The most accurate title for a movie I've seen since Violent Shit!
Alicia is a young woman in the process of breaking up with her boyfriend, Mike, on charges that Mike has boinked her twin sister Barbara Ann. As this happens, we see Alicia at her day job at the local video store. A nervous but sweet guy named Franklin comes in and asks her out. They begin a relationship, and around the same time, Alicia begins getting mysterious phone calls featuring horrifying moans and a strange dial-tone sound, and all attempts to investigate this lead nowhere. Then, we find out something that Alicia doesn't know: Franklin is a serial killer. It isn't long before he kills Barbara Ann, and the rest of the film follows Alicia as she faces her demons...which, judging from the ending, may be somewhat more literal than at first glance.
Man, this year is shaping up to be the Mental Illness Nightmare Fuel Year, isn't it? No, no, not in real life--well, that too--I mean in the movies I watch. Between Alien Lover, Euridice BA, and this, I've seen an uncommon amount of movies this year which have managed to hit home as far as the ol' mental illness journey goes. Lots of scenes of women crying...but then, I know for myself that that's what going insane is like. Lots and lots and lots of crying. I felt for the women in this movie because I only recently pulled myself out of a similar rut. Thankfully, I've never had to face anything quite like what Alicia goes through in Disconnected.
This movie is both creepy and amusing alike. On one hand, this movie legitimately contains a scene (a dream sequence) where Mike kills Alicia and he and Barbara Ann have sex on her corpse. Trust me, that is the amusing thing, if only because that's something I thought only existed in legends as far as movie scenes go--rather like the scene in Evil Dead where one of the Deadites grabs Ash's ankles while hissing, "Join us! Join us!" But then there's the Phone Gibbering. If Euridice BA gave me nightmares, then I can rest assured that I'll have them tonight as well on account of that awful sound. I kept thinking something was going to burst out from behind a corner but, thank Christ, it didn't. The horror was preserved. As was, one might say, the disconnection.
So the editing of this movie, like everything else, is done to make that title bite you as hard as it can. It frequently feels like scenes are out of order, or dubbed improperly, but it appears to all be on purpose. Strange closeups will pop in, like the shot of the worried-looking Betty Boop clock (?), and they will appear so often that they'll haunt you as much as Alicia's calls haunt her. And finally, we're left out of things in the movie. We don't always hear the other side of phone calls--sometimes things are filmed too distantly for us to see or hear them. Occasionally, the shot will be too bright, and we can only see vague shadowy shapes as characters wander around. All of this means it's hard for us to keep track of what's happening, even if what's happening is very simple, and with a tip-off title like Disconnected it really does feel like this is intentional genius rather than blundering gone right.
It doesn't help that I was going through another, more personal layer of disconnection while watching this movie. You see, the premise for Disconnected listed at the top of its IMDB page is fucking bullshit. They have an accurate synopsis farther down the page, but at no point does anyone suspect either Alicia or Barbara Ann for the murders--not even the narrative of the film itself! Unless, of course, I'm dumber than I think, and I missed all of this. That's always possible. But man, when I was expecting what IMDB promised, you can well imagine I was at the edge of my seat waiting for Alicia to kill Mike or something. And when that didn't happen, I felt even weirder about the whole thing.
Disconnected is occasionally boring, but the sheer artistry of the whole thing will keep you focused enough to follow what can be followed. If you're not sold yet, this movie features a scene where Franklin begins to engage in tender necrophilia with one of his victims. The camera pans up to reveal a crucifix hanging on his wall. We slowly zoom in on said crucifix.
Yeah, I have no idea what the fuck that's supposed to mean, either.
Oh, and because I resisted for so long, and the situation is so very clearly asking for it...here you go.
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