Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: PATHETIC FALLACY [Fantastic Fest - Austin, Texas]
Blending a music video aesthetic with horror and traumatic loss can be done many different ways but it depends one the sandbox it plays in. "Pathetic Fallacy" [Main Competition] starts off in an interesting way with love lost and a pretty emotionally wracking first 20 minutes with Jessica Rothe succumbing to an illness and Kid Cudi mourning her as she speaks of moving on. The crux is a book about the 7 minutes when you die and how you are being ushered forth. However it then jump cuts to a man in a mask murdering a couple. The juxtaposition is interesting at first but then the film turns in to a journey for Cudi’s character to find himself. There is an incessant amount of insect imagery and more abstract images more akin to a music video shoot that tries to offset itself as a feature film. The second act brings in Travis Fimmel as a drifter and would-be killer who is working his way to lure more people in. Fimmel with his recent forays in "Raised By Wolves" and "Dune: Prophecy" just goes really out there. He pushes it farther as if the director just took off the reigns and let him lose. Even Cudi looks a little scared in their scenes.
After that, the film goes off the reservation with a primal animal/devil storyline that has an almost cultish function to it which has its place but just wants to be weird. The plot device is clear enough but is just too off-the-reservation. This usually qualifies the film into a "hot mess" category. Cudi tries to keep in on track and the aspect of a certain kind of trance pop performed by him and Rothe plays throughout with certain amounts of success. In something more "Twin Peaks"-like, there is a doppelgänger in a band fronted by Charlie (also Rothe) that plays a stop called "The Ladybug" in the mountain town that Cudi is drawn to by the death book he reads to Rothe in the beginning. It is completely non-sensical and done for metaphorical purposes. But the goodwill for Cudi’s character disappears quickly, even though we know what he is doing it for. This whole trip could all be in his mind but there are better and more effective ways to do it. The fusion of the music is admirable but doesn’t quite match what we are seeing. During the second Fimmel interaction with Cudi in the woods, the sound design decided to push a pulsing bass for a good five minutes in order to unnerve the viewer. It is a bold choice but it doesn’t do its job because it is not built into the bigger concept of the film. The ending tries to make the drama undeniably tragic and mythic but one is sort of checked out by then despite both Rothe and Cudi putting a lot of effort in. 72%/C
By Tim Wassberg
