Chris Jordan reviews the
reality-bending found-footage indie thriller, which was featured at
Comic Con over the weekend.
The San Diego Comic Con gave us a whole
lot of big movie and TV news over the weekend: trailers for Justice
League, Wonder Woman, Blair Witch, American Gods...
but let's not forget that it also gave a platform to some very cool
indie genre films that could use the exposure a lot more than some of
those sure-to-be-blockbusters. One of those films was the ambitious
and high-concept found-footage thriller Occupants,
which screened on Saturday night as part of the Comic Con
International Independent Film Festival. While I wasn't able to fly
out to San Diego to attend Comic Con and see their indie film
selections hosted by the filmmakers, I had the chance to see a
screener copy of Occupants,
and was thus able to get an early look at director Russ Emanuel and
writer Julia Camara's movie on the same weekend it was enjoying its
West Coast debut.
The film they assembled is a very interesting take
on the found-footage concept, moving away from the usual Paranormal
Activity-style tropes and
towards a more unique blend of sci-fi/mystery/thriller. You won't
find any troublemaking ghosts here, but instead, a pretty cool take
on the concept of parallel dimensions, and suspense based around the
question of how people might turn out differently under another set
of circumstances. It is ultimately a flawed movie, with some aspects
that work quite a bit better than others, but credit must be given
for doing something genuinely different with the found-footage
medium; a unique concept executed unevenly is (I think) better than a
repetition of tired tropes done well.
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| "What's this... a parallel universe with a different color temperature?" |
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| "I hate it when parallel universe crossover causes picture interference!" |
Right
from the start, it is clear that the use of found footage is being
handled differently this time around. After the initial Blair
Witch-esque text prologue
explaining that the footage comes from an unsolved case-file (gotta
have that pretense of realism!), we are introduced to what is
essentially a rough assembly of raw footage from a documentary. Our
two main characters – a married couple (Briana White and Michael
Pugliese), of whom the wife is a filmmaker – are working on a
healthy-living documentary, for which they have placed cameras all
over the public areas of their house. This means that the footage
isn't shaky-cam-style handheld stuff, but an actual multi-cam
production. This device not only allows director Emanuel to avoid the
usual visual annoyances of many found-footage movies, but also builds
in an answer for why the characters are filming everything when stuff
gets weird. It also allows for some fun, slightly postmodern scenes
in which the documentarian protagonist, Annie, talks about the
filmmaking process, and her approach in cutting the wealth of
around-the-house footage into a compelling story (the result of
which, of course, is the fictional rough-cut that we're seeing).
Things get strange when the footage starts inexplicably showing
another version of their house, with another version of themselves: a
window into a parallel universe, where they appear to be a miserable
couple headed for some sort of imminent disaster. They keep the
cameras rolling and keep watching, fascinated and disturbed by who
they could have been under different circumstances... but opening the
window to these tragic parallel versions of themselves soon presents
consequences.
Occupants
is at its best when it is operating as a high-concept relationship
thriller, about how a happy couple could have been sent down a much
more tragic path if their circumstances were just a bit different. It
is in these moments that the writer, director, and two leads create
some strong emotional impacts and unsettling “what if” chills.
The parallels between the happy version of the couple in this reality
and the struggling one on the other end of the cameras, sliding
further towards misery despite a couple moments of reaching for
something better, are alternately sweet and very sad. The question of
how a person can be loving in one reality and cruel in another, and
whether it would take just a push for the kind version to turn into
the nasty one, has pretty disturbing implications. This is where the
script works best, and where the director and two leads dig into
the material most effectively.
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| "I just want to find a parallel dimension where people aren't so quick to judge found-footage movies as Blair Witch knockoffs! It's so unfair!" |
However,
it does falter elsewhere. Firstly, the script makes the mistake of
thinking that the anomaly of the dimension-bridging cameras needs to
be explained. There are a few scenes where the characters throw out a
bunch of possibilities of what might have caused this to happen...
and some are very, very silly, with allusions to the Mayan calendar
and theories about vegan diets awakening latent psychic powers
(someone call Scott Pilgrim's
Vegan Police!). In a story like this where the sci-fi plot device is
clearly a metaphor to address deeper concerns like ethical identity
and the decay of a happy relationship into a potentially-abusive one,
it's totally fine to leave that plot device unexplained. In fact,
it's better to leave it unexplained than to throw some goofy
explanations into the ring which will distract viewers from what the
film is really about. These more dubious moments of theorizing seem
to make the actors a bit ill at ease as well, creating the weakest
moments of otherwise solid performances. Then, there's the matter of
the third act. While the first two acts focus much more on the drama,
and suspense in the psychological sense, the film decides to turn
into more of an outright thriller towards the end, and makes some
narrative jumps that strain plausibility and take some characters'
actions a bit too far. There are still some very strong moments and
effective twists, but some of the more believability-stretching
choices cause the last few minutes to not have the emotional punch
that the first hour achieved at its best.
Still,
these flaws do not ultimately undo the movie; they just make it an
uneven one. It doesn't always work, and it makes a few missteps, but
when it works it works well. Its finest moments are very effective,
and its choice to use a parallel-universe concept as a tool to tell
the story of a crumbling relationship is inspired. It also uses found
footage in a very effective way, and I appreciated its postmodern
nods to the storytelling process. For these strong points it is
definitely worth a look, and I really appreciated its ambitions.
There are better found-footage films out there, but this one
definitely tries to do something unique with the style, and at its
best it succeeds nicely. It has a few more festival screenings coming
up – give it a look if you can.
Score:
-
Christopher S. Jordan