Director: Natasha Kermani
Screenplay: Brea Grant
Year: 2020
Running time: 83 minutes
Score: 7.93
Release: Shudder
Listen, I know this really isn’t the same thing, so forgive me. When I was in high school and recently licensed to drive, I was tooling between destinations one beautiful Friday afternoon. The cause is irrelevant, but I crashed the car I was driving. It looked gnarly but nobody else was harmed and I managed to hobble away with only a badly sprained ankle. It was unpleasant, I was shaken, and the shared chorus was that I was Lucky. I absolutely didn’t feel like this was the case.
Any longtime reader may recall my affinity for director Natasha Kermani’s Imitation Girl. It was one of my favorite films of 2017 and is a terrific example of what slow cinema can accomplish when a director values time as capital in their budget. Lucky, is a different monster all together.
With Lucky, Kermani directs a screenplay written by the star of the film, Brea Grant. It tells the story of May, a writer who focuses on a self-help books which are aimed at building up the confidence, strength, and most importantly, independence, of women. One evening May wakes during the night, she glances out a window, and sees a masked man. Terrified she wakes her husband and tells him what she has seen. To this he replies, “Oh, that’s just the man who tries to kill you every night.” He says this as nonchalantly as one might introduce a cousin.
The next day May’s husband goes to stay with his parents (for a reason that I missed), this leaves May alone to deal with this “man who tries to kill you,” on her own. As the nights go by the masked man become more brazen as he enters the home to attack May, her defense become more violent, and due to minimal evidence, the police get leerier of her each time.
I imagine that viewers are going to fall into three camps. Most people will probably see a very well made, and interesting take on the, home invasion horror sub-set. There will definitely be men who cite this as evidence that feminism is merely code for man hating propaganda. And there will be those who either relate to the film on a personal level or are empathetic enough to wish that more people could understand how unnerving the theme truly is. However, it is difficult to dance around those themes enough to leave the bulk of the film ripe for discovery. Suffice it to say that this is a very well made film.
While the photography is a vast difference between this and Imitation Girl there is also a different photographic need. I am not familiar with, cinematographer, Julia Swain’s work, but I did see a few moments that harken to some of David Fincher’s signature camera movements.
Something that interests me is the photography, and it is something that I expect will change how I see some films and why not to judge others. I am not sure if I can really put my finger on, considering that low light, interior, photography is something I know next to nothing about. If I think about this next to Jordan Peele’s Us, the very low light photography of Mike Gioulakis fills most of the nooks and crannies with a murky blacks. This, to my eye, is like most overnight horror films, whether it is crisp my Us, or grainy like a Friday the 13th movie. It is almost dark to the point where they could easily hide monsters, or maybe imperfections. But this also give them the opportunity to highlight that feeling of unknown dread.
What Swain does remind me of something similar to an after school special, or Lifetime, style movies that I have watched. To be honest this is something that, until now, I would openly deride. In Lucky, during most of the scenes in the house the light level is low enough to be clearly dark, but bright enough to still be able to see everything, or, not obscure anything.
This was a little unsettling before I really sat back and thought about it. In my own home I can “see” everything even when it is dark because I know where everything should be. The lighting levels may be a trick to reassure us that Kermani and Swain aren’t hiding a monster in the gloomy shadow, they are hiding them in plain sight. That, or someone messed with the gamma on my television. I’d prefer to think it was intentional. Either way I certainly have a greater appreciation for this style of cinematography.
I enjoyed Brea Grant’s performance as well. It is undoubted helpful that she wrote the script as well. The character has been living in her mind for so long that it was likely second nature when it came time for action. Grant deserves to be commended both for the screenplay and her performance.
As I expected Natasha Kermani did not disappoint. She seems so adept at communicating her vision with all the parties involved that she is able to craft a tight 83-minute horror / thriller. At no point did it feel long, and I can’t imagine expanding any scene could really do much more than making it feel long. She continues to be a talent whose career I will always follow.
Like I said earlier, I am sure that the subject matter will rub some people wrong. But I can’t imagine those people are folks who frequent this site. So, I feel confident is giving this film a blanket recommendation. You can find it streaming on SHUDDER on the 4th of March, 2021.