A Horrible Way to Die
Starring: AJ Bowen, Amy Seimetz, Joe Swanberg
Writer: Simon Barrett
Director: Adam Wingard
***Slight Spoilers***
A struggling alcoholic woman -Sarah- has just relocated to a new town in hopes for a better life. Meanwhile, her serial killer ex-boyfriend -Garrick Turrell- has escaped from prison.
While Sarah's part of the story moves along in chapter by chapter normality, Garrick's is in a completely sporadic fashion. Bouncing back in forth and up and down and I honestly had a hell of a blast piecing it together. And I really dig the way it all comes to a head, answering every question I had all at once.
This is for sure gonna be another audience divider, due to the slow burning technique and frantic as fuck camera work. I find entertainment out of set location, as long as there is some true form of beauty to it and not a bunch of substandard blasé cinematography. The wintery bleak locale in A Horrible Way to Die was complete eye candy and the dreary musical score gave a subtle feeling of coldness, making me feel as if I were there. So, even in moments lacking dialog or any real type of character interaction I was content with just the surroundings.
Now onto that camera work; My favorites are the segments in Sarah's apartment where cameras are right behind dangling Christmas lights, giving them an colored orb appearance like a ghost within a polaroid picture. Shaky-cam is present in the movie, but there's also a lot of out of focus shots, or just moments where the camera drifts off of what would normally be the key element of a scene. For example, when Sarah and Kevin are together conversing or eating or whatever, the camera will just wander or center on a hand picking up a glass of soda from an overhead shot. Many a time there appears to be a fight of whom or what to focus on when one of the characters is more in the background. It's as if you yourself can't decide.
I read into all this and developed a theory of my own, only to be proven full of shit after listening to the commentary. What I took away from the blurring camera shots was possible symbolism to Sarah and Kevin's current battles to stay sober. I felt intoxicated before my buzz even kicked in. What I got from the shaky and frantic effect was Garrick's struggles of who and what he is and how he doesn't want to be, but it's inevitable and he knows it. As it turns out, there were severe budget restraints and this entire film was shot in hand-held fashion. As a matter of fact, the budget was so low that the crew was under insane time restrictions to get most of the scenes filmed before business hours at the chosen locations, because they couldn't afford to shoot during regular working hours. Well, I still want to stick to my guns with what I pulled out of the film, but either way I give major fucking props because I think the look came out brilliant.
Gonna have to leave the acting shout outs pretty vague, but I gotta say I dig the hell out of AJ Bowen (Hatchet II, House of the Devil) in pretty much everything. In his role of Garrick, he manages to create a sympathetic sociopath, and it had my feelings for the guy in a twist. Amy Seintz is great as Sarah, the alcoholic ex-girlfriend of a serial murder. Her performance evokes unforgettable fear fused with a constant glazed over look of weariness, and I clung to her immediately. Joe Swanberg plays Kevin, a seemingly wonderful guy she meets at her AA meetings and eventually hits it off with. He paints the portrait of “Mr. Sensitive and Caring” so very believably. I can't pick a favorite here, can't even attempt to.
I'm not gonna recommend A Horrible Way to Die to everyone; the direction is going to turn a lot of people off, and some will think the 80 some-odd minute run time feels more like sitting in 5 o' clock traffic. But if slow burning movies is your thing, by all means try it out. Ultimately, I see a minimal fan base, but I'm glad to say I was sucked right in from the white and sterile opening all the way through to the final credits.
