Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Kourtney Roy
Starring: Chloe Pirrie, Jeff Gladstone, Jason Deline, Ali Rusu-Tahir
It's Kryptic by name and cryptic by nature for Kourtney Roy's
directorial debut. The title is a play on both the film's cryptozoology
theme (my screener suggest the original title was "Crypto", changed
perhaps to avoid confusion with the world of Bitcoin) and the puzzling
nature of its storytelling. The former revolves around a search for a
mythical sasquatch-like creature known as "The Sooka" in the forests of
British Columbia. The latter sees the film veer into Lynchian territory
with the identities of two women seeming to blur and merge into one.
Neither strands coalesce into anything satisfying, and the experience is
akin to trying to complete Tuesday's cryptic crossword with Wednesday's
clues.
The confusion comes right from the off as Kay (Chloe Pirrie) joins
a party of female hikers only to veer off the trail when she's distracted
by what appears to be a fragment of red material. She stumbles across some
decidedly hallucinogenic looking mushrooms before spotting the Sooka in
the distance. From afar, the creature seems to put her in a trance (or did
she indulge in the mushrooms?), and when she comes around she has no idea
who she is or how she got there.
Following some clues, Kay pieces together her life and learns she's
rather unremarkable. Perhaps wishing for an escape from this drabness, she
becomes obsessed with the case of Barb Valentine, a cryptozoologist who
disappeared while searching for the Sooka. Barb also bears a suspicious
physical similarity to Kay.
Most of the ensuing narrative consists of Kay meeting and interacting
with a variety of women who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of
the Sooka. Each of these characters is distractingly quirky and I found
myself wishing the movie had played this aspect with a straight face,
perhaps employing real life creature hunters in the manner of Nomadland. The film is clearly trying to say something by making all of these
characters women, perhaps a commentary on escaping a patriarchal world,
but making them so cartoonish doesn't help this thesis. The few men we
meet are tellingly abusive, either physically or emotionally, but come off
as broad caricatures.
Pirrie almost holds it all together with an impressive performance that
convinces us we're watching someone who may be in an alien body. When Kay
finds herself in Barb's nightmarish suburban home with an overly
controlling husband, the metaphor becomes clear as that of a woman
suddenly realising she doesn't recognise her life any longer. But rather
than digging into these potentially intriguing themes, Roy is too
distracted by the cosmic horror elements of her movie, with frequent
surreal sequences of writhing, rubbery bodies in the vein of Brian
Yuzna's Society and token Little Red Riding Hood imagery.
When the mysery is ultimately revealed it almost feels like a con has
been played on the audience as it's so hackneyed. At several points I
found myself rewinding my screener as I was convinced my inability to
follow along was a "me" problem, but it was a futile exercise. I'm all for
surrealism and ambiguity, but for both to work requires a focussed vision
from a filmmaker, something Roy fails to demonstrate in her misformed and
frustrating debut.
Kryptic screens at the 2024
Fantasia Film Festival on July 22nd and 24th.
