive content included on the Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray). Although Kelli plays a new character named “Tippy Rose” and for the first time includes other actors (memorably, the freakishly lantern-jawed Dr. Locker, played by none other than Escape from Tomorrow‘s Roy Abamsohn) and non-apartment locations in the video, the fractured multimedia aesthetic will be completely familiar to “Girl Internet Show” fans. The brief story concerns the titular medical procedure and the satire of cosmetic surgery is obvious, though done with Kelli’s usual verve. Sadly, Kelli died suddenly—of, of all things, an asthma attack—only three days after “Total Body Removal Surgery” was completed. This mixtape version of her legacy, assembled by admirer Jane Schoenbrun and her husband Jordan Wipple, flows well and is a fond remembrance of her out-there artistry. Rather than being a completed product, Kelli’s work suggests a talent that was just beginning to find her legs in her late 20s, cut off just as she was ready to launch. It’s a shame that she was never able to expand her canvas beyond YouTube, but her work should inspire a generation of independent artists looking for a template for how to create engaging art with nothing more than a camera, a few wigs, dolls, the After Effects suite, and broadband wifi.
PLOT: Professor Kansas Bowling, with a degree in “Teen Age,” draws on myriad examples of girls’ ruined childhoods to explore the dangers of impressionability and sexual predation.
COMMENTS: There’s a human skeleton arranged on a string, a red backdrop, an old slide projector, and a strange figure: a professor, she tells us, with her field of study situated on the grim intersection of the evil and the mundane. Shattered futures, injured esteem and injured bodies, dogged sunniness, doom, defiance, death, and rape: all these elements, across numerous (“There are 100 actresses in this film”) testimonials, flesh out this frightful and compelling, sometimes experimental and sometimes verité, mockumentary dissecting the teenage girlhood experience in all its harrowing possibility.
These girls’ lives unfold in a murky ’70s-to-’90s era, with postcards sent from the road, nary a portable phone to be seen, and the recurring Scott Walker tune, “It’s Raining Today,” lashing ominously as crooned counterpoint to the poppy Nilsson/Monkees title track. After a brief introduction from the professor, Cuddly Toys dives right into its deadpan-dreadful proceedings with a “Miss Pre-Teen” beauty pageant, setting the tone: we’re in for a nasty ride, made just barely tolerable by the clinical absurdism of our guide and the improbable perkiness of (some of) the girls and women onscreen.
But discomfort—to put it mildly—weighs on the viewer, and appropriately so. As a general rule, I am not prone to guilt by association, but by the film’s end I was truly appalled by the evil potential, and the evil realized by, my fellow men. I had no objections to Bowling depicting this, however. There’s far too great a streak of nastiness in the world, which menaces one sex exponentially more than the other. That said, Professor Bowling slips in a trenchant observation in her closing remarks—one which raises the question as to which sex is actually considered more disposable.
Cuddly Toys is a mind-blowing journey into the casual cruelty found in our culture, weaving harrowing nightmares from grubby dreams. The victims are clear, and the perpetrators—though predominately male—seem to be just about everyone; there is more than enough blame to go around.
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