This simplistic slasher-lite is a Glee meets Friday 13th mash-up that scrapes by with enough funnies to score a warm reception from its target demographic.
Rocky Horror fans will welcome the prospect of a rock musical featuring Meatloaf, basques and runny facepaint, but comparisons should end there.
Stagefright
Dir: Jerome Sable
Canada, 2014, 90 mins
Allie Macdonald, Meatloaf, Minnie Driver
★★★☆☆☆
From Eskil Vogt, regular writing partner of Norway’s Jochim Trier (Oslo 31) comes this hypnotic debut about a woman coping with the onset of blindness.
Within layers of episodic meta-narrative that resemble (in form if not tone) Phillip Kaufman’s Adaptation, we are purposefully disorientated by the sensual world of a paranoid imagination. By turns, funny and frightening.
Blind
Dir: Eskil Vogt
Norway, 2014, 96 mins
Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Henrik Rafaelsen, Vera Vitali
★★★★★☆
A teenage BMX biker witnesses his friend suddenly stabbed to death.
There’s a strong case for comparison with Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park. The beautiful photography is the film: largely static compositions, inventively framed and held for long takes – the pacing may prove divisive.
In lieu of conventional drama or narrative you’ll find a melancholy study of the fallout that follows murder in this sleepy suburban setting.
VIOLET
Dir: Bas Devos
Netherlands, 2013, 82 mins
Cesar De Sutter, Raf Walschaerts
