Director: Chris Stern
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Psychological
Plot:
Hired for a special job, a master foley effects artist is brought on board to handle the last film of a visionary filmmaker after he passed away, but the more she and her partner work on the film, the more she starts to slip psychologically down a dangerous hole.
Review:
This was a generally enjoyable effort that manages to come off incredibly well. Among the brightest factors with this one is the use of the background information on the role of filmmaking and her standing in the profession. This takes a solid look at the role of low-budget, indie filmmakers who are forced to make do with whatever means at their disposal to bring a vision to life, and requires them to focus as much on creativity and ingenuity to fulfill that dream of the director to create their masterpiece. It allows this to start off with an immensely effective opening giving us a chance to get to know her and her work through the use of creating an expose on her work and the various films she’s been hired to work on in the past so that there’s some context for them to be hired onto the new project for the deceased director she’s a huge fan of.
With the scenes of them in the studio starting to perform their magic and create the final pieces of the puzzle for the film, with the soundscapes for the brutal, uncomfortable film they’ve been hired to work on, the connection between what’s going on on-screen against the slowly unraveling mental state she experiences is handled well enough. The unflinching moments of torture, brutality, and generally unhinged madness that’s presented to them to create the noises for as she’s pushed to the brink of her sanity attempting to find new, unique ways of generating what’s going on is a lot of fun to watch, with her usual tricks unable to work and the more uncompromising sequences she’s being forced to work on the deeper into the film leaves everything up in the air as for what’s going to happen with her and the film.
As a whole, this all works, but it does wind up highlighting the lone issue here, where the finale is a series of flashy visuals that are quite hard to make out what’s going on. The idea of this one doing far more in terms of psychologically-minded interactions with the series of flash visuals from the film, and the different talking heads being presented about what’s going on with her, and the devolving mindset she has, which is immensely confusing and difficult to make out the purpose of everything. As well, there's also the film’s structure that can be a bit tough to overcome, where the behind-the-scenes footage of her preparations and style might be difficult to get into, and it might take a while to get the point, being just a few issues here that hold this down.
Overview: ***.5/5
A highly likable and effective psychological genre effort, there’s quite a lot to like here, which manages to come about well enough to hold this up over a few minor, not-that-important drawbacks. Those with an interest in the subject matter or who are intrigued by it will have the most to like here, while those turned off by these factors should heed caution.
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