Prox Partum Depression

Quick Plot: As Esther leaves her final OBGYN appointment, a hooded stranger attacks her from behind, stealing some cash and inflicting terrible harm on her pregnant belly. Having lost her baby, Esther is visited by a hospital social worker who encourages her to try out some support groups.

It seems as though that's exactly what she needs. The reserved, distant Esther lives alone with a tank of fish who don't survive her hospital stay. At a group meeting, Esther is befriended by the much more put-together Melanie, a friendly woman recovering from the loss of her husband and son at the hands of a drunk driver.

Proxy is a film best watched knowing nothing more than the above synopsis, so those who haven't seen the film should probably stop here. It's not quite perfect, but it's an intriguing dark ride that makes an appropriately chilling followup to director Zack Parker's outstanding debut Scalene. You can find it streaming on Hulu.

Now let's talk.

There is much to be said for films that don't reveal what they're about until well into their running time. Proxy begins as Esther's story, as we struggle to understand this distant, lonely victim of a truly horrible crime trying to rebuild her life.

Or so we think.

Aside from the fact that Esther is far more complicated than we ever imagined, Proxy also does some fancy footwork in changing gears halfway through to become Melanie's story. Melanie, an equally if not more damaged woman, is a Muchausen by Proxy poster girl with dangerous ambitions about playing the hero. 

Much like Scalene, Proxy doesn't comfort its audience with any sense of morality. Our only real sympathetic character (the always welcome Joe Swanberg as Melanie's clueless husband) is so specifically kept in the margins that while our hearts go out to his plight, he never really seems to stand a chance. In an odd inverse, Kristina Kelebe's hell-in-a-pickup-truck spurned ex-con is introduced as an untamed animal with a violent streak, only to become something of an antihero purely because her crimes seem somehow purer than the wolf-in-sheep's-blouse-wearing Melanie.

Zack Parker, along with his writing partner Kevin Donner, is an exciting filmmaker with a wonderfully twisted ability to tell incredibly challenging stories. Next to Scalene, Proxy also reminded me a bit of Simon Rumley's Red White and Blue, a similarly harrowing genre-bender that successfully suffocates its audience in the amount of human-caused tragedy that attacks its characters.

Proxy isn't a fun film (though it packs its own brand of occasional dark humor), nor is it scary in any traditional sense. But it will, I imagine, lodge itself deep under many a viewer's skin. If it doesn't, you probably shouldn't volunteer to babysit anytime soon.

High Points

I've said it before and I'll say it again: a well-executed ambiguous ending can be a truly beautiful thing

Low Points

It says a lot about a horror film when a 2-hour running length isn't long enough, but I really did wish we had just a little more time learning about Esther and what brought her to the kind of place where, well, she'd ask her girlfriend to anonymously crush her almost-ready-to-deliver baby

Lessons Learned

Tattoo artists who want to know what's going on read the newspapers

Local newsmen are loyal to their sources

Think very carefully before asking someone who has just gone through tremendous loss, "So how are you doing?"

Rent/Bury/Buy

Proxy won't make anyone feel better about the world, but it will hopefully give many a film fan hope for the future of honest, cruel, and incredibly rich cinema. I'll continue to buy what Zack Parker is selling...even if I want to curl up in a ball with my far better intentioned cats after.

Just Following Orders

During my freshman year of college, I took an introduction to psychology class and received the worst grade of my university career (B-, because I'm a NERD). Aside from crushing my self-esteem, this course instilled in me a very, very important rule to live by: 

Never be the subject that proves a terrible truth about humanity.

This class involved watching a few videos about the infamous Milgram experiments and what they might say about our tendency to accept sheep status when a leader has taken control. One of the videos followed a lesser-known and far more relatable study than the "how many electric shocks would you issue if someone in a lab coat told you to?" In this case, two people (one a control and the other the unknowing subject) were led into a room to take a written test. Just outside the door, they passed a man doing maintenance work while standing on a ladder. They were instructed to sit down, write their answers, and not to leave the room or speak with one another until the time was up.

