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DIRECTED BY: Seth A. Smith
FEATURING: Chik White, Kate Hartigan, Mitchell Wiebe, voice of John Urich
PLOT: Asa reappears after six months to join his friend Elle before a bad trip triggers a journey to a remote island littered with drug-secreting starfish.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Though hewing toward gritty realism, the plot hook—starfish drug—as well as the recurring hallucinations—narrated by a mystical dog—combine to create a singular something which is as strange as it is unsettling.
COMMENTS: Addiction has rarely looked this icky. A typical drug movie usually takes some effort to showcase the fun part: gathering with friends, experiencing euphoria, and the overall feeling of jolliness before the tragic results of substance abuse rear their heads. Lowlife diminishes these easy-times considerably through the drug in question: the brownish secretions of rather unhealthy looking starfish. While the characters do appear to appreciate the ensuing, loopy high, Seth Smith obliges the audience to endure a smearful dampness; and then, of course, hits his characters with the nasty ramifications.
The movie’s time-flow is somewhat uncertain, with three different narrative chains interlocking. The segments in color feature Asa, increasingly disheveled, as he roots through the murk of shallow streams in search of something. Black and white footage is used for the sequences involving Asa, Elle, and eventually the foppishly mysterious drug dealer Damon. Asa and Elle have a reunion—a reluctant one, as far as Elle’s concerned—which begins icily, but improves to the point that Asa reveals and shares what’s in his cooler. When these entities die from exposure (Asa is convinced Elle left the cooler lid off on purpose; Elle insists otherwise), the drug movie tragedy kicks off, catalyzed by a visit to Damon, who really creeps out Elle—her fear of telephoning him is palpable—but who also has two well-cared-for starfish to share.
The third block of narrative is the most cryptic. Black and white, and projected, it seems, 8mm-style, with a thick narration provided with its own subtitles, despite being in English. Nature, breezes, and words of fate, doom, and redemption. These are from the perspective of a dog, or perhaps dog spirit. (Smith is not hung-up on the viewer knowing what’s happening at the moment, so long as they feel what’s happening.) The dog-visions culminate alongside Asa’s arrival at his nadir, when Lowlife tilts briefly but fantastically to existentially unsettling body horror.
And so, the viewer is doomed with Asa; and Smith quietly shocks and awes in his feature debut. He would continue his evil-organism-tinged angst some years later with his sophomore effort, Tin Can. (This time with ill-omened fungus.) Lowlife is an unpleasant experience, but a worthwhile one—and a worthy member of the drug tragedy canon.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
