There’s something off with Darling, Mickey Keating’s latest horror movie (his second in 2015, after unveiling Pod at SXSW). Shooting in black-and-white on a presumably low budget (given its single location and glossy digital sheen), Keating’s film is a combination of familiar elements from psychological horror that never feels genuine in its execution save for the set-up: a young woman (Lauren Ashley Carter, referred to only as “Darling”) gets a new job as a caretaker for a large house in Manhattan, which the owner (Sean Young) claims is the oldest house in the city. But right before the homeowner leaves Darling to care for the house on her own, she also mentions two other pieces of information: the house has a reputation for being haunted, and the previous caretaker jumped from the roof to her death. Darling doesn’t seem to mind, seemingly unfazed by her new boss’ oversights.

With the owner out of the way, Darling turns into a largely one person show for Carter, who goes insane as she picks up on some strange things in the house: a room she can’t enter, a necklace with an upside-down cross, doors opening on their own, and other sorts of things that can only be attributed to unseen, sinister forces. Keating shows an awareness for traits commonly associated with austere, refined horror (rigorously composed shots, an emphasis on mood, and obfuscated character development, to name a few) but he has no idea how to properly implement them. Darling is woefully underdeveloped, with an ominous shot of some scars on her body serving as backstory, and the eventual reveal of Darling as a victim of sexual trauma is more offensive in its laziness than its insensitivity. Keating makes his protagonist nothing more than a victim succumbing to her traumatic past, and by doing so exposes his usage of sexual/physical abuse as a plot device, the sort of behaviour that should be left in the time period Darling tries to emulate.

The offensiveness of Keating’s story might not have been so transparent if everything else didn’t feel so half-baked. A five-chapter structure feels as superfluous as the different typefaces used to introduce each section, but the worst part has to be Keating’s insistence on stroboscopic effects and quick cuts throughout. What might have been an attempt to portray Darling’s fractured mental state turns into an obnoxious and annoying attempt to shock rather than scare, relying on bursts of static over Carter’s screaming face as a way to jolt viewers awake. Carter, looking like a grown-up Wednesday Addams, manages to come out of the film unscathed, doing a fine job acting unhinged while easily carrying the film along on her shoulders. But no matter how magnetic Carter’s presence is in front of the camera, it’s no escape from Keating’s asinine attempt at both a horror film and a character study.

This review was originally published on November 16, 2015 as part of our coverage of the Ithaca International Film Festival.

It always feels important to rediscover an established filmmaker’s earliest work. There’s a unique artistic pleasure in dissecting the roots, looking for the under-developed thematic, narrative or formalistic signs of eventual greatness—almost as if we are over-analyzing a childhood to reconcile why someone became a serial killer. With its re-release at the IFC Center in New York on Friday, March 11th, our eyes fix on Kelly Reichardt’s River of Grass. It’s difficult to find reviews of the film from its premiere at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival and its subsequent limited theatrical release, but by all accounts, it received solid buzz considering it was a debut film. River of Grass was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance when the festival was at the height of its grassroots independent glory. Interestingly, Tom Noonan’s directorial debut What Happened Was (a film by a notable filmmaker that has been similarly forgotten) won the prize, which competed in a lineup that included Clerks, Spanking the Monkey and Hoop Dreams—three films that cemented the cultural importance of Sundance at the time. Twelve years after River of Grass, Reichardt made her breakout film Old Joy and has been on an indie cred tear ever since.

River of Grass stars Lisa Bowman as Cozy, a bored wife and mother, stuck in a boring life with a boring family in a boring community. Restless, she decides to hit the bar one night, abandoning her motherly responsibilities in the process. She meets Lee Ray (Larry Fessenden), a young slacker who has recently come into the possession of a gun. They connect, leave the bar together and eventually get into some trouble because of that loaded gun. Cozy and Lee Ray are now tied together by murder, a bond which Cozy notes is stronger than the bond of marriage. The two leads give very fine, understated performances, with Bowman particularly good in the weirder and quieter moments. Fessenden, in one of his earliest performance, brings energy to the film.