Ten minutes into their "exam," there is a loud sound as if the man on the ladder has fallen and is moaning in pain. The control continues to take the test, making no effort to investigate. The subject seems conflicted, but ultimately follows the lead of the control and continues on course despite the screams coming just outside the door. When the same experiment is run without the control, the subject usually breaks the "rules" and checks on the individual outside.

Rorschach had his Kitty Genovese and I have this educational video to keep me in line when it comes to hive minding. I'm sure I can still be duped into submitting to authority despite my own instincts, but I try to be conscious of what I think is right if it doesn't seem to match instructions. Or maybe I just always make a point of checking on someone if I hear a crash.

My point with this rather overlong intro is not that I'm anywhere close to being a psychology expert (remember: B-) but that it's easy--so easy--to do what we're told without any kind of introspection. Today's film is about such a case, and while it's a horrifying extreme, it also really happened, and could potentially happen to all of us.

Let's see if they start showing this in intro psychology classrooms.

Quick Plot: Sarah is the manager at a ChickWich, a fast food joint filled with your typical fry grease and unmotivated minimum wage employees. Just before her Friday night shift gets busy, she receives a phone call from a policeman named Officer Daniels informing her that Becky, the pretty young cashier, has been caught stealing money from a customer's purse. Because there's more to this case than petty theft, Sarah is advised to bring Becky to the backroom and keep her in holding until the matter can be resolved.

It doesn't exactly end there. Daniels convinces Sarah that finding the stolen money will make things easier all around, leading to a strip search and confiscation of Becky's clothing. As the restaurant gets busier and busier, Sarah is forced to bring in her almost-fiance Van to help supervise Becky, something made more than a little uncomfortable by the fact that Van may have had a few beers on the way. Daniels asks a little more of Van. Since Becky fears Daniels is mounting a bigger case against her brother (who was casually mentioned on the phone call), she continues to comply with the increasingly odd demands.

Written and directed by Craig Zobel, Compliance is very closely taken from a real event that occurred in a Kentucky McDonald's a few years back (you might even remember the Law & Order: SVU episode on it, wherein Robin Williams advised 30 Rock's Pete to do some very bad things). As much as I typically cringe at an "inspired by real events" tagline, it's actually vital in this case because otherwise, it would be so easy for the audience to judge the characters and wonder why they're so accepting of the situation. It's not really any kind of a spoiler to say that Officer Daniels is no cop, that Becky never stole any money, and that Sarah is not about to be named employee of the month.

Daniels (played by the wonderful Pat Healy) is a master manipulator, and while his targets aren't necessarily the sharpest tools in the burger industry, it's completely believable to see them buy his persona without too much questioning. When you know the truth, it's easy to realize that he never names names or gives any real specifics. But every fast food joint has a 19ish year old working the counter, and if you ask her about a family member that might have trouble with the law, there's a good chance that every 19ish year old will have one of those too. That middle-aged restaurant manager will of course be incredibly cooperative if she thinks she's speaking to a policeman with her regional manager on the other line. We're eager to please those in charge. It's human nature.

Compliance is a horror movie, one that will make you cringe. It's also an incredibly important reminder that doing the right thing isn't always the same as doing what we're told. You won't feel good watching it.

High Points

There's such a mastery in Daniels' manipulation of the situation, but it's most horrific in how he's able to immediately shut Becky's protestations down and continuously make her feel small. The worst thing you can ever say to a woman is "calm down" when she's not actually overreacting, and the writing and performances so perfectly nail how such an instruction would work

I'm not in any way the first person to say this, but Ann Dowd's performance as Sarah is so achingly real that it goes a long way in making Compliance work as well as it does

Low Points

The last ten minutes or so deal a little with the aftermath, and while Sarah's arc continues to be fascinating, it feels as though the film stalls a bit in understanding how Becky has come to process the experience

Lessons Learned

You're fucked without bacon

Skinnies don't have pockets

Always check your minutes before using that calling card

Rent/Bury/Buy

Compliance is an incredibly uncomfortable film to sit through. Much like a similarly morally muddy indie gem Scalene, it presents its case and characters with such a believable realness that the entire experience is that much harder to take. This is definitely worth seeing (and is currently streaming on Instant Watch) but remember that it's not an easy ride. 

