Review: Higher Methods

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2022
Images from the Internet

Higher Methods
Directed by Nathan Suher
IM Filmworks
97 minutes, 2022
www.highermethods.com/

A little talked about subgenre of the horror field is the meta “ensemble” of actors who struggle on set with dangerous minds and often knives. Be it a film set, backstage at a play, or in this case, a drama acting class, the darkness will be exposed.

There are usually two ways of viewing these: first, is as an actor who can watch and say, “That’s like so-and-so,” or “Been there, done that.” The inside joke, as it were. The other is as a fan of the theater/movies/etc., which is where I approach the topic.

Michael Christoforo

We meet our protagonist – anti-hero? – Matt (Michael Christoforo) literally in the spotlight, in a darken room, as he is interviewed in sharp patter written by playwright/screenwriter Lenny Schwartz, as the room tilts and the tension is immediate. Damn, if it isn’t shot amazingly, right out of the gate. I’m hooked.

Outside the rave is raving and Matt meets Shannon (actor/singer Jamie Lyn Bagley; I’m a fan from way back), as the snuff is sniffed and the hook-up commences. Oh, not for that, but for acting classes with John Edward Marcus (Aaron Andrade; again, a fan), of the Razor’s Edge Acting Studio. Sharp writing. This is when we meet the rest of the esoteric students for the class, as well, filled by a defensive woman, The Muse (Abigail Jean Lucas), a man-child, Shane (Brad Kirton), a mother-figure, Vanessa (Marybeth Paul), and of course, Shannon.

Aaron Andrade

They all are subservient to Marcus’s “genius,” and we get to see his patter/pattern of mixing death threats with sage words, all designed to bring out the actor in the actor. Andrade does a chilling job in the role, making “The Kaminsky Method” look like a merry go round in comparison.

There are a lot of subtle commentaries of what it is like to be a struggling working actor, or in the case of one particular star, Cameron Stark (Anthony Ambrosino), the fickleness and fecklessness of the acting milieu can be twisted and turned in a second.

Matt, meanwhile, has a secondary motive for being in this class, and that is to find his long-lost sister, Katherine (Kayla Caufield), who took the class from Marcus 10 years earlier. But is he really there for her, or himself?

Abigail Jean Lucas

There is a deep psychological undercurrent that runs through the film, which escalates at an alarming rate after Matt takes a hallucinogenic drug, and the roller coaster ride begins not only for Matt, but the audience as well as the lines of reality and psychology get on a Tilt-A-Whirl-ish mental space as the second act kicks off into literally high gear.

At this point, I want to point out the editing of the extended sequence by Eileen Slavin that highlights the beautiful cinematography by Ken Willinger, taking this from a low budget psychological horror (with some violent scenes) to a cinematic splendor.

Despite the beauty of the image and the occasional knife and drug play, this film is wordy. Some of it is pop psychology, such as “There is no death here; she’s on celluloid,” to the fanatical ravings of Matt, and especially of Marcus.

Jamie Lyn Bagley

Another central theme here is honesty. The stripping down of one’s barriers to reveal the rawness underneath that even the actor themselves have trouble seeing through their own ego, history and general mishigas. Matt is a pile of inner conflict, and everyone around him is pressuring him to be “real,” in an occupation where everything is fake. This could have been tedious, but Schwartz’s writing, as usual, is taut, drawing the viewer in while also being appalling in the treatment of the characters by others and themselves.

Amid the dark and shadowy imagery is an equally dark look at the life of an actor in a very stylized form, where the person is irrelevant to what they can bring, whether it be as a marketing object or as a shell of themselves. This was covered in a more depressing way in the film The Day of the Locust (1975), but thankfully this one is invigorating, rather than disheartening, like Locust.

Everything is precise in the film, from the lighting, to the costume design by Lily Spencer, and the whole minimalist art design by Michelle Parenteau. The colors are as muted as the lives they are hiding within, symbolizing the emptiness the characters feel. Even the music by Indy Shome is electronic and stark, sometimes honing down to nothing but a low, two-note hum at tense moments.

If you are looking for a slasher to watch while winding away your weed, you have come to the wrong shelf, my friend. This is much deeper and thought-provoking, laying on the side of the psychological in a way that director Richard Griffin did with Long Night in a Dead City (2017; also co-written by Schwartz and acting by Andrade and Caufield, among others). In fact, this would be a great double feature; but be prepared to be walking into walls afterwards.

This also makes me think of Bob Fosse. No, hear me out. What made Fosse famous was his precision: there was not a move, a single digit that was not where it meant to be; the same could be said about this film. It feels very intensely scrutinized as far as look, acting, and motion. Even the perfect lipstick on the faces of The Muse and Shannon are precise. The director, Suher, has obviously taken some amount of care to get everything to line up to be a piece of art cinema that could be talked about in classrooms. But to just watch it on the screen on one’s own? Well worth it if you like a mind fuck of a film. And I mean that as a positive.

IMDB listing HERE