“Seeing your world here and how you have everything set up here makes me really wonder about the other half, the path of trying to make videos or whatever it is you say you do,” Ricky (David Brown) says to a friend upon arriving at a mansion in “Sour Minnows,” the kind in the San Fernando Valley that appears to have no history but built almost expressly for the purpose of adding to the fantasy of a porn shoot. Ricky seems at least a little oblivious about what his friend does for a living, but can admire how lucrative it must be – if he doesn’t outright own the house filled with women casually lounging about, it is still in some perverse way the dream of moving out to Los Angeles that he probably had, and as he voices his admiration out loud, his nose starts to bleed, as if his body is actually starting to voice its own displeasure about where he is in life.
A synopsis of Harrison Atkins’ nerve-jangling second feature might not make it sound all that appetizing when it could easily have been an exercise in navel-gazing, but the writer/director seems to take every angle but in the formally daring mindfuck. After making an auspicious directorial debut that considered the practical issues of falling in love with a ghost including carnal relations in “Lace Crater” a decade ago, Atkins has been sought after as an editor for such films as “Madeline’s Madeline” and “Emily the Criminal” and admirably applies some radical notions in that regard to the story of a filmmaker experiencing a break from reality, unsure whether it’s his own personal or professional disillusionment or the world is just moving further away from where he is. Although the COVID lockdown isn’t mentioned, it can’t be ignored as a potential inspiration as people start to exhibit strange behavior around Ricky, who himself wanders around his neighborhood with his roommate Tepper (Chase Williamson) absent many others to speak of and through a succession of quick cuts, a trip to the grocery store can seem like it’s over before it began, leaving him to wonder where the time went when no one is on the same wavelength anymore.
The real psychotic break for Ricky would seem to come when he and Tepper see a collection of six men writhing on the ground, licking the asphalt, when they’re making their way back from the store, and once the two get back to their place, Ricky doesn’t seem to have clocked it at all when Tepper mentions how bizarre it was. Somehow this is even freakier to think about than the disturbing scene that precipitated it when an acceptance of odd occurrences without question seems to be the price Ricky now pays for keeping his head down and simply trying to survive, unable to be concerned with much else as a career in entertainment now has him doing a job he hates training AI models to likely eliminate his entire line of work when it’s the only opportunity out there. Engagement with other humans also feels as if it’s become more difficult when there’s little common currency between experiences, as Ricky not only has trouble relating to Tepper, but he also has awkward interactions with Aura (Susanna Son), with whom he clearly shares some chemistry, but something seems off – and it isn’t necessarily an issue between them but around them.
A feeling of dread fuels “Sour Minnows” more so than a specific plot, though one is introduced with a mysterious spirit/concept known as “the Yellow Thing,” a term that starts being used around the death of an actor named Jojo Monica when there’s little other explanation for what seems like a body-swapping phenomenon, and the reporting news anchor’s claim that he was a “cinematic icon” is equally suspicious when neither Ricky or Tepper can remember who he is despite being only a generation removed. Part of the disconnect between Ricky and Tepper and everyone else would seem to be the fact that the lingua franca of movies themselves seems to be disappearing in front of their eyes, and as painful as it is to pursue careers in an industry on the wane, the loss of movies as a form of dialogue is also brutal when it served as the foundation for so much else in a fractured world.
With Atkins’ facility with visual language, “Sour Minnows” may be dense with ideas but never overwhelming in that sense, though it does in all others as a truly disturbing expression of present reality. The director leans into more overt horror movie in creating a bit of an inversion of found footage – although you’re made to feel a presence behind the camera, it doesn’t have the personality to feel like a character in the film – yet as Ricky can start feeling as if he’s having an out-of-body experience watching his life unfold from a distance, the conceit takes on an entirely different dimension. Perhaps Tepper sums up the whole experience best with his thoughts watching one of Jojo Monica’s films to honor him by saying, “I felt like I was going to vomit watching it and now it’s like I drank a bunch of coffee” and though neither he or Ricky have specious memories of it the next morning, Atkins has delivered impressive proof that there are still some films you can make now that just won’t go away.
“Sour Minnows” will screen at New/Next Film Fest on October 3rd at 10:45 pm at Charles 1. It will next play at the Sitges Film Festival on October 16th at 3:15 pm at the Cinema Escorxador.