Math Class Redux!

A scalene triangle is one in which all three sides (and therefore, angles) are not the same. Since Scalene is not a movie about triangles, you should keep this in mind.

Quick Plot: We open on some sudden violence as a middle aged woman named Janice Trimble barrels her way into an upper middle class suburban home in a clumsy attempt to gun down a pretty young woman named Paige. Awkward girl fight commence!

We quickly cut to a chronologically earlier scene as Janice purchases her gun, and next, to one where we see why: her mentally impaired son Jakob has been sent to a mental hospital after allegedly attacking Paige, his home aide. Along with these scenes comes some heartbreaking moments as Janice tries to raise the silent Jakob while attempting to start a sweet romance with a bearded nice guy. As the scenes flash backward Memento style, we see that the sad roots of this family's plight. It's heartbreaking.

Or is it heartbreaking for other reasons? After we flow through Janice's past, we're switched to the more surreal point of view of Jakob, who sees the world from shaky, even LESS linear eyes. We only linger there a little while before switching to the (maybe) more straightforward perception of Paige, a sociology major with good intentions who begins to suspect something amiss at the Trimble house. Is she right, and have we been tricked by Janice's point of view? Or is Paige damaged in her own twisted style in a way that, due to her position, nobody (including the audience) will ever have any reason not to trust her instincts and actions? 

Scalene is a difficult film, something I say as a compliment. Much like the even darker Red White & Blue, Scalene is film that challenges its audience and refuses to let them know if they've won. Grounding it all are three fantastic performances in roles that require an awful lot from their actors. Margo Martindale is one of those faces that you've seen in bit parts forever before she finally gained some mainstream fame with an Emmy award for Justified. She's the kind of 'real woman' actress who you always want more of, someone who can steal a scene from Dexter's Michael C. Hall while laying in a hospital bed bemoaning the lack in quality of key lime pie. As Janice, Martindale gets an incredible chance not just as the long-deserved lead, but as a character who acts from three distinctive point of views. It's juicy, and she squeezes it for all its worth.

Equally good is Hannah Hall (young Jenny in Forrest Gump!) in the tricky part of Paige. While it's easy to side against her, Hall plays Paige with an intriguing balance of entitlement and good intentions. As Jakob, Stake Land’s Adam Scarimbolo has to play a brain-damaged young man with little glamour. It works.

Directed by Zach Parker (who co-wrote the script with Brandon Owens), Scalene is bound to be a divisive film. The backwards approach might seem to some to be derivative of Memento, though I found it an effective way to immediately catch you off guard, forcing you to see the sad effects of some choices and putting your pity in a certain place, only to later twist that around with another point of view. Ultimately, the fact that the narratives don’t *quite* add up makes Scalene something deliberately uneasy, a film less about who’s right than who’s who.

High Notes

It’s called ACTING!

Low Notes

The opening scene features an appropriately awkward, even humorous fight scene. While it's an entertaining and ultimately fitting way to start the film, the choice in score--which goes from Hitchcockian suspense to near-circus cues in less than 3 minutes--almost calls too much attention to itself. I think I understand what Parker is trying to do in terms of toying with tone, but upon first viewing, I just found it distracting

Lessons Learned

When it comes to college, blonds only hang out with blonds

Always check the flipbook before ordering pizza

In some states, it’s REAL easy to buy a gun

Rent/Bury/Buy

I hesitate to heartily recommend Scalene, as it's sure to polarize a large chunk of any viewing audience. While virtually everyone will appreciate its key performances, the very nature of its ambiguity is bound to make some viewers flat-out angry. I for one thought Zach Parker's approach was both unique and incredibly powerful, especially when aided by the powerhouse that is Margo Martindale. The pieces don't add up, and while that might indeed be frustrating, it also makes its own point. Scalene is currently streaming on Netflix and makes me an uncomfortable, but fascinating view. Word on the Internet Superhighway says that the DVD includes a few special features, and considering this is a movie that will easily benefit from a rewatch, I just might put it on my shopping list.