Film Review: The Scary of Sixty-First
Images courtesy of Arcadia.
The Scary of Sixty-First, the feature directorial debut of Belarusian-American actress, filmmaker, and podcast host, Dasha Nekrasova, presents itself as two movies.It’s at once an earnest, self-important, mumblecore horror film about passive twenty-somethings being angry at the injustices of the world, or it’s a tongue-in-cheek parody of said pretentious low-budget horror films.
The film tells the story of two young women moving into a cheap but fancy New York apartment with some “troubling history”. Without revealing too much, that history involves the disgraced celebrity pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. While the subject matter is nothing to laugh about, the way these characters just bluntly namedrop Epstein, along with spouting numerous internet conspiracy theories deadly seriously, is comically obtuse, seemingly less concerned with the actual events post-Epstein, and more so with establishing a shocking setting for a psychological horror narrative that actually has very little to do with the mystery it presents.
This is my first exposure to the work of Nekrasova, so my confusion comes from the fact that, stylistically it seems to want to be taken seriously, and it is very well shot, yet on every other level the production is confusingly poor.
Visually emulating the claustrophobic psychological New York horror-thrillers of the 70s, even down to being shot on grainy 16mm film, that little extra authenticity goes a long way for the atmosphere of the whole thing, far more than any fake-grain-over-digital-look would have. The droning synth-heavy soundtrack influenced by the likes of Oneohtrix Point Never, combine with the cinematography to give it that extra haunting edge. Yet the film stock clearly ate up most of the budget as the acting and writing is awful and in some scenes it seems like it’s on purpose and other times it seems completely sincere.
Betsy Brown as Addie was probably the best actress in the film, delivering her lines believably, until the second half of the film, which had her writhing around uncontrollably, spouting the strangest dialogue in a childlike voice, albeit demonstrating a sense of extreme commitment to the role. Director Nekrasova plays “The Girl”, the smartest character in the film to no fault, who shows up to save the secondary lead, Noelle, played by Madeline Quinn. Both actresses deliver such bland and bored performances that they seem like they’re almost reading the script for the first time on camera. And I think Mark Rapaport, who plays Greg, thought he was in a porno, which may well have been a genuine confusion considering the amount of nudity and sex scenes on display.
Everything comes together with an explosively weird and violent finale in the end for it to be a suitably surreal endeavor, with a very effective atmosphere established through visuals and sound design, bogged down by a confused tone, script, and cast, that might want to be one thing, but presents itself as another thing, ambiguous enough that the purpose of the whole film is a massive blur.
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