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| I watched Shimmer Lake tonight. It was okay! Mild spoilers. by Rob v. Nate CorddryVD Review 09/17/2018, 12:44am PDT | ||||
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| Negatives: kind of monotone (with the thankful exception of Rainn Wilson, who I guess steamrolled the disaffected indie director? it didn't seem like the kind of flick that could afford to shoot scenes over and over again until Rainn did it like he was on Nyquil like he was supposed to), and I don't believe they ever really justified the reverse chronology gimmick. A few times jokes were set up by characters recounting events one day, only for the payoff to be seeing those events play out pretty much as described the next day. Er, the previous day. You know what I mean. They also did a little bit of the reverse, with characters making predictions that are blatantly wrong with the benefit of hindsight. Foresight? Fuck it. The punchlines are too dry, is what I'm saying, and it's a long walk backwards to the well.
The reverse chronology worked in Memento because it was more than a storytelling conceit, it was a fact of life for the protagonist. He had some idea what he was going to do, but not a clue what he'd already done. "I'm chasing this guy? No, this guy's chasing me." Whereas in Shimmer Lake, the master plan at the heart of it all is so convoluted and dependent on chance that the only way to sell it to an audience was to play it out backwards, then end the movie before we had a chance to think it over. (That's one thing in Shimmer Lake's favour: at 83 minutes including credits, it's the shortest of all the movies in this thread.) On top of that, the twist ending-beginning was spoiled at the actual beginning, when we saw the killer's arm but not the rest of him, indicating it couldn't possibly be who we were being lead to believe it would be. And with only a couple white guys left on the last day, well, it doesn't exactly take a reverse Sherlock Holmes. (Ironically, this is where an extra 10 or 20 minutes and a few more characters would've come in handy.) I know this would've undermined the whole conceit, but after marching inexorably backwards from Friday to Tuesday, I would've liked to see the movie jump back to Saturday and just kick over all the tables. Kill anyone who was still alive, bring back anyone who died (ever see Lone Wolf McQuade? they buried him in his car, for a while), turn lover against lover and sister against brother and definitely kill the little girl. When you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves - one for the kid you lost, and one for the kid you got left. You can't be that no-soundtrack-and-lots-of-sedate-medium-shots for your entire runtime and expect me to walk away satisfied with a happy ending. How about a blackly comic one, like a Coen Brothers movie? Or 6 Souls? Positives: I enjoyed the Reno 911 bits. If they did do a Saturday, I would've liked to see them bring back the FBI guys. I suppose that answers the question in my username: Rob Corddry was way more fun as a fed in Shimmer Lake than Nate Corddry was as the brother in 6 Souls, even if I liked 6 Souls a little better overall. Congratulations Rob Corddry! |
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