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Irish Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Gazer review: An impressive, lo-fi and disarmingly intense debut
GAZER Director : Ryan J. Sloan Cert : 15A Genre : Mystery Starring : Ariella Mastroianni, Marcia Debonis, Renee Gagner, Jack Alberts, Tommy Kang Running Time : 2 hrs 14 mins Ryan J Sloan's Gazer springs from the grungy fringes of American indie cinema with the urgent pulse of a noir and the stylings of Barbara Loden's Wanda . Lo-fi, disarmingly intense, and shot on textured 16mm by cinematographer Matheus Bastos, this impressive debut feature casts a twitchy, retro shadow over the less salubrious parts of New Jersey. Frankie (a mesmerising Ariella Mastroianni, who co-wrote the script with producer, editor and director Sloane) plays a single mother trying to wrestle back control of her fractured family and equally fragmented psyche. Frankie suffers from dyschronometria, a rare condition that distorts her perception of time. To cope, she records second-by-second audio prompts reminding her what she's doing and where she is. These serve as both narrative scaffolding and existential red flags, tethering us to her unravelling mind and blackouts. The financially struggling heroine takes a one-time job offered by a stranger named Claire (Renee Gagner). The task: retrieve a car, allegedly belonging to Claire, and leave it out in the wasteland. Inevitably, the vehicle turns up with a corpse in the boot, and Frankie's fingerprints on the wheel. READ MORE Mastroianni's haunted performance plays out against dim interiors, grimy streets, anonymous motels and buzzing petrol stations, with the air of a sinner wandering through purgatory. Mobile phones, we are told, are bad for her, an absence that keeps her rooted in a decaying, tactile world. The score by Steve Matthew Carter, all despondent horns and unsettling reverb, adds to the distress. It's impossible not to think of Christopher Nolan's early work and the classic paranoia of Brian DePalma's Blow Out and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation . But Gazer swerves from retro pastiche into Cronenbergian body horror, as the already unreliable narrator becomes increasingly unmoored.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Gazer review – ineffably creepy and unbearably tense noir chiller
Here is a paranoid noir chiller from the US, shot on 16mm on the mean streets of Jersey City; it is a fascinating debut for first-time feature director Ryan J Sloan that premiered at Cannes last year and is now getting its much-deserved UK release. A genuine skin-crawling unease seeps out of the screen for every second of its running time, helped by a brooding, moaning electronic score by Steve Matthew Carter. This ineffably creepy, often unbearably tense and disquieting film has a little of early Christopher Nolan (the Nolan of Following and Memento), with hints of Lynch and Cronenberg in its hallucinatory episodes. Sloan's co-writer and partner Ariella Mastroianni (reportedly a very distant relative of Marcello) stars as Frankie, a woman living on the edge of poverty, suffering from the neurogenerative disorders ataxia and dyschronometria. This means that she is disoriented and cannot accurately judge the passing of time, a condition she attempts to manage by listening to 30-minute tapes on an old-fashioned Sony Walkman, and by gazing in at the windows of total strangers. Her pinched, sharp, intelligent and discontented face dominates the screen; she radiates suppressed anguish and rage at everything that has happened and will happen to her, and at the idea that her condition means she will have to resign herself to an assisted living facility. The scene in which a harassed doctor puts this to her is itself a masterly set piece of grimness. Her husband apparently took his own life some time ago, an ambiguous event which recurs to her in vivid nightmares – was she somehow responsible? – which means Frankie is now legally obliged to let her young daughter be looked after by her glowering mother-in-law. At a therapy group for those who have lost loved ones to suicide, Frankie meets a mysteriously intense young woman (Renee Gagner) whom she remembers seeing in a window, and who puts to her a strange proposition; she says she is being abused and bullied by her aggressive cop brother (Jack Alberts) and needs to get away from their shared apartment, but he is keeping her car keys. If Frankie will break into the apartment and get them, and drive her car to the remote Jersey wetlands, she can have $3,000. But can Frankie do this without zoning out, or suffering one of her 'flashforward' episodes where hours can suddenly go past in an instant? Gazer's atmosphere of looming disaster and dreamlike oppression crowds in on you as the movie progresses; an intriguing, genuinely scary picture. Gazer is in UK cinemas from 25 July.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Gazer review – ineffably creepy and unbearably tense noir chiller
Here is a paranoid noir chiller from the US, shot on 16mm on the mean streets of Jersey City; it is a fascinating debut for first-time feature director Ryan J Sloan that premiered at Cannes last year and is now getting its much-deserved UK release. A genuine skin-crawling unease seeps out of the screen for every second of its running time, helped by a brooding, moaning electronic score by Steve Matthew Carter. This ineffably creepy, often unbearably tense and disquieting film has a little of early Christopher Nolan (the Nolan of Following and Memento), with hints of Lynch and Cronenberg in its hallucinatory episodes. Sloan's co-writer and partner Ariella Mastroianni (reportedly a very distant relative of Marcello) stars as Frankie, a woman living on the edge of poverty, suffering from the neurogenerative disorders ataxia and dyschronometria. This means that she is disoriented and cannot accurately judge the passing of time, a condition she attempts to manage by listening to 30-minute tapes on an old-fashioned Sony Walkman, and by gazing in at the windows of total strangers. Her pinched, sharp, intelligent and discontented face dominates the screen; she radiates suppressed anguish and rage at everything that has happened and will happen to her, and at the idea that her condition means she will have to resign herself to an assisted living facility. The scene in which a harassed doctor puts this to her is itself a masterly set piece of grimness. Her husband apparently took his own life some time ago, an ambiguous event which recurs to her in vivid nightmares – was she somehow responsible? – which means Frankie is now legally obliged to let her young daughter be looked after by her glowering mother-in-law. At a therapy group for those who have lost loved ones to suicide, Frankie meets a mysteriously intense young woman (Renee Gagner) whom she remembers seeing in a window, and who puts to her a strange proposition; she says she is being abused and bullied by her aggressive cop brother (Jack Alberts) and needs to get away from their shared apartment, but he is keeping her car keys. If Frankie will break into the apartment and get them, and drive her car to the remote Jersey wetlands, she can have $3,000. But can Frankie do this without zoning out, or suffering one of her 'flashforward' episodes where hours can suddenly go past in an instant? Gazer's atmosphere of looming disaster and dreamlike oppression crowds in on you as the movie progresses; an intriguing, genuinely scary picture. Gazer is in UK cinemas from 25 July.
