The Breakdown: After picking up a dress at a strange department store, a down-on-her-luck single mom begins experiencing violent and bizarre phenomena around the garment.
Watch If: You like weird films.
Not If: You dislike confusion-horror
SECONDARY FACTS
Overall Rating: 3.4
Length: 1:58
Country: UK
Language: English/French
Gross Factor: 2/5
REVIEW
THE QUICK AND DIRTY
In Fabric is a dark, weird love letter to the fetishistic Italian horror and Giallo films of the 60s and 70s. It's certainly not for everyone, but if sexualized, bizarre comedy-horror arthouse films are your thing, here you go.
PREMISE: 4
This film is absolutely wild. It's Dario Argento meets Kenneth Anger. Its Italian fetishism kaleidoscoped with German grotesque surrealism tied up in a lovely 1970's bow. It's uncomfortable and bizarre. I can honestly say that there is nothing I have ever seen that's quite like this.
If you've ever done a Ludacris amount of drugs and gotten lost in the back of a Macy's for so long that you eventually found a mysterious staircase that leads to a garden with a bunch of mushrooms where a man in a mask was jerking off to a raccoon on a unicycle, then you have a rough equivalent of what this film feels like.
ACTING: 3
The acting was, overall, fine to good. The real masterpiece was the fact that anyone in this movie managed to keep a straight face during some of the stranger scenes. I am amazed.
AUDIO AND VISUALS: 4
Full disclosure: none of the stylistic icons that this film evokes are really my jam, but I do have to admit that it evokes them remarkably well. The technical influences on this film are flawlessly conveyed, every aspect of its creation serves to viscerally capture both the voyeuristic sexuality of the Italian horror movement. The brutal outlandishness of the editing style is so effective at arousing discomfort that, since that was clearly the intent of this film, I have nothing to say except, "bravo," and perhaps, "why?"
ATMOSPHERE: 3
There is absolutely no reason for this film to be two hours long. Over the course of its enfolding, I was interested, bewildered, bewitched, but by the time the second part of the film begins, the gimmicks are stale, the tone shifts away from the bizarre, sudo-seriousness of the first half, and I went from engaged to completely checked out. I had trouble finishing the latter half of this film out of sheer boredom. Thankfully, the film finds a bit of its original vigor towards the end.
While the absurdity of the film and its execution manages to hook the viewer early, the effect is lost in the over-extension of what felt like a well done, capsulated story.
DELIVERY: 3
As much as I am not really the intended audience for this film or its influences, It succeeds wholeheartedly in its attempts to present the guts of predecessors in a way that truly demonstrates not only expertise, but a love of those genres and of that cinematic landscape as a whole.
This movie was painful to watch. I didn't like it. But somewhere after I turned it off, I found a bizarre fondness for the first half of the film, almost as though something in the aftermath had turned the recoil-inducing aspects of some of the shots into grotesque whimsy, and because of that, despite how disgusted and uncomfortable as some parts made me, I am glad I watched it.
There is truly nothing else quite like it, but I still maintain that it's half a movie too long.
Starring
Written By: Peter Strickland
Director: Peter Strickland
Executive Producer:
Affiliate Companies: Rook Films, BBC Films
Music: Cavern of Anti-Matter
Cinematography: Ari Wegner