Fantasia 2017: Sequence Break

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At about the midway point into Sequence Break, which just screened at the Fantasia Festival, one of the characters (I should say one of the five characters in the entire film) says, "Don't just look into the void; let the void look into you."And there are times in actor Graham Skipper's directorial debut that you do actually feel the void looking off of the screen and right into you, the audience member, and not in an interminable bored Dunkirk kind of way - in a good way. In the "this movie is legitimately fucking with my brain" kind of way.

Sequence Break reunites actors Chase Williamson and Fabianne Therese who played the lovebirds in the 2012 film John Dies at the End - I wasn't that film's biggest fan (which had me sad-faced as a big fan of the book) but there's no denying Williamson and Therese had sparks, and Sequence Break recharges their chemistry in new and interesting ways. We might have a lo-fi pairing for the ages here - give these two another movie!
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Williamson plays Oz, a too chillax by twelve dude who spends all his time in the video-game repair shop he works at - Therese plays Tess who shows up one day looking for a game to play. And what a game they find when the weird black machine in the corner starts whispering and pulsating and oozing creamy Cronenbergian fluids.

I mention up top that there are five characters in the film - Skipper keeps the focus tight on one location too, preferring to use his clearly limited budget where it counts, and where it counts is that ooze. What ooze! The film comes self-sold as a love letter to films like Videodrome and the practical effects of 80s horror, and if you've ever obsessed over anything of the sort then there's something here for you to love, and be grossed out by. (And if you've ever seen the Emilio Estevez portion of the 1983 anthology film Nightmares you're gonna light right up.)

But it's not just liquid television - Sequence Break futzes with time and logic in twisty ways that don't always stick but are still ambitious and strange; Skipper's somebody to keep an eye on. His influences might be worn bright on his Gameboy sleeves but they don't smother - they silky caress and squish.
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Previously from Fantasia:

Animals reviewed here

Game of Death reviewed here
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