At the movies: Show Yourself.

It’s rare to find horror films that successfully manage to crosspollinate with other genres; it happens every now and then with comedy, with classics like (Shaun of The Dead, Slither, and Evil Dead II), or with Science Fiction (the Alien series, The Stone Tape). But those combinations are blends that we as audiences recognize. So what happens when something really unexpected comes along. Think along the lines of Rahtree: Flower of the Night or Lake Mungo, where you have a horror film that has found a way to expand the reach of the genre into truly unexpected territory.

Billy Ray Brewton’s film Show Yourself is like that. It’s a ghost story, and a weirdness in the woods tale, but it’s also an immersive nostalgia piece (think The Big Chill, or Come Back To The Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean), and that’s a unique mesh of elements. It also dabbles in self-help actualization and unsublimated tension, which is quite the reach for such a modest indie. It’s basically a one-man show, as Travis (Ben Hethcoat, who works his ass off onscreen for pretty much the whole movie) returns to the forest where he and his buddies would hang out back in the day. Only now, that group of friends has fragmented, with the recent suicide of Paul (Clancy McCartney) throwing previously held certainties into entirely different frames of existence.

Travis is back in these woods to spread Paul’s ashes, and also start learning a new script. He’s got technology on his side, as well as an uproarious one scene cameo from national treasure Robert Longstreet as the cabin’s owner. But he’s also, for the most part, a decent dude working his way through some heavy shit. So when supernatural things start happening, it’s hard to have an instantaneous response. Writer/Director Brewton has us in unfamiliar territory, and that is an ever rarer wonder. We understand, instinctively, ghost stories, We get home invasions, and we understand hostage narratives. Show Yourself isn't something you've seen before; it's an experience that the viewer most process in a new way.

Le us also praise Hethcoat’s performance, because without it, the film wouldn’t work. It’s a lot of heavy lifting to do, being in almost every scene, and he finds a way to never react to any situation in exactly the way you might suspect. It’s an endearingly weird performance, and that’s just fine, because Show Yourself is an endearingly weird film. It’s rough around the edges, but it gets inside your thoughts and haunts the viewer even after it’s over. It's a film that remains vibrantly alive in the subconscious, more than a year since I first saw it. And it continues to evolve, after the second and third viewings as well.

At the movies: SEQUENCE BREAK.

Kinky, ghoulish, serrated, trippy as fuck, and kind of sweet, Sequence Break is yet another in 2017’s remarkable array of debut features. Imagine the narrative mechanics of The Last Starfighter, but told with the visceral grace of one of David Lynch’s psychogenic fugues.




You wouldn’t think a film this expert in the particulars of nonconsensual melting would elicit such an emotional catharsis, but here we are... Written and directed by Graham Skipper, whom you may know as the moral center of the Begoverse, or from his leading turn in last year’s haunted VHS board game epic Beyond The Gates, Sequence Break is like something distilled from the hippocampus (the part of the brain where nightmares and fever dreams live). It’s rooted in situations that even those poor souls with no affection for classic arcade games can relate to- in a way, the film’s transformative horror/hope could insinuate itself into a near infinite number of situations with creative people and the fields in which they hone their craft.




But arcade tech places us in a visual space where we understand the capabilities of The Now and The Then. And then it takes us further. Into The Beyond, which is a phrase I use both in its literal sense, completing the triplet, and as a shout-out to Lucio Fulci’s 1981 apocalypse of mortified flesh and inescapable dread. Skipper knows his shit when it comes to horror and SciFi, and he never goes for ‘spot the reference’ jukeboxery. But he’s also aiming wider than one might expect- Sequence Break is also one of the best weirdo romances since The Lobster, and it’s not inconceivable that we might see its title popping up as dating app profile slang in the not too distant future.




Oz (Chase Williamson, who could have stopped making movies after John Dies At the End and would still be a damn treasure) is the guy who fixes arcade games. It’s neither social worker nor 24-hour veterinarian, but it’s a job that is necessary. He’s a little weird, and routine-based, but that’s how the world is when you’re not working the traditional 9-to-5. He may well never meet the folk he brings joy to a quarter at a time, but he’s doing honest work that’s nothing to be ashamed about. And unfortunately, in a situation that’s becoming all too familiar to folk who have those small-scale artisan jobs, the economy just isn’t as supportive to peripheral artists. So at this moment, into the middle of this crisis, comes Tess (Fabianne Therese, who eschews quirkiness for a pragmatism grounded equally in agency and fun). She’s a writer, though that’s currently taken a backseat to tempcraft. So she’s also biding her time, cultivating an appreciation for gin and for lanky, scruffy dudes – like Oz.




The two have a casual, unforced chemistry, and they’re as cute together as they are funny. Also, Tess introduces the color blue to Oz’s life. When they first really talk to one another, her presence brings the blue light of a bar, a shade that was always there, into sharp contrast in the redscape of how we (and Oz) have been seeing things. Williamson delivers a deeply sensitive performance, bringing a lot across without ever telegraphing the journey he’s on. His Oz is the kind of guy who keeps his cost of living down. He’s not trying to rock the boat, or make a big score, or fuck anybody over. “You’re an antique,” she says to him, and he confirms that others have said the same thing. But he’s not an idiot manchild. He’s not anybody’s stereotype. But then there’s the matter of the mysterious circuit board that shows up at the arcade. It’s when Oz hooks it up to one of the nonfunctioning cabinets at the office that things start changing.




Sequence Break shares certain of its fundamental elements with Cronenberg’s Videodrome, but its New Flesh rejects the linear hierarchy of Dr. O’Blivion’s mutagenic signal. Its White Eye is the Vajrayana of body horror, using technology as a means of transformation that philosophically feels like a biochemical remix. We repeat, we revise, we reorient. As videogame movies go, Sequence Break sits right up there near the top with Cronenberg’s eXistenZ. It gets at the aspirational nature and expansive possibilities of games, but rather than text-block backstorying the viewer into oblivion right after the opening credits, it goes immersive. Its edges don’t fit in neat spaces, conveying the audience from point A to B and so forth.






It rewards repeat viewings in the way that ‘70s and ‘80s sagas did, letting the viewer determine where the parts fit after spending some time with the story. In its vibrant color schemes and moody electronic score (imagine Vangelis and Tangerine Dream getting all pilled out in 1983 and having a no holds barred synth fight), it’s a versatile beast of a film, acquainted with the worlds of the analogue and the digital. And while Sequence Break isn’t necessarily the film you’d throw on at a party (it’s a measured, moody, meaningful film, not made for casual or indifferent viewing), it’s the horror/SciFi film you share with the ones who matter. If I had to program it in the center of a Triple Feature, I would put it between Lord of Illusions and Beyond The Black Rainbow. You know, for when you have to tear off that scab that we call reality every now and then.