Sundance 2021 Film Review - The Blazing World (2020)

Sometimes you understand a movie from the get-go, sometimes that comprehension is instinctive but harder to explain to anybody else. And sometimes you simply find it hard. There’s no shame in that. So we’re totally shameless in saying that getting to grips with Carlson Young’s debut feature, The Blazing World, was like grabbing a handful of water.

Not that it’s totally obscure. The basic idea is clear enough, with the adult Margaret (also played by Young) haunted by the drowning of her sister in the family swimming pool. That it happened during an especially violent argument between her two parents, who were constantly at war, added to and deepened her guilt. Unable to let go of the memories and her pain, she comes close to suicide, at which point we follow her on a journey inside her confused and tormented inner life, one that could ultimately expel her demons and help her find some kind of inner peace.

Young was originally at Sundance in 2018 with a short of the same name: her feature expands on the idea, taking us into a labyrinthine realm of horror and fantasy, and doing so on a limited budget. It doesn’t hold her back and, even though some of the visuals give the game away, others compensate with a rich vibrancy. At the heart is the long-standing damage inflicted on her by that childhood trauma and her, hitherto, failed efforts to exorcise it. This time, as she approaches the brink, she finds herself on a series of quests to bring her sister back to life. She’s never accepted her death. Guiding her – and often hindering her – is the mysterious Lained (Udo Kier, with ice-like eyes), another creation of her mind and one that she eventually learns not to trust.

It’s when those quests arrive that everything gets murkily confusing. ittedly, we know it’s not real, that it’s all in her mind, but much of what it means is completely obscure, resulting in an experience like a video game on acid. They’re all linked to the sister’s disappearance by a series of keys, identical to the one she was wearing when she died, but that doesn’t prevent the film spiralling out of control, until it’s brought to something approximating a neat conclusion. Nobody minds being challenged by what they see on screen but when it’s this obtuse it starts to become far too much like hard work.

Whether the film is worth the time and effort is up to the individual. Visually, there’s just about enough to keep hold of your curiosity, but the strangely stilted acting and the web of confusion spun throughout the narrative will have you scratching your head. Perhaps a little too much.