CM McCambridge
Rochester’s Anomaly Film Festival is always a delight, highlighting genre films from around the globe and bringing them to the town that revolutionized the camera so many years ago. Every year comes with its own unique theme, and 2024 was no different with its dark carnival decor and activities. While the festival ran for all of November 6 through 10, the weekend selections really seemed to tie together the event’s theme nicely, putting a special focus on the performances we put on, as well as having a few true spectacle pieces in-between.
Dead Mail
Man, you could cut the tension in that theater with a knife.
Dead Mail is a thrilling romp, following the events surrounding one kidnapping and the desperate letter the victim sends. Rather than just be a hunt for the kidnapper or showing his victim, Dead Mail tries to do both, tying it all together in a neat bow in time for the third act.
Watching Trent (John Fleck) go down this path more and more against his better judgment is astonishing, and Fleck does a masterful job of selling it. With every second glance and every pained expression, it feels more believable, even as Trent is driving the story further away from reason over and over. By the time the climax comes around, we’ve seen exactly what led to his actions and can sympathize with some of what he’s done.
Though it could use another pass across an editor’s desk for pacing, Dead Mail drives a tight screenplay with some fantastic acting and prop work. The lighting consistently keeps the tone, from the harsh shadows of Trent’s cellar to the bright and buzzing overheads of the post office. It all sells itself so well through these small touches. In a time when lighting is seemingly becoming a bit of a lost art, it’s wonderful to see a film that clearly took it into consideration.
With a fun theme and enough small twists to leave audiences guessing, Dead Mail delivers on its premise and manages to sort itself out nicely, placing every plot thread back into its envelope to find its destination.
Chainsaws Were Singing
How does a person even begin to talk about this film?
The Slasher-Comedy-Romance-Musical out of Estonia manages to do a lot in its sub-two-hour runtime if that wasn’t clear from the genre description alone. From multiple car explosions to an unintentional police murder spree, to a love story, to a lesbian hedgehog, to an entire musical number about bukkake, everything is contained in one in this near-fever dream of a film.
It shouldn’t come as any shock that Chainsaws takes itself about as seriously as the audience is expected to, being the perfect absolutely bonkers movie night selection. There’s no world in which this film could be anything other than a fun mess, and it makes no attempt to hide that. For all those who claim to just want something fun, this certainly is it, and a perfect palette cleanser for people exhausted of dramas and thrillers.
While other attendees were later outside talking about how the film needed to be trimmed down, I fundamentally disagree. Sure, plenty of this film isn’t literally necessary to understand the plot, but it’s all lovingly crafted and assembled in such a way that there are no loose threads. Should I have seen Chainsaws with any part of it missing, I would have found myself disappointed, even if the pace was broken, the tone never was. It may be on the long side for a genre movie, being well above 90 minutes, but it also clearly understands the story it’s telling and the tone it needs to sell. For all of its messiness, Chainsaws manages to land on all accounts.
Flow
God, this one is gorgeous. Being the first PG film that Anomaly has ever screened, it really was a perfect choice. Following a cat and the group of animals it meets after a severe flood, Flow is one of the cutest films of the year, and also one of the most striking.
With models and movements evocative of its name, Flow really captures the differences in animal behavior in a way that other films wouldn’t. There’s barely any humanization in behavior, no distinct shifts in how any one member of the crew behaves, but instead, everything is clearly telegraphed through existing animal behaviors. The leading cat acts like how everyone thinks of a cat acting, and the rest follow suit. There’s no change for our sake, but rather an exaggeration of what we already expect as an audience.
There’s such a distinct curiosity throughout the film as if the team behind it were discovering new parts and chasing them throughout the process. This, in turn, reflects well on Flow’s characters, each one being naturally curious as they explore new places and discover how they’re going to live now. The stunning soundtrack running throughout carries so much of this feeling, following the waves and the wind to be just as flowy as the rest of the film. With no dialogue to speak of, the sound design all comes together to form something incredible, selling everything in this world as authentic while keeping the audience firmly in this perspective.
Sound of Love
On the list of the wettest-sounding films ever made is Sound of Love. Following a janitor who falls in love with an ASMR artist, Sound of Love clearly had a high bar for its sound design to meet. Fortunately, the film went far beyond, even managing to get the more minute details of different styles of shoes and countless different materials.
Being less of a straightforward romance than it may seem, Sound of Love takes so many interesting turns that it becomes almost impossible to guess where it’s going next. Even at Anomaly, there was the unique twist of Yuka Someya, who plays the film’s leading lady, making a surprise appearance. There are so many little touches here that come together beautifully, from the flashbacks being in a different aspect ratio, to the way that performances escalate in intensity as the plot becomes more unbelievable, ending at something that wouldn’t be horribly out of place in a David Lynch film.
It may be easy to overlook this film given the initial description, but it really must be seen to be believed. From the outside, it looks nearly stereotypical, but the way its plot unfolds is utterly unique, taking full advantage of its setting and premise in a way many films now are seemingly afraid to do.
Dead Talents Society
This may not be the first Anomaly film to make me cry (that award was given to last year’s Robot Dreams), but it was certainly the first to really hit something that deep inside.
Dead Talents Society is a must-see. Full-stop, that’s it. With everything from a unique setting and premise to a cast entirely at home in their characters, there’s so much to love here. I can’t possibly name a film that more perfectly captures the genre of horror-comedy than one that uses its horror as comedy. Dead Talents Society uses countless horror genre conventions to push its narrative into new ground, handily developing a world based around the stereotypes of 90’s and 2000’s style horror to tell a heartfelt story about the weight of expectations.
Every character in Dead Talents Society feels lived in by the time we meet them, something ironic considering that they’ve all been dead for some time. There’s so much subtle work here, little quirks and behaviors that it’s abundantly clear that the cast dove into the script with all they had, giving thought to every action and reaction. It almost feels like a disservice to talk about anything else, given how tangible the character work is on screen. Given that this film is very much a comedy, it comes across as unexpected, but not at all unwelcome to see this labor of love. Sandrine Pinna’s Catherine in particular has so many little quirks to her behavior that were carefully crafted to tell this story that they shine through the screen, selling the glitz and glam as much as the woman behind it all, both the person and the mask they present being clearly distinguishable in the most minute behaviors.
While these were far from the only films screened at Anomaly, the Friday and Saturday selections always seem to be indicative of the festival as a whole. For a year with plenty of incredible picks, the carnival theme truly emphasized the masks these characters wear, the ways they present themselves as a grand act, something more than who they really are. If I knew any less about those involved, I might almost be inclined to call this a fluke, but for so many films to have this emphasized by the festival’s theme, truly there is no coincidence in curation.
