This article is part of NUFEC's ongoing coverage of the Independent Film Festival Boston 2015.
Hey film lover type-people! I am also attending the 2015 edition of the Boston Independent Film Festival, along with fellow writer and editor Mary Tobin. I will be uploading one article for each day of the festival; here is my coverage of two films which were shown on Friday, April 24.
The Overnight
Alex (Adam Scott) and Emily (Taylor Schilling) have just moved to a new home in California with their young son. They are a loving couple and have a happy life but they have a few problems, such as their lackluster sex life. Alex also has mild social anxiety, and is very worried about having to make new friends in their new town. Therefore, he is very happy that when their family is at the park they are approached by a neighborhood man, also with a young son, who warmly introduces himself as Kurt (Jason Schwartzman). Kurt is incredibly affable and Alex and Emily soon agree to have dinner at his house that night. Once there, they meet Kurt’s beautiful French wife Charlotte (Judith Godrèche) and join their new friends in making merry. However, as the night grows longer and things become stranger, Alex and Emily begin to suspect that Kurt and Charlotte may not be as innocent and neighborly as they initially seemed.
The Overnight is an odd film. Funny, but odd. I suppose in terms of genre it’s closest to those awful British sex comedies from the seventies. If you haven’t figured it out yet, Kurt and his wife are swingers, and try very hard to convince Alex and Emily to join in their fun. I did have fun while watching it, and it does have a lot of pretty funny moments, mostly because the dialogue is very clever and well-written. There are some odd transitions where the tone fluctuates between scenes with amusing hijinks and scenes which are supposed to make Alex and Emily (and by extension, the viewer) uncomfortable.
When I saw this at the Somerville Theatre, it was in their massive theatre number one with a very large crowd. It was stretched all the way around the building in fact, I imagine because everyone had heard that Jason Schwartzman was in it. The crowd was really into the film, and riotously laughed through almost any scene. The Overnight is one of those films, I feel, that if I had seen it by myself I would have thought “meh” and probably have not liked it very much. But because of the crowd, I enjoyed it much more than I otherwise would have. If you and a few friends want to see an awful American sex comedy, by all means see this movie. Otherwise, I would say this one is a pass; there’s lot of stuff playing at IFFB that I would recommend higher than this. Unless of course you want to see Jason Schwartzman’s dick, in which case this movie will happily oblige.
Grade: B with a good group, otherwise C-
The Overnight is an odd film. Funny, but odd. I suppose in terms of genre it’s closest to those awful British sex comedies from the seventies. If you haven’t figured it out yet, Kurt and his wife are swingers, and try very hard to convince Alex and Emily to join in their fun. I did have fun while watching it, and it does have a lot of pretty funny moments, mostly because the dialogue is very clever and well-written. There are some odd transitions where the tone fluctuates between scenes with amusing hijinks and scenes which are supposed to make Alex and Emily (and by extension, the viewer) uncomfortable.
When I saw this at the Somerville Theatre, it was in their massive theatre number one with a very large crowd. It was stretched all the way around the building in fact, I imagine because everyone had heard that Jason Schwartzman was in it. The crowd was really into the film, and riotously laughed through almost any scene. The Overnight is one of those films, I feel, that if I had seen it by myself I would have thought “meh” and probably have not liked it very much. But because of the crowd, I enjoyed it much more than I otherwise would have. If you and a few friends want to see an awful American sex comedy, by all means see this movie. Otherwise, I would say this one is a pass; there’s lot of stuff playing at IFFB that I would recommend higher than this. Unless of course you want to see Jason Schwartzman’s dick, in which case this movie will happily oblige.
Grade: B with a good group, otherwise C-
They Look Like People
Christian (Evan Dumouchel) is just a regular guy: he gets up and goes to work every day, he works out at the gym (a habit developed during high school is dissuade bullies) and keeps trying to work up the courage to act on the crush he’s developed on his boss (Margaret Ying Drake). This is until one day when Wyatt (MacLeod Andrews), an old childhood friend, shows up on his doorstep completely out of the blue. Although Wyatt dodges most of the questions he asks about where he’s been and what he’s been doing, Christian takes him in since it seems like he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. As the two of them rekindle the friendship that had dwindled over the years, it soon becomes apparent that Wyatt is struggling with much more than the average millennial.
A chilling physiological horror, They Look Like People is a terrifying picture of what it feels like to struggle with schizophrenia. The writer and director, Perry Blackshear, was at the festival and conducted a Q&A after the screening concluded. He said that a several of his close friends and family had struggled with the disease, and he wanted to try to convey to audiences via the screen the terror they felt on a daily basis. They Look Like People is one of those slow-burn horrors which relies on subtlety and silence in order to build tension. And boy does it build tension, often to unbearable levels; by the end of the movie you start wanting it to explode into violence and action just to release tension, but it just continues its slow and steady pressure cooker.
The acting and writing is frequently uneven, with many scenes making it aware that both the director and actors are not terribly experienced. However, the scenes that are done well just shine; there’s one heart-touching scene where after deciding to go out to a bar, Christian and Wyatt just end up staying at home and doing the same silly things they did when they were in middle-school (BLOB WARS!!). Scenes like these humanize the characters to a much greater degree than is typically seen in horror movies. This adds to the film’s greatest strength: its realism. I walked out of the theatre thinking: “Jesus Christ, now I know what it’s like to have schizophrenia.” This is scarier than any film about monsters, aliens, or serial killers, because these are demons that some people really do have to fight.
Grade: A-
A chilling physiological horror, They Look Like People is a terrifying picture of what it feels like to struggle with schizophrenia. The writer and director, Perry Blackshear, was at the festival and conducted a Q&A after the screening concluded. He said that a several of his close friends and family had struggled with the disease, and he wanted to try to convey to audiences via the screen the terror they felt on a daily basis. They Look Like People is one of those slow-burn horrors which relies on subtlety and silence in order to build tension. And boy does it build tension, often to unbearable levels; by the end of the movie you start wanting it to explode into violence and action just to release tension, but it just continues its slow and steady pressure cooker.
The acting and writing is frequently uneven, with many scenes making it aware that both the director and actors are not terribly experienced. However, the scenes that are done well just shine; there’s one heart-touching scene where after deciding to go out to a bar, Christian and Wyatt just end up staying at home and doing the same silly things they did when they were in middle-school (BLOB WARS!!). Scenes like these humanize the characters to a much greater degree than is typically seen in horror movies. This adds to the film’s greatest strength: its realism. I walked out of the theatre thinking: “Jesus Christ, now I know what it’s like to have schizophrenia.” This is scarier than any film about monsters, aliens, or serial killers, because these are demons that some people really do have to fight.
Grade: A-
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