Sometimes when I review movies for this site, I get the feeling that the dish I’m experiencing wasn’t quite ready to be pulled from the oven. Maybe it was the sub-film school-level graphics (news articles descend into visible gibberish, a phone number is rendered as “555-5555”), or disconverting mood whiplash (starting off awkwardly-comic before veering wildly into WTF territory), but perhaps Kourtney Roy’s debut directorial feature Kryptic just comes from a very personal place that doesn’t translate very well into mass audience consumption.
The engine of what passes for a plot is the mystery of awkward loner Kay (Chloe Pirrie) and whether she may in fact be long-missing cryptozoologist Barb Valentine who vanished while seeking the mysterious “Suma”, a sort of bigfoot-on-crack type creature. Sought by her camera-whore husband Morgan (Jeff Gladstone), Kay/Barbara attempts to retrace her steps through a tangled web of kooky locals from booze-fuelled monster hunter Starla (Pam Kearns) to trailer trash Jeanette (Christina Lewall) and her dysfunctional family.
What follows is a meandering series of events utterly lacking the drive of solving a mystery often punctuated by scenes of real or imagined Suma encounters. Is our protagonist really Barb? Is she really Kay? Is she a monster herself? The film seems utterly uninterested in any clarity which leaves the audience appropriately uninvested in the answers.
Kryptic does in fact have a decent opening where Kay gets separated from a woman’s hiking group before it promptly descends into plodding procedural monotony. The characters are an eclectic bunch, but fail to register or leave much of a lasting impression. I found myself having to go back to the screener repeatedly just to remind myself who was who. Standouts include Jeanatte’s rebellious daughter Sasha (Ali Rusu-Tahir) and lackadaisical boy-toy Caleb (Jason Deline), characters in search of a much better story.
Pirrie comports herself well as the pixilated heroine and works in tandem with David Bird’s spooky cinematography even if Paul Bromley’s script seems bound and determined to let us down. There’s a hint of intriguing themes like toxic relationships, and an evolving sense of self, but these are never fully explored and often get drowned in off-putting sequences involving ample white goop (don’t ask).
Like a student short that somehow got expanded into feature length, Kryptic may very well leave you leaving the theatre far more confused than when you entered it. Recommended only for those who enjoy eerie forest settings, wallowing in a general sense of befuddlement, and buckets of white goo. All others would do well to check the Fantasia program for a better use of 96 minutes.
3/10
Kryptic screens as part of the Fantasia Festival in Montreal on Weds July 24 @ 12:15pm