The film is very much in line with the 1990s Sundance indie from which it came. The offbeat characters, loose narrative, crime elements and hushed voice-over are all trademarks of its time, which gives the film a bit of a time capsule feeling. It also has an up-front comedic sense that we don’t associate with most of Reichardt’s films, but was definitely a part of indie cinema at the time. From a recurring joke with a profane punchline and weird character moments, the film is consistently funny. Sometimes it’s absurd too, like when Cozy and Lee Roy are on the lam only to be revealed they are in the same city as where they started. It’s the standard couple-on-the-run plot through the ’90s slacker sensibility. They see themselves as dangerous bandits but are ultimately too chickenshit to run through a toll stop. When they do eventually try to leave southern Florida, they fail in about the most pathetic way possible. Even Cozy’s monotone voice-over becomes humorous in its super serious pseudo-philosophy: Cozy’s realization of “If we weren’t killers, we weren’t anything,” for example.

For Reichardt, River of Grass is very much in line with her look at small communities. The film’s title comes from a Native nickname for the Everglades, the Florida swampland only miles outside of Miami with the complete opposite aesthetic. Instead of the bright fluorescent lights, beaches and nightclubs, the “River of Grass” is rural with miles of flat land dissected by lonely highways. The inhabitants are working-class and semi-transient, similar to their Northwest counterparts in Wendy and Lucy and Old Joy.

At less than 80 minutes, the film reveals itself as more of a slice-of-life than it seemed. This is perhaps what makes River of Grass most like its auteur’s work. All of Reichardt’s films, no matter how profound, emotionally or thematically rich, are very much a moment in their characters’ lives. Like Meek’s Cutoff, River of Grass ends with a particular sense of dread, but just open-ended enough not to pin down. Certainly, Reichardt could have expanded Cozy and Lee Ray’s life, added more debauchery or heightened the stakes of their criminal fall-out, but she chose to keep the narrative shaggy and simple—sure, the ultra-strapped indie budget probably had a practical effect on the film’s length, but there is the beginning of a narrative line here.

I don’t know why River of Grass didn’t immediately achieve a cult reception similar to Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Clerks or other films similar in their time and space, but thankfully Kelly Reichardt persevered, allowing you to take a look back to over-analyze or simply discover the roots of one of today’s most important filmmakers. It shouldn’t be forgotten, however, that River of Grass is a very good debut in its own right. The film is often funny, often elusive, and very confident in its style and narrative presentation.

Idiot Plot: Any plot containing problems that would be solved instantly if all of the characters were not idiots. (From rogerebert.com)

Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, the writing/directing team behind Body, must have had the Idiot Plot in mind when they made this film. Body starts out innocently enough; friends Holly (Helen Rogers), Mel (Lauren Molina) and Cali (Alexandra Turshen) spend Christmas together at Mel’s parents, bored out of their minds. Cali tells her friends that her rich uncle happens to be away for the holidays, and comes up with the bright idea of driving over to party in his giant, empty mansion. They head off to the house, but after partying for a few hours Holly and Mel discover the house actually isn’t owned by anyone related to Cali (it actually belongs to a rich family Cali used to babysit for). Suddenly the groundskeeper (Larry Fessenden) shows up, and when he tries to stop them from escaping he breaks his neck falling down a flight of stairs.

It’s an interesting set-up, and Berk/Olsen handle the escalation from girls’ night out to manslaughter well. But then the film turns to the question of how its characters will get themselves out of this situation, and things take a sharp nosedive. Cali devises an elaborate, offensively stupid cover-up, and Holly & Mel simply go along with it. It’s obvious that Berk/Olsen want viewers to be shocked by the levels of depravity their characters go to (here’s a hint: if you found Gone Girl offensive in its portrayal of Amy Dunne, your head will fucking explode watching this). None of it really shocks or offends, though. Plenty of time gets spent on establishing the chemistry between the three friends, but as individuals they’re developed through broad strokes. It’s hard to have any reaction to these characters stomping all over morals when they barely register as people. It’s also difficult to believe in a single ounce of this film when the premise is so infuriatingly idiotic.

Granted, it’s not unreasonable for people to act stupidly in extreme situations, but in order to believe what happens in Body you have to assume these three friends never graduated preschool. The asinine situation only makes Berk and Olsen’s motivations transparent. This is a film about shock for shock’s sake. Its only priority is putting something on-screen that will piss people off (or impress die-hard genre fans into giving emphatic responses of “Sick, bro!”). It’s one of those films where its blatant attempts at being egregious wind up making it heinous for all the wrong reasons. The only offensive thing about Body is that it seriously expects people to fall for this shit.