IN MEMORY OF – Review

With IN MEMORY OF, director Eric Stanze and his crew at Wicked Pixel Cinema have delivered another nightmarish piece of low-budget psychological weirdness that is highly recommended. Jackie Kelly stars as Amber, a twenty-ish woman recently diagnosed as the youngest victim of an unusual neurological ailment, one which causes hallucinations and other mental issues. It’s a disease that may have killed her mother and in flashbacks it’s revealed that she was raised by her Aunt and was in an abusive relationship with her boyfriend Darren (Adam Ahlbrandt), who cheated on her with a woman named Jennifer (Haley Madison) and forced her into prostitution. But Amber is an unreliable narrator, which becomes more apparent as the story unfolds and her past is revisited. She travels to a grungy bunker to take part in a group study for a potential treatment for her disease. After she wakes up and finds herself surrounded by the bloodied bodies of her fellow test subjects, the group’s leader Simon (Jason Christ) sends her on a journey across several states to discover what really transpired and the truth behind her affliction.

Stanze is known for a nihilistic style with depraved images and irrational associations that push his work to the extreme limits (read my review of Stanze’s RATLINE HERE). With the new film, Stanze has opened up his usual claustrophobic aesthetic with an unexpected look at roadside Americana and that, combined with a terrific central performance from leading lady Jackie Kelly, has resulted in his most accomplished film to date. IN MEMORY OF is too long at a rambling 122 minutes, but Stanze’s direction is clever, his cinematography top-notch, and he keeps things moving at a fast clip. The locations include the type of claustrophobic, foul settings we associate with Stanze’s films; grimy apartments, demented laboratories, and filthy torture chambers populated by hooded nudes and the film includes an eye-popping montage of some of St. Louis more glorious decaying buildings (I spotted Vincent Price’s father’s crumbling candy factory in one shot). This time, he opens up his locales with Amber’s road odyssey, which sends the audience on a multi-state tour highlighting dilapidated diners, abandoned gas stations, motels, as well as wind farms, creeks and rivers – vast landscapes shot in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah.

IN MEMORY OF spends a bit too much time in dream state. Amber interacts with characters believed dead, and even herself at one point.  Some of these sequences feel redundant and I’m unclear how all the pieces fit together, but the film works better as mood poem than narrative, promoting grotesque imagery over story logic. Gus Stevenson and Rocky Gray’s soundtrack, a discordant blend of atmospheric Industrial sounds – squeaking, clicking, motor noises etc. sets just the right tone of dread. Gore highlights include an axe to the face, a scissors to the skull, and a shocking mid-coitus stabbing, but IN MEMORY OF is less interested in the horror of cheap frights than in creating a mood of paranoia and instability. The craft on display here is powerful and the actors are up to Stanze’s challenges. A central weakness of RATLINE was the miscasting of Jason Christ in the lead (though he’s better here), but with IN MEMORY OF, Stanze has found his simpatico star in Jackie Kelly. With a blonde pixie hairdo that isn’t the only thing that calls to mind Mia Farrow’s Rosemary, Kelly perfectly captures the right balance of fear and resilience. She’s given a lot of screen time and exposure and is unnervingly good at keeping you guessing about which of her memories you can trust. Although it is rarely if ever jump-out-of-your-seat scary, IN MEMORY OF is an unremittingly creepy municipality of the mind where mystery and madness have come home to stay.

4 of 5 Stars

For more information about IN MEMORY OF and Wicked Pixel Cinema, visit their site HERE