![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static.vidmate.mobi\/images\/cover\/55\/55ea43bd950861da524103a119b0236f.jpg\")
<\/p>\nReviewed by Phill Hunziker. Viewed at the Chinese Theater, part of the AFI\u00a0Film Festival 2015.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Like SBIFF 2015’s La Noche Del Raton, this film has injected hope into my filmmaking pursuit. On a roughly $10,000 budget, a husband and wife were able to put together one heck of a trip of a film. The singular location feels like it harbors multiple contradictory worlds, thanks both its natural creepy design\/aura and the filmmaking clinic put on by this dedicated artsy married couple. It’s personal, it’s haunting, it’s suspenseful \u00a0and it’s perplexing.\u00a0Expectations; throw those out the window. This film\u00a0 Perola (Ticiana Augusto Lima) leaves her home to attend school alone in France. The apartment she inhabits is either lifeless or haunted by an unwanted form of life. Her love back home, Angelo (Guto Parente) first consoles over the phone then promises to come out and see her. As time goes on, Perola, awaiting his arrival, loses herself in paranoia, hallucination and delusion as she constantly fears what she has yet to see. Over time, the line between real and imaginary blurs to the point of no return.<\/p>\n The film\u2019s genre is hard to describe; some sort of abstract blend of horror, fantasy, mystery, thriller, etc. Around halfway through the film, the narrative gets flipped on its head and, honestly, nothing makes sense anymore. That, though, is completely fine thanks to the surrealistic style the filmmakers have developed. It\u2019s okay that logic dissolves over time because that is the world in which these characters are living in. The film\u2019s aesthetic design feeds off the natural creepy aura given off by the apartment building in which it was shot. The place feels haunted already, so the filmmakers decided to amplify that while also mixing that with the characters\u2019 devolving psyche. Ingeniously, the filmmakers harnessed all tools at their disposal to create a warped world that blends psychological disturbance with apparition-based horror.\u00a0 Aesthetically, everything clicks. The cinematography establishes the aforementioned world and its ambiguity. Coupled with sometimes choppy editing, they play on motifs and encapsulate the psychological devolution of the characters. Patience-testing long takes captured on a stationary camera are separated by trippy horror-style sequences. These scenes are frustrating at times because of their ambiguity. However, they escalate further each time around, building up momentum towards a perplexing but rewarding finish.<\/p>\n A horror-fantasy film filled with so much and still so little would probably flop, flail and fail if it were a bigger project with a bigger budget. This film\u2019s pint-sized budget and crew is its greatest asset. That isn\u2019t to say expectations are low, but the lack of financial strings and obligations allows the filmmakers to have creative freedom by default. Because it was made almost entirely by a deep artistic married couple (the talented Lima and Parente), everything feels so personal. That gives the film a sense of authenticity which allows us to trust the direction and execution of the story, even though we have no idea what the $#%& is going on.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reviewed by Phill Hunziker. Viewed at the Chinese Theater, part of the AFI\u00a0Film Festival 2015. Like SBIFF 2015’s La Noche Del Raton, this film has injected hope into my filmmaking pursuit. On a roughly $10,000 budget, a husband and wife were able to put together one heck of a trip of a film. The singular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34248,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afi-filmfest-2015","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/g9r.3b8.myftpupload.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/g9r.3b8.myftpupload.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/g9r.3b8.myftpupload.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/g9r.3b8.myftpupload.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/34248"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/g9r.3b8.myftpupload.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/g9r.3b8.myftpupload.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/g9r.3b8.myftpupload.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/g9r.3b8.myftpupload.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/g9r.3b8.myftpupload.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}requires<\/del>\u00a0demands objective and patient attention.\u00a0 It truly is a trip, one that is definitely worth your viewing.<\/p>\n