The Scary of Sixty-First 2021 Movie Review
The most effective side of “The Scary of Sixty-First” is how Nekrasova captures the connections that may be made by means of conspiracy theories. As Noelle and The Woman get extra concerned with them, they type a bond that turns into a romance, and Nekrasova (co-host of the “Crimson Scare” podcast) is aware of a factor or two about how private dynamics can type by means of intense widespread perception. There are such a lot of attention-grabbing concepts in “The Scary of Sixty-First” that really feel like they are going to be part of the material of the subsequent decade of horror and I stored attempting to think about these concepts in a movie with tighter craft and performances.
As a result of whereas I can admire the trouble right here, the execution is one other story. Hunter Zimny’s 16mm cinematography is wildly inconsistent, generally recalling the paranoia thrillers of the ‘70s that so clearly impressed this movie but additionally feeling a bit slapped collectively, one thing nearer to Mumblecore/indie drama filmmaking. It’s so clearly a descendant of filmmakers like Polanski and De Palma (with even a touch of Argento), however the framing right here feels extra amateurish, particularly within the remaining act when Nekrasova depends too closely on shaky camerawork to convey terror.
In the long run, I used to be left feeling like “The Scary of Sixty-First” was all set-up and no follow-through. Positive, it will get bloody and loopy in methods that can most likely flip off some viewers, nevertheless it does not really feel really feel prefer it has one thing to say about our conspiracy concept tradition. Maybe that’s the purpose—that this sort of QAnon spiraling out about issues we can not management will solely result in distress. We would look again on “The Scary of Sixty-First” as the beginning of a kind of apathetic Twitterverse model of style filmmaking, one which acknowledges that making a horror movie is tougher in an age of actual villains like Jeffrey Epstein. For now, it simply seems like a chilly shrug as a substitute of the impassioned warning it might have been.
