3 out of 5

Directed by: Gordon Shoemaker Foxwood

There’s an A for Effort in here for writer / director Gordon Shoemaker Foxwood, bringing on a talented cast and giving them space for some powerful, let-the-audience-connect-the-dots drama, and mapping that atop the tensions of something of a psychological creeper, but Wild Eyed and Wicked also clearly shows its shoestring budgetness off at unfortunate points, and there’s a very clear moment about halfway through when we pass the material that could’ve made for a strong short film, and enter into territory of dawdling filler for a full-length.

Molly Kunz is excellent as Lily, who’s trying to live her life as s fencing instructor, while socially awkwarding her way through friendships and a relationship with Willow (Claire Saunders). A well-intentioned “spend the night” with Willow is stymied by Lily mentioning that she has quite restless nightmares; indeed we’ve seen this from the film’s start – a memory of Lily’s, witnessing her mother’s suicide; a dream from which she often wakes up screaming and thrashing.

A call from Lily’s estranged father (Michael X. Sommers) has Lily traveling back to her family home, going through her mother’s items with which her father plans to dispense. This adds in some further detail: of the presence that’s been haunting Lily ever since the tragedy, and that she’s sure was haunting her mother before her passing.

Concerning Lilly’s daymare sights of this “presence,” director Foxwood has mostly pulled off the balance of it it real? or isn’t it? up to this point, but the aforementioned moment up above is when the movie has to lean more towards one side of that question, and then we dive into some weak lore that sincerely feels like it was based around what props the crew had handy. It’s not an uninteresting angle to take – trying to add some history to the being; pushing (in a way) into slightly deeper territory than the “elevated” trauma horrors of the A24 crowd – but it’s a bit beyond the script and budget to really flesh it out, leading to an unfortunately way underpowered conclusion that gets less-lore-y and sillier. The themes are good, and Kunz delivers on creating an entire character out of relatively few lines – Sommers is stiff, but not in a way that isn’t complementary – and Foxwood really does show marvelous control over what’s on screen and what’s said about forty minutes or so. It just has a reach that exceeds its grasp, but also seems to be reaching for something thats beyond the script as well, as the underbudgeted theatrics probably weren’t necessary for a stricter character study, accepting that those are probably harder to pitch and get even this sized budget for in the first place.

So: definite A for Effort. Give this guy some more cash, and a brutal editor, and let’s see what happens.