When I first saw press for this film, I was fascinated and intrigued. The dayglo visuals, the warped logic of a movie about an obsession with an in-world 90's TV show, the short window it was available in theaters and the gates to stream it.
My local library finally got a copy and I watched it tonight. I was not disappointed by the experience. It has elements of mystery, metaphor, and a pervasive surreality to it. The world feels like an alternate history with a in world show having the tropes of a 90s show in title font, blocking, camera, and dialogue.
It reminds me of the Grindhouse project that Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarentino released in the mid 2000s as a love letter double feature to a time where that mystery b-movie night would be playing as standard fare in a secondhand movie theatre.
This generation has the epherema with the fleeting nature of 90s tv shows which were greenlit with a gold rush of prime time tv and novelty. Some of which were able to be recorded by VHS.
The main characters of this film are Owen and Maddy the former being a seventh grader with overprotective parents who gave him a bedtime, and the latter being a cool teen girl who is standoffish, neglected by her parents and is quietly dogmatic about a show on the YOUNG ADULT NETWORK called "The Pink Opaque."
The show is about two teen girls who met in the pilot episode at a sleep away camp and became psychically linked to battle the monsters of the week, sent by a power rangers type big bad who is named "Mr Melancholy" and is a giant face in the moon.
Owen is attracted by the siren call of forbidden fruit of teen culture, as it airs at a late hour beyond his curfewed bedtime. Maddy quietly tapes the episodes on VHS and drops them off for him to watch and appreciate at school.
The film is full of Owen's asides to the audience about the timeliness of events in his life as he is narrating the constancy of "The Pink Opaque" as his favorite show from nostalgia and having his egg cracked into the world of media and storytelling. The show becomes a larger gravity as the film goes on, making the real world's allure to pale in comparison to the organized clarity and rhythm of the show and it's cliffhanger finale episode.
My experience of the film is the attention to detail and atmosphere in the setting and set pieces of the film. There is room to breathe and slowly be immersed in the lived in reality of the film and the show within. The performances of the actors is excellent for the unsettling familiarity of awkward nostalgia and desperate mania of being a teenager. I really enjoyed the quiet horror of waking up to a life that the media didn't cover. The quiet despair of settling out of fear of the unknown possibility of greater responsibility and accountability. It is a dangerous business waking out your front door. And a dangerous business to dream of a greater world, but refuse to step through the closet doors catching a glimpse of that opportunity to adventure within the dream world.
What is illusion?
Alluding to the true sight
Of false visions shown
